On This Day Pre-Y2K
Confused by any of the jargon you see below? Check the Y2K Glossary!
May 19, 1999 Permalink
The bottom line: can you face yourself in the mirror, and feel good about what you’ve done? What difference does it make WHAT others think? What do YOU think?
This morning, the propane guy came with an entire crew and installed a 500-gallon propane tank in my back yard. (I live in a residential community). Someone called city hall, who sent “snoopers” to check it out. Now, along with my new (rented!) tank, I have a 20kW NG/propane generator in the back yard. I have guranteed heat, guaranteed power/light, guaranteed food (3 mo’s so far; another 3 to go...), and guaranteed water (Berkefeld filter & 8 55-gallon water drums).
Do my neighbors think I’m NUTZ? Probably. Do I care? HELL NO. But I’ll tell you THIS, if TSHTF at rollover, whose house do you think they’ll ALL show up at? The ant or the grasshopper, which one are YOU?
BTW, latest CAP Gemini survey shows that (currently) 22% of U.S. fortune 500 companies’ “critical systems” WILL NOT BE COMPLIANT on 1/1/2000. That’s THEIR OWN ANSWER. 72% of those companies have reported Y2K failures HAVE ALREADY OCCURRED. How many of those failures have YOU heard about? Think you’re likely to?
Did you read about how at a press club meeting in D.C. a month ago (or so), government representatives “requested” that the media only report POSITIVE Y2K STORIES? This was reported in Reuters.
If I were you, I’d keep preparing.
—Dennis, Time Bomb 2000 Forums (LUSENET), 05/19/99
The facts show that businesses when surveyed last May were wildly optimisitic about completion dates. The track record and the pattern of responses are clues that they are still being wildly optimistic. A shockingly small number are finished.
The reason the sample size was so large was so they can break out the data by technology. (Remediating mainframes, embedded systems, etcetera). It could be that most of the hard work is finished, making the projections reasonable. I don’t think so myself, but there will be plenty more grist for the mill when the final report comes out.
I think the Canadian experience wil be an excellent proxy for the US experience. One point that seems to go unchallenged is that the US is ahead of the rest of the world. Personally, I think Canada is ahead of the US. Certainly the Canadian government is. Their Y2k project is much better organized than the US government. They came up with 48 mission critical systems (with many subsystems to be sure) and they have stayed with 48 systems.
—Tom Benjamin, comp.software.year-2000, 05/19/99
