Opened the San Diego Union-Tribune to the Business section this AM and was gratified to see this headline:

Y2K Menace Creeps Ever Closer

Three separate stories -

Local company touts emergency phone system

Some are growing gardens, a few are buying precious metals, others are stockpiling canned goods, water and even weapons.

But according to San Diego-based Triage Communications Group, you are not really prepared for Y2K unless you have an emergency wireless phone system... It'll be gradual, expert says, and might begin in mid-1999

Those who expect the Y2K computer bug to strike with a bang on Jan. 1 should instead prepare for a gradual meltdown of computer systems that are not fixed on time, a top expert in the field said yesterday in San Diego.

In fact, only 10 percent of Y2K failures will happen within two weeks of Jan. 1, according to Lou Marcoccio, Year 2000 research director for the consulting firm GartnerGroup... Some warn of risks in billions of embedded chips

The good news: You can quit worrying about whether those big old mainframe computers may go kaput come Jan. 1, 2000.

The bad news: You should be very afraid about what will happen on that date to billions of embedded chips -- built into everything from transmissions to pacemaker monitors...

If anyone's interested, go here: San Diego Union-Tribune and click on the "Business Extra" button on the left.

I'm just glad that the U-T gave the story this much play. We've got a City Councilcritter who's hosting a Y2K meeting in a couple of weeks, so this should make for some fascinating dialogue.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), March 23, 1999