Its understandable that relief over the unexpectedly low reports of utility system outages around the world is leading to premature declarations of victory by doomers and pollies alike. Understandable, but wrong.

Dont get me wrong. I am thrilled so far. I love the idea that those who mocked Y2K and didnt prepare arent in the dark today, scared and desperate. My family is so much the safer as a result.

I am thrilled that  so far  terrorism has been nearly non-existent and that the nukes did stay in their silos. Lets leave the near and far-future (years) for another thread.

OTOH, regular posters know that I have been saying for months that I had become more optimistic about power and telecom. Rollover for utilities is not a wrong prediction on my part. Note that I will feel better still even about utilities after 01/07/2000 when the post-mortem is more complete  and I note that Rick Cowles, who ALSO expected a calm rollover, anticipates potential (not definite, but potential) power problems later even than that (ditto Dick Mills).

So I am not surprised by the result so far EXCEPT by the unexpected DEGREE of grid calm.

Read that again  the notion that I (can only speak for myself) predicted a grid collapse as the basis for a doomer expectation was already wrong months ago. And, yet, I continued in the face of that expectation (and continue) to come in at a 8.5 for Y2K impacts. Why?

The primary reason is that serious Y2K defaults will take weeks or months to emerge (funny how some bubbly obscures sensible analysis on this board). Or not. But the point is, it will take until May before we can either wrap this up as a wonderful polly victory AND/OR determine the severity of the impacts to come. There will be defaults. Whether those defaults will add up to a 3 or a 8.5 cant be determined on 01/01/2000.

To a few specifics:

 Banking and markets.

We know almost nada at this point. It will take days, weeks and/or months to determine whether the system has been corrupted. If banking goes down, TEOTWAWKI will be just as sure as if utilities had gone down, though it is obviously nicer to endure a terrible depression and worldwide chaos when the lights are on (or, at least, on if you can pay your bills).

 The rest of the embeddeds

Oil, air traffic, chemical, water/sewage, agriculture, medical, etc. Again, we know almost nothing so far since some of these systems are just now coming up today and degradation in systems will take days, weeks or months to reveal long-term impacts. I am confident that our insiders (rc, gecko, etc) have NEVER had a stake in a disaster. If the inside dope from these sectors proves positive over the coming days, they will report it and it will be awesome. But we dont know yet.

Ditto military systems.

While the surprising absence of utility downs might be encouraging, embeddeds vary significantly by sector. If we see a consistent and unexpected type failure in a given sector that has not yet reported, we will be in the deep stuff for that sector.

 Government applications

The jury remains out on Medicare, IRS, USPS and a range of other applications that drastically affect the lives of tens of millions of people and entire industries. Consequently, gauging the impact of their relative remediation is a task for the coming weeks and months.

 Business applications

The fact my lights stayed on doesnt help me determine the status of 50,000 enterprise mainframes around the world (hey, Fred, the lights are on, you can go home now and stop FOFing the iron) nor the viability of millions of SMEs who have chosen to FOF. Does big iron matter? Were the SMEs smarter than me? Mebbe. Mebbe NOT. Again, time will tell. If not, will the effect on the supply chain be minimal, significant or disastrous? Stay tuned.

DO I really have to go on?

What we have apparently learned so far is that utility folks like Malcom Taylor and Rick Cowles were correct that the advanced grids would handle rollover. Great. But thats about ALL we have learned. As for Russia et al? Keep watching the news for a week or two, as Ive said all along.

If the same holds for telecom (I havent seen any first-hand reports), that will be somewhat more surprising to me, since many doomer and polly analysts have been predicting problems there right up to yesterday. Again, great.

As for how the forum is behaving, I cant say Im surprised one way or the other. Most are playing to type  a mix of trolling, blaming Ed, claiming victory or feeling like they were duped.

Hang in there, folks. The home team (thats all of us) had a good first inning. Now, lets keep playing while the rest of the game unfolds.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

 The rest of the embeddeds

Oil, air traffic, chemical, water/sewage, agriculture, medical, etc. Again, we know almost nothing so far since some of these systems are just now coming up today and degradation in systems will take days, weeks or months to reveal long-term impacts.

Bullshit.

ATC worked through the rollover, water/sewage flowed and still is. agriculture??? What in agriculture?

Medical, I just came in from the store and a woman who had to work during the rollover said they had nothing to do but sleep, people still got sick and the equipment still got used.

Embeddeds will not fail due to the Y2K rollover, they did not, there is no such thing as a hidden clock and they will not fail in the future, a day, week, month or year.

You dipshit, I have worked hands on on that stuff for over 30 freekin years, I know how it works.

But why nott go ask Paula Gordon who wouldn't know one if it was jammed up her ass.

They work by physics not by opinion or guesswork or popular belief.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), January 01, 2000.

Nice try, Cherri. Suggest you wait a bit before you claim your "gracious" victory on embeddeds.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 01, 2000.

" They work by physics not by opinion or guesswork or popular belief."

You're right about one thing there. sort of.

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.

Thanks BigDog,

My major y2k concern with regard to family, friends and the human race was the ability of the basic infrastructure to stay intact. It now appears that we can move beyond this phase.

I believe that we can cope with whatever OTHER problems come our way. The lessons I have learned with regard to personal survival and independence will remain with me throughout my lifetime, they are invaluable.

Now tback to reality! My Brothers 4550 Multi-Function machine showed a date of 01/01/2014 this am and my answering machine had 01/01/2001 displayed. Hopefully I will be able to make a simple update and be done with it.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), January 01, 2000.

There was a report of Monitor equipment in an Egypt hospital crashing. Only a few were problematic and were replaced quickly.

Above and beyond the typical concerns..... With all the date glitches we are seeing..... I wonder what will happen with Date sensitive spreadsheet applications. If most small/medium businesses adopted a FOF mentality, then their data is already corrupted and may appear as gibberish when they get back to work on Mon.

I think this is the calm before the storm for Y2K, and that this board will really heat up within the next week or so.

Just MHO

-- Austin (minime@austinpowers.com), January 01, 2000.

What a mouth on a "lady" Cherri, you used to at least have a better grasp of civil adult language...beginning to sound a bit like the polly groupie LL.

-- Tiara (sorceress5@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.

BigDog... I think this is a very fair analysis. I have to admit while I believed that the actual roll-over was going to be a limited event with respect to failures, the degree of robustness in the system or at least the apparent robustness at this point leaves me questioning some previous analysis of the problem. I am however still very pessimistic of the over-all outcome. Thanks for the post.

-- richard shockwave (vission441@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

Funny how Cheri's still an asshole post rollover.

Guess her period is Y2K compliant.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.

You dipshit, I have worked hands on on that stuff for over 30 freekin years, I know how it works.

Specifically, what embedded systems where you personally working on in 1970. I do mean specifically.

Thank you very kindly.

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), January 01, 2000.

Oh... and for Cheri...What you just said really makes me see what kind of idiots this world has to deal with..."phyics" get a life kid. Anyone who reads this post will never respect your opinion again...if they ever did. Now get back to class.

-- shockwave (vission441@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

Lane -- Could you take that up in a separate thread with her highness? It may be unavoidable here but I hope not. Cherri is angry because she feels her expertise has been disregarded or dissed. Actually, it's her spelling and personality. I have always factored her analyses into my own estimates - but not ONLY her analyses.

She thinks the game is over on that score, but she's wrong.

We will have most of the dope on embedded impacts within the next two weeks, either publicly or through insiders, but it won't kill us, after two years of embedded discussion, to wait. Perhaps Cherri can keep from hissing at Paula until then.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 01, 2000.

Cherri, can I rent you out for a stag party I'm planning? The way you talk... Ohlala!

-- gary elliott (Gelliott@real.on.ca), January 01, 2000.

Gettin' pretty shrill there, Cherri. Better adjust your meds a little.

We shall see whether you are correct with regard to embeddeds or not.

But nobody here cares much whether YOU are right or wrong. We just wish you would go away because your personality is so distasteful.

Godspee

-- Pinkrock (aphotonboy@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

ABC, right before the coverage of the Rose Bowl parade, had a blurb about EKG's failing today in Sweden, and that nurses were monitoring the patients manually. They failed today, not last night. Things that make me go hmmmmm.

-- But I'm (still@curious..com), January 01, 2000.

Thank you for the post Big Dog, excellent as usual. IMHO, the posters claiming "victory" or "foul" are as always the TROLLS.....

I'm sorry but I will never truly understand the mentality of someone who chooses to spend their time on an issue that they do not believe, and on people who choose to disagree with said belief. Boggles my mind.

Cherri, please go back to Sams and leave us alone, or better yet go visit Kosky's $50,000,000.00 tax payer funded command center and spew your filthy mouth at him!!!!

-- sick of these ugly trolls (karlacalif@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

Cherri seems not to have gotten enough attention as a child. Heard that the only way the family dog would play with her, was if mom tied a pork chop around her neck...

-- gary elliott (Gelliott@real.on.ca), January 01, 2000.

So far, Cherri's prediction has won by a clean knockout. So let's BLAME her for, uh, well, uh, whatever, let's attack anyway.

I agree with BD that the jury is still out on a million and one items, and I agree that they won't ALL come through unscathed, or even close to all. The real cleanup process starts Monday, and there will be a LOT to clean up. But I think anything over a level 6 on our scale would require failures already observed not to happen. And even holding for a 6 requires a belief that the same process of "analysis" that blew the embeddeds so badly (hey, oil wells, pipelines, and refineries are still running, so are chemical plants) just happens to have been correct analysis for IT systems. And hell is full of snowballs too.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 01, 2000.

"(hey, oil wells, pipelines, and refineries are still running, so are chemical plants)" -- Flint

Flint, ARE they running today? I don't know about the ones around us, but it is a weekend and a holiday too. ARE they running at normal capacity?

-- helen (sstaten@fullnet.net), January 01, 2000.

helen:

To be honest, I don't know but I doubt it. However, there have been no reports of any problems with those facilities that were not shut down just in case. So I think the plants running at less than full capacity are doing so because of precautionary measures, not because they experienced any failures. Arabian oilfields (at least someone reported) are continuing at normal capacity, end to end. And the Alaska pipeline couldn't be shut down, but had no problems. And so it goes.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 01, 2000.

Good post, Big Dog as always.

Cheri, the first step over the edge seems to be when posters use colors in their replies or threads. Lighten up

-- Nancy (wellsnl@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.

Agreed, Big Dog. If there is a y2k problem, it will begin to accrue on 1/1/00. I've thought all the experts agreed that the risk was the "death by a thousand cuts". It is my assumption that such a process would occur over a period of weeks or months.

The paucity of reported failures is encouraging. Based on the CIA reports, I would not have been surprised if the hinterlands of the former USSR had been left in the dark last night, but, appparently, they weren't, so maybe the unremediated environment was not as threatening as the CIA and the Commerce Dept. and the Senate were all advertising.

If all continues to go well on Monday and Tuesday, then I will feel that we have survived the Pearl Harbor of y2k and that we are technologically strong enough to fight the rest of the y2k war.

I am not at all surprised at where things stand right now. I will be surprised if there is not some negative economic effect from y2k bugs.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.

Gordon, I,for one would be very glad if you could refrain from "sexist" insults.There are quite a few female posters & lurkers on the board who find this kind of comment most offensive.I realise you had a degree of provocation (LOL) but could you have not seized the chance to be more original ?

With respect

-- Christine (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), January 01, 2000.