One thing I wrestle with all the time is, what kind of sense can we make of what we read. And how do we do it?

Consider the USPS story as an example. The head administrator says everything will be just fine. The auditor says they've hardly started. We make the snap decision that the administrator is lying, the USPS has no prayer, we're happy with this 'analysis'. Anyone comfortable with stopping there need read no further.

If anyone is left, is there any fundamental analysis that can be done here? First, is it possible to be in great shape if you've hardly started? Well, yes it is, if you had no important problems to begin with. It seems axiomatic that if your operation doesn't make much use of dates, you aren't in much trouble if those dates are wrong.

OK then, what is the real scope of the task USPS faces? How much date processing is really required to deliver mail? Do sorting machines use dates? Do postal vehicles use dates? Are dates required to print or sell stamps? What sorts of date dependencies does USPS have which, if not fixed in time, can cripple their operations? I don't know.

I notice that the auditor's report didn't address this issue. That report discussed number of people working on the project, number of items to be examined, number of total systems and number of remediated systems, etc. What USPS systems are critical, what exposure to dates do these systems have, how many critical systems have critical date exposure, and where do these systems stand? The auditor's report is silent on these questions. The auditor did NOT come out and say that mail could not be delivered without major changes.

I should make it clear that I'm talking here about the size of the effort USPS faces internally, in order to be adequately (if not completely) functional, all else being equal. Yes, USPS will be in trouble if external factors come up wrong, even if they've fixed everything within their jurisdiction. But it's not the job of USPS to repair the trucking industry, or the FAA, or the airports, or the fuel industry, or to control riots.

Still, it seems hardly acceptable to throw our hands in the air and fall back on the old 'nobody knows' excuse. Nor does it seem reasonable to conclude that USPS is doomed on general principles, because we lack all pertinent details.

Of course it's safest to assume the worst and prepare accordingly. And maybe the functional viability of USPS isn't something we can usefully concern ourselves with.

How do we deal with insufficient data?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 12, 1999

Answers

Flint, millad, the last question is the one we've been asking since I stumbled into this forum in, what, summer 1998(?). It almost begs an Irwin Corey answer which i shall refrain from offering.

In truth, this is what we have to use for our personal analyses. this is why there are screaming flame wars in so many places. (though, having stumbled in here I have recently read teh name on teh door and it reads ainrofilaC letoH, I suspect I'll be able to check out but leaving may be problematical).

Seriously, if anyone has an answer to how we handle info that isn't really. Or how we handle partial info or info that didn't do enough research, or didn't report enough research, I will be the first to bow to them.

Chuck, if we can't have SOME humor (yes that's what I call it) then the subject gets a bit too big for any of us.

-- Chuck, a night driver (reinzoo@en.com), March 12, 1999.

Flint,

Which ever report you choose to believe both indicate that the USPS faced or is still facing a major challenge.

I think an official has a lot more motivation in producing a happy face report than one who doesn't. For an official to produce such a dismal report putting their reputation on the line takes considerable guts and can only leave me as to wonder what their motivation was to produce such a report if they didn't think it was true.

Happy face reports on their own are great because if they are right then I don't have anything to worry about. It's the not so happy face reports that are produced that I need to worry about because if they turn out to be right and I discounted them then that's what's going to lead me into big trouble

-- Cheery (mailcarrier@work.com), March 12, 1999.

The Aircraft Contract Data Collection System(ACDCS) is very date sensitive because it takes the mail weight data and converts it into flight manifest data for the contracted airlines to haul your mail.It also does the routing as to who gets what mail. ACDCS hubs use DEC PDP-11 series computers(mostly 11-45's and 83's). They don't like the rollover date.

Also the Remote Bar Coding System(RBCS) uses time date tracking to allow the processing of non machine readable mail.Ever see the little orange bars on the back of your envelope? That one was ran thru a RBCS system.RBCS uses non postal personnel at a remote site to read handwritten mail and punch the data into the system which then converts that to a barcode. RBCS has been on line since about 91 and depending on the age of the host and remote processing site you will have problems.They use regular Telco dedicated T1 lines.

Delivery Confirmation Scaning which came on line last fall should be ok if the phone company stays up. Express mail will see failures due to old equipment not being able to handle the rollover.

Bottom line folks is this, If the mail you put in the box has to go more than 200 miles give or take, it's flown there. If the airlines stay happy, the Post Office will run (sorta), if they get their internal processing equipment up to snuff.Most of the Regular Optical Character Readers have the national Zipcode directory on board them and can be removed from the net if need be and they can run as stand alones. But you need to print envelopes with a common font, say Times New Roman so the machine can read them.If it's hand written and RBCS is down then it gets processed the Ben Franklin way,by hand.

BTW, the last internal Memo I saw had an outside contractor coming to my office for a site audit in,get this, JULY 99.Just the audit, no remediation date yet. So spin that however you will. I plan on prepaying my mortgage on Dec99 thru Mar00.

-- nine (nine_fingers@hotmail.com), March 12, 1999.

Flint, I think the approach to the USPS dilemma is really straight forward. If the Inspector General's report is correct about the USPS' primitive level of assessment, then the USPS can't possibly know yet what the impacts will be next year - Any ability to function will be entirely the result of sheer luck that their systems didn't require remediation. I had better "usefully concern" myself with the possibility of a USPS-free world next year - ordering what I can this year, arranging for automatic deposits and payments, etc.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), March 12, 1999.

Flint,

Let me refer you to an article that was on the June 11, 1998 issue of Time Digital. It doesn't settle the issue of how compliant the post office is, but it does give insight into how truthful the Post Office is in such matters...

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,13653,00.html

[snip]

The U.S. Postal Service, for instance, plans to spend over $500 million on Year 2000 debugging. It claims to be absolutely finished with its most vital systems in just three months -- but it's not even done figuring out if 21 of its 335 "mission critical" computer systems have problems. Even the Social Security Administration, which has been reprogramming its computers for the last decade, isn't that optimistic. "This raises questions about whether the Postal Service's own target of this September is realistic," Willemssen said.

[snip]

That's September *1998*.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), March 12, 1999.

Flint - give up, give your brain a rest.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), March 12, 1999.

Flint --- Are you aware of how silly and transparent you are becoming? Anyone paying attention the last few days to your various threads and posts can discern your entire agenda at this point. I'm beginning to understand why Milne never took a word you said seriously.

Now, you take an independently audited report (the very thing you USED to claim would help resolve uncertainties) that, indeed, is probably the bleakest picture of a Federal Agency ever shared with the public and try to SPIN even that into oblivion ("gee, it's sooooo hard to know anything about Y2K and the Postal Service"). Nonsense.

It's probably not a coincidence that your disinformation machine has moved into high gear, right along with Koskinen's, once the Senate report came out exposing clear perils that can't be washed away. Or that you are bringing up this subject on the same day a post was made in this forum about Time Magazine's shocking masthead: no, not because their masthead proves anything (got to anticipate your usual attacks, I suppose) but because it is, after all, transparently related to their concern over the same Postal Service.

Flint, I've been there auditing huge organizations. I know how it's done. The audit report was legitimate. The Postal Service is hosed, Flint. Sorry. Do I know whether 80% or 50% of the mail will be delivered next year? No: that's the meaning of uncertainty. But the fact that they're hosed is certain.

Flint, you are hard at work trying to take a forum that does its best to fairly analyze Y2K and smear it, manipulate it and degrade it. We can't stop you but we can keep pointing out what you are doing. What are you getting out of it? No, I know: you get to feel even more superior to us poor kooks than you already do.

No doubt I'm now in for some sort of smarmy response about me and the Postal Service. It's your thread, Flint. We're all just clueless compared to you. I'm outta here.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 12, 1999.

DipDog said:

"Flint, you are hard at work trying to take a forum that does its best to fairly analyze Y2K..."

Now that's comedy!

-- Y2K Pro (No@Y2Krackpots.com), March 12, 1999.

Flint, at the risk to have tomatoes thrown at me too, I see your point and it makes sense. I enjoy seeing doomers' assertions torn appart as much as the Polyannas'.

Andy, you're resorting too much to cheap bully tactics lately, I used to respect you a lot more. Why don't you try to debunk line by line in a neutral tone instead? You'd do me and many other readers not as smart and knowledgable as you are a great service.

I'm just smart enough to know that I am not the smartest person here, and so I count on all of you smart guys to make sense in my wittle head. Flint included.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), March 12, 1999.

The problem lies with the way a lot of outfits (and the entire govt.) analyze the Y2K problem. Believe it or not, they have no scale whatsoever that gives one item a higher priority over the next! Now the people doing the work HAVE priorities (the flood control valve is a damn sight more important than the river gage, the microwave link is more important than the clerks spreadsheet, etc.) but the people in public affairs have no clue about most of these things. So they report only a percentage of items remediated. Some even report a percentage vs. all items owned by the company/agency. So looking at the forest is meaningless in many cases, you have to examine the individual trees to make any sense out of the reports. In the case of the Post Office, the primary bottleneck will be sorting and shipping at their primary and secondary hubs. The sorting equipment is reported to be in pretty good shape - completion of that work is expected pretty soon (don't remember the exact date). Their surface transport is in pretty good shape. So as far as sorting and sending the mail on to the delivery points, it doesn't sound too bad. Some of their internal reporting systems are not in good shape. How will that affect their mission? Very hard to say - but they do have a history of trying hard to overcome obstacles.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), March 12, 1999.

Ahh Chris, you've noticed :)

"Andy, you're resorting too much to cheap bully tactics lately, I used to respect you a lot more. Why don't you try to debunk line by line in a neutral tone instead?"

Chris, I'm not a saint, I've just about run out of patience. That's all, very simple. There's a lot of crap on this Forum lately, too many posts to keep track of, so I'm getting to the point as quick as I can - I don't have the time to address Flint's disinformation sermons line by line - anyone with half an ounce of commons sense can see where he's coming from. BTW it's a little personal with Flint and I, some personal correspondence, I took a lot of time replying to him only to have him carry on as he has - so yep guilty as charged, I'm a god dang bully boy :)

Nuff said Chris, could tell you more but I can't be bothered. later,

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), March 12, 1999.

Davis, your response sounds like a typical pollyanna post. It's full of " pretty good shape, Does'nt sound to bad, expected pretty soon, very hard to say". Pretty typical of your lame posts

-- Shithead (noneofyour@business.com), March 12, 1999.

For anyone who cares, do a csy2k search. USPO has been a subject there many times, with a few good analysis.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), March 12, 1999.

Flint,

If anyone is left, is there any fundamental analysis that can be done here? First, is it possible to be in great shape if you've hardly started? Well, yes it is, if you had no important problems to begin with. It seems axiomatic that if your operation doesn't make much use of dates, you aren't in much trouble if those dates are wrong.

Flint, I think you are dense! Look at a piece of mail, look closely, do you see anything in the upper right hand corner of the envelope, guess what that is? Why heavens to Betsey, it's a date stamp! I wonder how many pieces of mail are date stamped on a daily basis, I would guess millions. Flint isn'nt it obvious that the USPS uses dates?

-- Watcher (anon@anon.com), March 12, 1999.

"What sorts of date dependencies does USPS have which, if not fixed in time, can cripple their operations? I don't know.

I notice that the auditor's report didn't address this issue. That report discussed number of people working on the project, number of items to be examined, number of total systems and number of remediated systems, etc. What USPS systems are critical, what exposure to dates do these systems have, how many critical systems have critical date exposure, and where do these systems stand? The auditor's report is silent on these questions. "--Flint

"Look at a piece of mail, look closely, do you see anything in the upper right hand corner of the envelope, guess what that is? Why heavens to Betsey, it's a date stamp!"--Watcher

That's one system, good. Now we need to know how many more critical like this one there are, and how far along they are.

Keep your flame suit on Flint. I think I see where you're trying to get at.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), March 12, 1999.

Watcher:

Good point. I hope nine_fingers can tell us whether the system that puts that date on the envelope is compliant, and if not, whether it would prevent mail from being delivered or cause some other problem. The devil is in the details.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 12, 1999.

IM going to add a little humor here,

As I read this thread one overwhelming thought penertrates my conciousness. Is not getting my mail a bad thing? Well aside from not being able to burn it as a heat source, Id say no.

I do realize this isnt the case for everyone. It just kind of shows you how different things are important to different people I suppose.

For a good hypothetical scenario of life the postoffice after Y2k rent the movie,

The Postman with Kevin Costner :)

-- nyc (nycnyc@hotmail.com), March 12, 1999.

nyc,

You said on another thread that you and your wife are bankers. What sort of contingency plans do you think your bank would use if the Post Office is non-compliant in 2000?

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), March 12, 1999.

Do we have to make complete sense of everything to see that there may be problems? S'cuse me if I misquote because it's been a few days since I read the report but I believe it said something about the USPO having 2700 vendors and few of those vendors had replied to queries as to their readiness. Yes, just a few things taken out of context can give you a warning.

Just in the past few days I keep reading about American companies capping their wells because the price of oil is so cheap now,yet we know the there could be problems at any time getting oil from the mideast with or without y2k.

In fact, we know the economies in the east and mideast are pretty bad right now, Japan, Russia, India and Pakastan,always Israel and it's neighbors,the Koreas, starvation and wars and genocide everywhere, ect. With or without y2k it's a tinderbox that could explode at any time.

So it makes perfect sense to me to prepare for what ever might come and even glitches can produce a domino effect.

At the beginning of getting it, I read everything, now it's enough just to know that the majority of programmers and IT specialists are preparing.

Of course my circumstances are a lot different than most,I was retiring to the country anyway so it just speeded things up a bit. A couple with highpaying jobs, new house, etc.in the city or suburbs would have a lot more serious decisions and research to consider.

-- sue (deco100@aol.com), March 13, 1999.

Everything will be fine. CLICK

will be fine. CLICK

will be fine. CLICK

will be fine. CLICK

-- (nobody@home.org), March 13, 1999.

"Do we have to make complete sense of everything to see that there may be problems?"

No we don't, and that's why we're preparing. And that's why Flint is preparing too.

I think what Flint is trying to show is that there are still reasons to hope and be optimist, in the sense that it is NOT an absolute given that everything will fail, and the future might also turn out to be not as bad as we imagine. What Flint does for me when I read his analysis and questioning is give me hope. He does not prove anything absolutely, anymore than the doomers prove anything absolutely. The bad news always outwieght the good news, and that's the important thing to remember, and so I'll never return to a carefree thinking and keep preparing until I can no more.

Flint's optimist bent and sharp thinking makes him look for the rays of hope in all this gloomy picture. It's good to look for the missing logic in the "rosy" pictures, but just as important to look for it in the "gloomy" ones too.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), March 13, 1999.

An inability to tolerate any kind of skepticism is a sign of insecurity with your own beliefs. I'll have to say that Flint does a good thing here by asking intelligent questions. Assessing Y2K's imapct can only be done with deductive reasoning, not inductive reasoning. So you have to start out with an open mind that is willing to accept (initially) many possibilities.

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), March 13, 1999.

Finaly, someone who "gets it" ;-)

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), March 13, 1999.

SH - I do think you chose an appropriate name.

If I don't know something I admit it. Would that the doomers, naysayers, Rick Cowles and Gary North would do the same.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), March 19, 1999.