First thanks Michael Taylor for the post of Ed Yardini's speech. It reinforces recent decisions made by my wife and I. I am a programmer in a smaller isolated midwest town. We recently put our large in town house on the market for less than any current reasonable value to move it fast. At the same time we signed a contract to buy ten acres outside of town at the full price the owner was asking.

What we are giving up is four bedrooms, 2-1/2 baths, two dens, etc. What we are getting is a smaller mobile home with 2-1/2 bedrooms, 1-1/2 baths. There are four of us.

However we are also getting ten arces; half pasture and half timber with lots of pecans. We are also getting two ponds, two barns and propane heat, 1000 gallons of which should last three years.

In reviewing our Y2K compliance we determined that some options just were not available in town such as storing fuel, caching rain water, waste disposal, gardening and raising small livestock.

We haved lived rural in the past so are not concerned about the shock of a lifestype change. My point in relaying this to all of the good folks on this board is that we determined earlier this year that we could not afford to wait and continue to analyze the impact of Y2K before making decisions. Action had to be taken post haste. My wife is very much a part of our preparations and does most of the Y2K related purchasing.

By the way we live in Fort Scott in the S.E. part of Kansas in case there are any kindred spirits in our area.

Ed

-- Ed Stevens (ed@terraworld.net), October 21, 1998

Answers

Without a doubt, you all have done the wise and prudent thing. Hopefully this will be a great encouragement to everyone.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), October 22, 1998.

Dear Ed.

CSIS is an excellent organization. From what I can gather, they have no economic interest in making money from y2k so they are very credible and they have heavy hitters on their board of directors.

I was very pleased when I read Mr. Yardini's words in the CSIS transcript. Not because of it's content but because of his unyielding motivation to get people to be prepared. He has put himself and his career way out there. In this climate of retreatism that is very refreshing.

Personally, I think that denial is sinking in to some of the "experts" who had tried to raise awareness early on for large and small corporations and the Fed Gov but they have now come to the realization that their own words are coming back to haunt them. Their worst fears are materializing. "The code is broken". "Their isn't enough time to get everything fixed." They had preached the awareness campaign for so long and now they're preaching triage and contingency because they can't accept the inevitable. That, in and of itself, is a clear indication that we're standing in line for the biggest rollercoaster ride of the technology age. I don't discount the need for such actions as triage and contingency. On the contrary, I think this is very prudent. But to say that everythings gonna be just fine isn't credible.

Best of luck with the new place Ed!

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-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 22, 1998.