On This Day Pre-Y2K
Confused by any of the jargon you see below? Check the Y2K Glossary!
April 19, 1999 Permalink
I don’t know what is about to happen. The press, Kosky, the denialists, have absolutely no idea how hard it is to fix large software systems. My area of expertise is large complex systems. These will have huge problems. What flows from that? it’s all speculation at this point.
How can these butt-heads be so sure that everything will be fine. When Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” he was horribly wrong. No one knows what will happen. The DC area geekvine is getting more frantic each day.
I’ll continue to gather information, monitor the mainframe geekvine in the DC area, and get the word out. From time to time, I might cache some additional info in the member’s only page but generally everything will be accessable to everyone.
Please, please take prudent actions, this isn’t the time to panic. As I write this, on Monday April 19, the NASDAQ stock market continues to melt down. Maybe it will recover, maybe not. I just sold the last of my pitiful stock holdings and will take a look at the mutual funds in my 401(k) next. This isn’t financial advice. I’m just passing on what I’m doing. You situation is certainly different from mine.
Tonight, while your family is sleeping and the night is dark and fearful, know this, humanity has survived and beaten worse than this Y2K problem. This has all the makings of a disaster but this isn’t an asteroid strike or a nuclear war. If we continue to prepare and the programmers fix all the software they can, maybe we can hold things together.
—Cory Hamasaki, Cory Hamasaki’s DC Y2K Weather Report, 04/19/99
In preparing for y2k possibilities, I have assessed my family’s risk of TEOTWAWKI. Our exposure is high. I live in a very remote area, my job is with a non-profit quite distant from my home and we are very far from affluent. For us, the risk is acute because of the vulnerability of distance (remoteness), technological disruption and economics. My preparedness efforts take this into account in decreasing those areas of vulnerability by becoming more self-sufficient and less dependent upon accoustomed services that might be disrupted due to physical or economic factors. I am fortunate in that I have many of the elements of self-sufficiency at hand (land, water, etc.) that just need to be developed. The economic aspect means that the “development” of these resources is largely dependent upon my own labor.
Right now I am trying to run on parallel systems. Each new area of “independence” I add is a time consuming alternative - both in setting it up and in use and maintenance. Canning, gardening, chopping wood, etc. consumes a great deal of time. Checking batteries, watering, feeding animals. learning new skills takes a great deal of time. Running parallel has been exhausting. I feel like a juggler trying to keep the plates spinning. It was so much easier to stop at the store on the way home, turn up the thermostat and plug in the appliance. I live with a world of daily checklists.
My point is that self-sufficiency, for me, is growing into a full-time job. I can see that I cannot live in both worlds without extreme stress. TEOTWAWKI may mean that I have to commit entirely to self-sufficiency to attain assurance that we will continue to function and have our basic needs of shelter, water and food met. (Not to mention clothing.)
—marsh, Time Bomb 2000 Forums (LUSENET), 04/19/99
