We saw Marianne present her "Congratulations" thread in the past few days, and it WAS interesting to read the posts in response, both HERE and on the EZBOARD forum. A few folks on the EZBOARD forum have a cut-off date that goes into 2001, if not beyond. I even read one post suggesting that if one didn't agree with this that they were in Denial, and even questioned why those folks were on that board.

Personally, my concern was power. As a programmer, I felt that if power was available SOMEWHERE, the computer problems could be managed. Without power ANYWHERE, we were pretty much SUNK . I didn't require the power to be available EVERYWHERE, because I felt that folks from locations that HAD power could be sent to FIX the power in the locations that didn't have it. As it turned out, even THIS wasn't necessary.

The question is: When is/was YOUR personal cut-off date for Y2k COMPUTER-related problems? I'm not interested in hearing about tornados, earthquakes, solar flares, wars, etc. I'm talking about the 2 digit computer thing SOLELY.

-- Anita (notgiving@anymore.thingee), April 02, 2000

Answers

20:00 DallasS.T. (aka:8 PM CST) 12/31/1999

By then after Eygpt, Athens, Rome,London, Berlin, Paris, Israel, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, N.Z., India, and who could forget TONGO, had suffered not even minor problems it was obvious that even my lowball at http://www.russkelly.com/experts.html was an overestimation.

The *key* to that and subsequent roll overs in the Western Hemisphere was that the "embedded systems" did not cause problems. Their operators had stated repeatedly that they would have no problems they could not handle upon failure but the absence of ANY major ones made it clear that was the biggest CROCK of all the Y2k Hype.

Efforts to "Pin the Tail on the Oil Price Rise Donkey" that followed were a subterfuge.

cpr xxxxxxxx

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), April 02, 2000.

It's almost shocking to think that in the end I was more optimistic than YOU, Charlie. I remember thinking that I'd make sure the laundry was done [just in case the power went out.] Once I saw New Zealand with power, I decided the laundry could wait. I remember thinking that I'd fill the bathtubs with water [just in case.] AGAIN, the power was on in New Zealand, for goodness sakes.

Malcolm and the other electricity folks in New Zealand made my cake. The rest of the countries unfolding in the same way were simply the icing.

-- Anita (notgiving@anymore.thingee), April 02, 2000.

Anita:

Personally, my concern was power.

That was mine. I talked with the CEO of the company that provides my power [and for parts of two other states] in Feb 99. He was very helpful. He had others provide me data [evidently, no one else had asked]. For reasons I'll never understand, he agreed with my suggestion to make all of their data available to the general public on their web site. By March, I was able to confirm that they wouldn't have problems [from 00]. What about the rest of the world. I had no way of knowing I just assumed that everyone would be as good as the companies that I could verify. Seems to have worked out. Your question is difficult to answer. I guess that I made my decision in March 99. I sure didn't try to preach to others; after all I could have been wrong.

I had no 00 problems on my computers. But this week, Word decided that I could only print one page at a time [10 copies of a 20 page report]. Now that irritates me. Haven't figured-out why. So the problems continue.

Best w

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), April 02, 2000.

Anita:

One of my jobs for the rollover was to monitor the rollover in the South Pacific and give an early warning if things started going wrong. I was prepared for some power problems to crop up with specific systems and was both suprised and relieved when none did. Once New Zealand and Australia rolled over successfully, I knew we were out of the woods. I also was responsible for certifying compliance for about 300 PC's so I was relieved when they all worked correctly after applying some BIOS patches and few other upgrades. So, in my case, worry about Y2K computer date problems ceased on January 2.

BTW, CPR , it's TONGA not TONGO. You don't want a whole country mad at you :^)

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 02, 2000.

April 9, 1999

I never once deceived myself into thinking that my personal tech knowledge would be adequate to make final decisions on the potential severity of Y2K related problems. However, I had come to the conclusion that there was a very organized effort to distort the facts and use FUD to create opportunities for profit. After 4/9/99 I no longer held any concerns for Y2K related failures. I backed up that conviction with personal and business decisions that turned out to be right on the money. Also, I took a very close look at the activities of folks like Hyatt, North, and yes Yourdon after this date and was convinced they were all in cahoots to spread fear and deceive for profit. It has been almost a year since that awakening and the world is still up and running, albeit wobbly at times.

-- Ra (tion@l.1), April 02, 2000.

For control systems, 12-31-99. I knew that if there were going to be problems, they would have shown up by mid-day on New Year's eve. I also knew that if the Big Bad Y2K Scenarios played out, the problems would be too big to ignore or hide.

For data systems, it's hard to say. For me, it has long since been over.

By the time that most nations and large businesses had already slipped into their FY2000's, I knew that most of the important work had been done. So, for me, Y2K is _already_ over, and has been for some time.

As an aside ... it was very frustrating to see the doomers downplay all of the "trigger dates" in 1999 after they played out as non-events. I knew, from my own experience, that look-aheads were some of the most common calculations made in businesses (especially in financial services -- in spite of what Sysman, Lane Core and Co used to say in CSY2K and in the old TB2000).

As Nick Zvegintzov said in his comments on Russ Kelley's page, "where are all the failures?" He KNEW this about lookaheads (as did I). We should have seen at least _some_ well-publicised failures, and not just incorrect notices and invoices, either. I'm talking about some real screw-ups that -- once again -- would have been impossible to hide in 1999.

This is the thing that I find most striking: Ed Yourdon's logic was actually quite sound in 1998. *IF* his basic premises were correct, we *should* have been seeing major chaos by late 1999. So ... I knew by late 1999 that Y2K was essentially going to be a non-event. Why others (including some government types!) couldn't see this remains a mystery.

One other thing that struck me in mid-1999: it was obvious that data-types tended to distrust control systems and vice-versa. Yourdon is a good example of a data-type in this category; another is Phil Greenspun! Phil obviously felt that the big data systems wouldn't be a killer; what he worried about were the "embeddeds!" :)

On the other hand, I knew from talking to engineer and tech-type friends that the DATA systems were their worry! They KNEW that their control systems would be OK! :)

(Go figure. I guess the two groups should've talked more ...)

I was that rare bird who'd worked on both, so I wasn't terribly worried about either.

-- Me (me@thisplace.net), April 02, 2000.

TONGA should have a special place in the history of the world. It was one of the first places covered by International TV for the roll over and while I watched the show, I kept thinking "what can Lord Jim say now?".

Would one of the "embedded knots" in a log drum ruin the ceremony of the King?

Would the power surges from all the TV cameras lead to "cascading cross defects" and the Dreaded Domino Effect?

Would that lead to the "Trigger Effect" on N.Z. or in the Outback necessitating the "Return of Crocadile Dundee"??

It was Lord Jimbo's use of the net address www.jimlord.to that was sort of his not very subtle hint that his great discovery of the "Navy Papers, THE "Pentagon Papers" of Y2k" were SO important that he had to procure an offshore Net address before "THEY" got him.

Later we learned that Tonga has sold off all the rights to their IP addresses to a US "marketing firm" and that Lord Jimbo was not the only one of the "y2k Expo and Survivalist" show people who had Tonga email addresses and web sites.

True it was clear after Japan did not "implode" that the Math was on the side of the Non-Doomers.

It was a virtual impossibility that 3 major nations would not show "some" problems, most especially Japan with the giga zillions of electronic devices and its almost inflexible "infrastructure" caused by too many humans on too little land for an advanced society.

And yet, the tiny problems (even the 3 power plant non-critical embedded problems that were fixed in hours) lead to the conclusion AT ONCE that **every** estimate of potential problems was overstated.

I left Dallas for DFW at 8:15 for the 4 Roll over flight to S.F. and noted on my street almost every home was lit suggesting "nobody" was going out.

Hours later, walking down Market in San Franscisco, seeing the Police in SWAT gear and the saddest thing of all the plywood on EVERY single plate glass window of those great old buildings, I thought, "those bastards ruined what should have been the greatest New Year's Eve of all times here (and in fact WAS in the REST OF THE WORLD where students of North, Art Bell and Jeff Rense would be given Mental Care).

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), April 02, 2000.

CPR:

Let me preface this by saying that I could be wrong and often am. Having said that, how do I analyze statements on BB's, newspapers and the broadcast medium [in areas where I am not an expert]. It is simple. Let's take Y2K. Of course it was always possible that embeddeds would cause a problem. They could have trashed the world. The statements made on the subject were always possible. What if the embeddeds had brought down the power grid on the west coast or in Texas. Disaster. But this isn't a game of what ifs? One doesn't look at what is possible [it is possible that, as I write this, I will be hit by an asteroid; oops had to duck] but what is probable; or in general terms, likely.

Another example; OK. Planting transgenic soybeans [with herbicide resistance] in the midwest could lead to outcrossing and development of superweeds. Possible; sure. Probable; not likely, since no members of the genus Glycine are native to North America. See what I mean. Well, I must go. I am still planting stuff.

Best w

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), April 02, 2000.

I was certain that Y2K would not cause massive failures as early as November 1998, but I also knew that there would be some applications and/or systems that would slip through by either being missed in the assesment phase, or would be poorly remediated.

My take on these few was that 75% would show up by 10th Jan 2000, 90% by 1st Mar 2000, 99% by today 3rd Apr 2000, and the last 1% on Dec 31st 2000.

It is this last date that most people ignore, yet I know I am going to have to manually change a parameter in an application that will see an incorrect date on the last day of this year. This will come about because a minor data logger in a remote location counts using julian dates, and on the 31st Dec 2000 will return the date as day #1. Our application at our power station will read these events as occuring on 1st Jan, and will automatically overwrite them to the correct date, however the self checking routine will report an error has occured untill such time as the date in the data logger is reset. I'll just disable the error reporting on this field for a few days.

But it'll be interesting to see if anyone else has anything similar that they aren't expecting.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), April 02, 2000.

I'm no longer concerned with a date related problem affecting, although I will be "on alert" 12 31 00. Now I think the euro vs dollar oil gold silver there ain't no inflation thing could affect us all adversely in the long run.

-- Johnny (Not@anymore.net), April 02, 2000.

I would say by mid 1998 I had a pretty good indication that Y2K would not cause any siginificant problems in the power industry.

By January 1999 I was extremely confident due to my work on a y2k nuke project - nothing was found that could have lead to power outages, and industry data for other utilities and plants indicated that this was pretty much the case around the US. By this time I was posting the facts on power at EUY2K and a few months later TB2000, and was met with a good bit of ridicule for doing so. A few of the y2k prognosticators were wise enough to listen at least, namely Rick Cowles and Roleigh Martin, both of whom began to moderate their predictions concerning embedded systems after much feedback from myself, Malcom (yes, the Malcom in this thread), Dan the Power Man, chicken little/cl, and others in the power industry.

My "personal" date of "proof" that y2k was indeed not going to cause infrastructure problems was Jan.1, 2000. Not a day later, not two, not a week, not a month, but the very day of the rollover. Why? Simple - in embedded systems, only the online systems were the most critical threat - in power, in water, telecommunications. The y2k bug would have manifested itself right at the MIDNIGHT 12/31/99 rollover for these critical control systems. Sure, there were types of problems that occurred later, such as trending, etc., but they just weren't critical control functions. This was demonstrated very well by the rollover itself, all the problems I heard about in the nuclear industry occurred right at the rollover, not a "week" later.

IT software, financial programs, had problems both right at the rollover, and later on when programs or functions were first run on their schedule, but these were never going to be "showstoppers", work started much earlier on IT software, and the bugs that got through weren't going to shut the plant down, and they were going to be fixed.

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), April 02, 2000.

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com

Your "outcross" might not happen in the "wild" but that does not mean it can't be induced on a bench. I know because I went back to school to learn why such things "could" happen. In many cases, the only thing necessary (within common sense) is "Proximity". What we choose to call "species" or "families" may not necessarily be so and the only thing that matters is the Biochemical compatibility of the reproductive material. In fact, in "ornamentals" there are verifiable plants from parents with different counts of Chromosome pairs. That should be shocking enough. Why it should be so might require another 50 years of dna mapping or less than five if someone has the right "insight".

It is true that most "wide cross" are not successful or yield non- viable plants.............BUT.....NOT........ALL. That does not justify the current hysterics against "designer" plants but rather states that there are a great deal of things we do not know about such crosses simply because as I found out, there is little work going on in the area and that is due to the classic: "Lack of Funding". It might be time for "strange-crosses.Dot.Com."

This is somewhat off topic but shows that those who "challenge conventional thinking" and persist at it "sometimes" make breakthroughs. Not often but sometimes.

It takes a great deal of nerve and courage to "think outside the box" especially in the confines of "Science" and older Science such as Botany.

When the cross between wild Teocate (spelling?) and domestic corn was written up in Scientific American there was hope for "perennial corn" but the wild plant was thought to be a linear ancester of Corn so that wasn't very "daring".

I spent a lot of years trying to understand something far more interesting, crossing in and out of species and even families.

Once upon a time pre-1980 or so, the "rules" of plant breeding were fairly straightforward. You stayed with closely related species and selected out the "best" for mating. Flowering plants were taken to the extreme so that everyone could have a 12" dahlia and a 8 inch flower on top of a 10 inch Daylilly. Big flowers/small plants in every color was the goal. Aseptic reproduction enabled rapid distribution and lowering of prices so if they died after a year or so, replacement was not the hassle of the past.

Well, from a "Scientific" point of view, plant breeding doesn't really lead to Nobel Prizes because of the "limited goals" of the Breeders themselves. Said another way, not too much of interest has come along since Gregor Mendel.

In ornamentals (Rhododendrons in particular) you discard 10,000 seedlings to get one thing of merit. That precludes some adventures needed for Science if you want to make a living either in Academia or Landscaping.

Now, Biochemistry insights enable new thinking about both horticultural goals and Food production. And "gene insertion" and "additions" enable "designer" progeny. Almost too simple.

There was a great deal of "hearsay" involved in plant breeding and little in the literature beyond "carrots" re: aseptic reproduction before 1980. Seven years later I sent a copy of an article from the J. of the Am. Rhododendron Soc. by an Economics Professor (now retired) who had developed a successful method for "tissue culture" for the "kitchen table" with readily available store bought goods. The article was specific for Rhododendron.

I showed the recipe to a Professor who actually had done the work on Carrots for NASA and whose LAB had *failed* to get Rh. callous to differentiate in culture.

In about 2 minutes, "Krik" looked at me, cursed and stated that the amateur had "the recipe we couldn't get". In essence, the Economist had cut the nutritional ratios to about 1/7th of what we had used. We had actually removed the reason for the cells to "differentiate" and "make their own".

The story gets more interesting because this same "Economist" with NO training in genetics or plant breeding reproduced a "wide cross" that was called "impossible" by Botanists. In so doing, I went off on a 10 year expedition in Academia to understand what had happened. It completely changed my life and my views of Science, Genetics and what is called Evolution.

I agree with the conclusions from the work of Barbara McClintock because I KNOW it can be done because I did it (as did many others) though at the time, I didn't know what I was doing.

I did my own variation of the "jumping gene" and so did the Economist and to make things more interesting a whole "bunch" of plant breeders toyed around with such things in the late 1970s and many of the progeny plants still live on.

I actually changed careers and returned to school after I was told what you call an "outcrossing" was impossible. Someone I knew had repeated a "wide cross" between Rhododendron and Lapponicum. When we were told at an International Botanical conference this wasn't possible because these two weren't even in the same species.

I responded that not only was that cross a repeat and yielded viable seedlings, but another between Rh. and Mt. Laurel had been grown on and inspected by other botanical experts. The plant and cuttings have even been introduced to the specialist trade.

It was called by the Botanists who inspected it and verified the intermediate characteristics "No Suchianum". Both plants flower but I don't know whether efforts to determine fertility were made. They have little horticultural value except that they represented a step into injecting "cold hardiness" into the somewhat tender Rhodies back in the 1960s and 1970s. Other interesting "wide crosses" in evergreens include a very improbable mating of evergreen azalea and a common flowering climbing vine,,,,,,*honeysuckle*. Curiously, the only resemblance between the two seems to be that both have five anthers (at least for the honeysuckle I have seen and Azalea is actually "Rhododendron Pentamerum".) This "mess" was never verified and my own efforts to mate them were "polluted" as I seemed to "self" the Honeysuckle and the reverse cross never took.

ALL of that suggests that what are called "the rules" and the "classifications" are but creations and artifacts for the convenience of their makers, HUMANS and the plants don't know nor care.

Biochemical reasons, of course, explain all of this. We now know that the 1900 "gene" was only a strand of dna and while "stereo-chemistry" of the particular formations might favor one shape in the mating of two different "things", we are still a long way away from a complete explanation of what is going on and "observation" is not particularly useful anymore as it was to Mendel.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), April 02, 2000.

Cpr:

I don't have time now to read your rant,

It takes a great deal of nerve and courage to "think outside the box" especially in the confines of "Science" and older Science such as Botany

I never disputed your knowlege of systems analysis. You shouldn't dispute my knowledge of genetics. Otherwise, even being the nice guy that I am, you will be a flaming corpse on the road to nowhere. I am gone for a week. This is from my nearly dead laptop.

Best wishes,,,,,,,,,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), April 02, 2000.

"It is simple. Let's take Y2K. Of course it was always possible that embeddeds would cause a problem. They could have trashed the world. The statements made on the subject were always possible.

Incorrect, Z. The typical programming of date related information in embedded systems precluded wide spread disaster due to embedded systems from ever occurring. The vast majority of y2k bugs found in embedded systems could have caused only minor problems EVEN IF LEFT WITHOUT REMEDIATION.

Genetics? Not sure how this topic got into the thread, but I found cpr's discussion interesting, as I always do when subjects are discussed with examples. But Z, where in the world do you see cpr "disputing" your knowledge of genetics? I re-read the thread, and he provides another viewpoint, so? Will your ego not allow this? lol!

A suggestion...discuss, engage, leave your ego at the door, for the field of genetics is hardly an area where ANYONE can claim some grand superior knowledge, it's a field in its infancy, and right now any self claimed expert is no better than the weatherman I listen to on TV....or those y2k experts that amused me...

Next.

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), April 02, 2000.

Fact finder,

Its time to repeat a statement from my last eval. of Y2k before 1/1/2000.

From Joseph Gable a breeder of Rhodies and Azaleas as he was presented the Medal of Honor from the Nat. Horticultural Society, "Someday we will come to understand that Creation is not complete."

As for genetics, I'm still waiting for one single expert to explain who the chemical compostion of the Histones pass down over millions of years without change and who that of some plants differs by less than five /100 from that of some animals.

cpr

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), April 02, 2000.

Link

Companies shouldn't expect all Y2K problems to show up on January 1.

According to Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), "It's going to take several months for the whole thing to play out. And if we are in trouble, it will have to cascade and build over a period of several months and we won't really know until March or April of 2000."

Bennett was probably talking about the impact of Y2k problems overseas not showing up here until March or April of 2000, so I'm not really worried. About the only possible impact left is this month's first quarter earnings reports from companies.

-- (w@v.u), April 03, 2000.

My cut-off date is when the Nasdaq hits 1000 and the Dow hits 5000. If it goes much lower than that it's probably just because of panic.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), April 03, 2000.

Anita:

Since you asked ... I figured it would take about a week or ten days into January to get a useable fix on the amount of Y2K problems. I figured it would take until Valentine's Day to have a really accurate, detailed picture.

Here's how it worked out in the event:

By the middle of January 1, I was totally confident there would be no catastrophe. The lights and water were on and I knew they would stay on. It was that way in every country. I stopped worrying about Y2k as a life-altering event then. I still wondered about the banks and stock exchanges, because it was the weekend.

By Tuesday January 4, I lowered my worst case scenario from a depression (a 7) to a mild recession (a 5). By that time I didn't think a 5 was very likely, either, but was not a complete impossibility. I had to see businesses do their invoices first.

Each day in January made the trend a bit clearer. As the month progressed, I lowered my top-end, worst-case by at least one point a week.

By Valentine's Day, I figured all the results were in and I had a pretty accurate, detailed picture. Not much had happened. Some people here and there had been inconvenienced. No one had suffered.

Please use this information any way you see fit.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), April 03, 2000.