The State of Y2K

July 4th Edition

In this issue:

MORE Headaches For Air Traffic Controllers
Ickes And The Lizard Lady
An Experiment In Journalism
How Be Da Banks?

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), July 03, 1999

Answers

Stevie, if you didn't advertise over here just how many hits do you think you would get?

Advertise? Whoa horse! Can't have that. Damned entrepreneurs.

Not selling? Idea selling predates commerce. Agree?

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), July 03, 1999.

That flying pig is hilarious!

and the fireworks are excellent also!

That's it, no more preps for me, everythings ok because Mr. Poole says so! Hear that kids! Mr. Poole is a Brain trust and has the ability to tie all of the billions of variables together in ADVANCE, he must have a crystal ball or something. Thankyou Mr. Poole, I feel much happier now! woooppppeeee!

-- David Butts (dciinc@aol.com), July 03, 1999.

Stephen,

Don't you know that you can get in a lot of trouble for indecent exposure?

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), July 03, 1999.

Mr. Poole,

You obviously have incredible hubris. To admit trying to con people with a thread regarding Electrical grid (baiting,trolling) only to have someone on another thread--BUST-- your con wide open and expose the phillips vcr numbers that you had attempted to use.

You obviously omitted this from your little update on your page. Now why would you do that? Forget it don't answer.

This forum for the most part has some extremely level,centered,intelligent,educated,well read individuals. I have not seen any dialogue of wierdos etc. Just normal people looking for informtion. My final conclusion is you cannot be taken as serious as you would like to be. regards

-- David Butts (dciinc@aol.com), July 03, 1999.

Hi, Poopsie, here's your old buddy again! Would you explain for us what you meant by this statement in your last State of Y2K emission?

http://www.wwjd.net/smpoole/fixed.html

But where "Indiana Ed" Yourdon was merely trying to distance himself from the extreme elements in Y2K (and in particular, in his Timebomb 2000 forum)....

-- OutingsR (us@here.yar), July 03, 1999.

"This forum for the most part has some extremely level,centered,intelligent,educated,well read individuals."

Perhaps the funniest thing a Doomer has said yet this week...

-- Y2K Pro (2@641.com), July 03, 1999.

Hate to tell ya, guy, but he wasn't thinking of you when he wrote it.

-- OutingsR (us@here.yar), July 03, 1999.

Since you hate this place so much, why do you advertise here?

-- you're (such@hypocrite.poole), July 03, 1999.

Stephen,

Aren't you one of the guys who is always saying we should never trust statements being said by anyone who is selling something? And here you are, blatantly selling your own viewpoints.

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), July 03, 1999.

Mr. Poole,

Thanks for the music on the TB2000 page. You should add some to your own site, especially with the fireworks. The graphics are really good. As the saying goes, the most intense Polly is the most sincere closet Doomer. What are you hiding in all your Polly mania? Why are you so worried about US? Afraid that we might be on to something, hmmm? God bless. I most truly hope you put aside something to survive on should the worst occur.

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWAyne@aol.com), July 03, 1999.

Wow! I really enjoyed the carnival music. Maybe someone could play appropriate music for all posts--nice touch. The "Ride of the Valkyries," when Will Continue and I are going at it, and perhaps, Beethoven's Eroica, when we're discussing war, Kosovo, Gilligan's Island theme when discussing Bill Gates island digs, the Hallelujah Chorus for religious post, and tinkling wind chimes and flute for New Age, something from Annie Get Your Gun on gun threads, and food discussions could use Grandpa Jones's song (don't know the name) that begins with all the food they had to eat. Any more suggestions. Patsy Cline's Crazy for DiETer'S posts, etc. Little White Lies for government posts.

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), July 03, 1999.

In pooleCrETin's case we could play some Stockhausen as he makes the same "sense" with his child-like "arguments"...

Is this guy typical of the US Educational system or is he an abberation???

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), July 03, 1999.

The fact that Poole trolled the electrical utility thread says all anyone on this forum ever needed to know about his character. As for his pride in revealing his little game (the only conceivable inner reason for the revelation), it will endure as a monument to the depths of his self-deception.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 04, 1999.

I respect Mr. Poole's effort to bring good news to light whenever he has documented evidence to support it; however, it is unfortunate that he chose to engage in the "Worried Utility Worker" hoax. For nontechnical outsiders who are trying to make some sense of this mess that was created in the first place by technical people, and for those of us who spend a lot of time examining expert testimony in congressional hearings, official agency documents, and news reports on the Web and elsewhere, it is unnerving then to be confronted on the Web with "anonymous" posts by alleged "insiders" in key industries. Obviously, to a nontechnical outsider it is very difficult under such circumstances to know what might be true or not true. "Dan the Power Man," "Cl," "The Engineer," etc., claim to be power company engineers and have repeatedly posted good news over on Cowles's forum, especially about T&D systems; I have generally taken those reports at face value, but even there one finds the problem with anonymous posts. For anyone who realizes the significance of the Y2K problem--which has been described in rather dramatic and often alarming terms by the Center for Strategic and International Studies ("a national emergency"), the President in his 1999 State of the Union Address ("a big, big problem"), the U.S. Senate in its February 1999 report, the NIC, the CIA, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, the UN, the International Energy Agency, the UK Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Information Technology Association of America, and a host of other supposedly reputable sources--it is psychologically difficult for any reasonably concerned citizen just to ignore any worrisome report out of hand. Yes, Mr. Poole is right that we should view anonymous "insider" reports on the Internet (or anywhere else, for that matter) with great skepticism; on his "Worried Utility Worker" thread, after confessing that I had no idea what a VRZ... whatever gizmo was, I inveighed against such anonymous reports generally, along with the way many companies veil their Y2K status in secrecy (or in boilerplate generalizations) and force their employees to clam up. But let's face it, in this situation Internet posts claiming to be from "worried insiders" are going to have some effect, at least until the fraudulent ones are discredited. After all, there really are some worried insiders out there, in various companies and agencies--or else, for instance, Gary Beach, editor of "CIO Magazine," is a liar. And alas, we have all been conditioned by even the mainstream media to accept reports from "confidential" or "anonymous" sources on a wide variety of crucial subjects about which it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to know the "inside" truth of the matter. I suppose most of us should just say to hell with it, and not care or try to find out what is going on with such issues; but again, when it comes to such a "big, big problem" as Y2K, and the threat it might pose to our utilities, our govt. agencies, our companies, our world in general, it is very difficult for many of us just to say, "Eh, who cares? I'll automatically believe the press releases; after all, corporations and govt. agencies never, ever lie." The matter is not made any easier by all the conflicting and ambiguous data out there, including much of it from various "official" sources.

It's just a pity that all these agencies, corporations, and technical people, who really should have known better, didn't get working on this problem a few years earlier than they actually did; if they had, now there wouldn't have to be this perplexing and aggravating "endgame," and constant doubt and debate, in the final months of 1999. As I noted in my post on Mr. Poole's thread, most of us now trying to make sense of this issue have other things we would rather be doing. As noted above, I intensely disliked the anonymity of the "Worried Utility Worker" post. Did I consider the post possibly true? Yes, since I had no way of knowing about the electronic parts serial numbers involved, and, to give Mr. Poole his due as a fictionalist, it was in many respects rather persuasively written, at least to a general reader. Besides, authoritative (not anonymous) sources had indeed already warned against power company reliance upon type testing (see below). It's fortunate that there are technically trained and ethical people such as Mr. Cowles and others out there who do work hard to expose such hoaxes as Mr. Poole's very quickly. No doubt it's bothersome enough for these folks to separate the wheat from the chaff without having somebody wantonly throw more chaff in.

In the meantime, Mr. Poole might remember that both NERC and TAVA (among various other respectable sources) have explicitly warned against undue reliance by power companies on type testing and vendor compliance statements. He might note the Bloomberg News article of June 30th that quoted Cameron Daley, chief operating officer of TAVA, as saying that electric utilities are very scared of the Y2K problem and that some of them, distracted by deregulation, have not checked some of their systems as thoroughly or deeply as they should have done. (N.B. TAVA has worked with over 100 power companies and has also done Y2K remediation for at least four giant American corporations, including GM.) Mr. Daley further stated that power outages as long as several weeks might (repeat, might) be possible in some instances. To me, that seems a quite unlikely scenario; then again, there was that letter (published online) some months ago from Georgia State Rep. George Grindley, head of that state's Year 2000 Task Force, stating categorically that John Koskinen was privately telling top Georgia officials to prepare, as a remote but nonetheless real possibility, for up to three weeks without power. Well, perhaps that was another hoax.

Finally, Mr. Poole might want to read the report written some months ago by Dr. Klaus Ragaller, a scientist at the giant Swiss-based engineering firm ABB (probably the biggest provider of power plant equipment in the world), to learn what ABB has found in Y2K-related remediation work for major power companies around the world. ABB has 200,000 employees in 100 countries; its homepage is www.abb.com. Mr. Poole might then understand why some of us poor, benighted, nontechnical folks continue to have some concerns--and why his game playing is not appreciated.

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), July 04, 1999.

Well said Don - alas with poole you are wasting your breath, his agenda is simply to persuade all and sundry that y2k is a gigantic hoax perpetrated by hucksters out to make a quick buck...

You cannot argue with an imbecile.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), July 04, 1999.

P.S. And Mr. Poole, what happens if the next time some really determined hoaxer does some homework, goes to the ABB report or wherever, identifies an embedded system/component that is known to be capable of tripping a power plant, gets the part/serial numbers right, and then posts as yet another "worried utility worker" who says the individual system is not being tested at his plant? Ain't human nature grand?

I said on your original thread that this Y2K mess was holding up a mirror to us all, and that the reflection was ugly. I am now even more angry and disgusted with myself for having spent time on your thread; again, no doubt we hoax-susceptible, nontechnical outsiders should just stop struggling to get at the truth of this issue, even if does directly concern our welfare.

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), July 04, 1999.

As a non-tech, on this day I went out and bought 3 pairs of work britches and another raincoat with pants, as Astoria Oregon these days is wet.

figured that as most stuff nowadays comes from a long ways off, they would shortly be unavailable. The AA's have a pretty good idea. When it comes down, scrounge one day at a time. Cheers.

-- Woodrow Walker (woodrow@pacifier.com), July 04, 1999.

And as for you Mr. Latimer,

getting tired of the lack of action on your friend poole's hangout?? your arguments are facile and see-through, you and poole are fooling no one...

and your tag line sucks

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), July 04, 1999.

The fact that some people are deceitful in posting information has not only been long-known on this forum but across the Internet. The fact that information on the Internet must be vetted has been long-known AND practiced on this forum as well as on the Internet broadly. That everyone doesn't have the same skill or inclination to do so is totally trivial.

The FACT that Poole's trolling WAS perceived on that thread is precise evidence that this forum does analyze information, INCLUDING "bad news".

There is no way to justify Poole, period. He has made a patronizing strategy out of his own "responsibility" about Y2K in the face of "kooks". This example of his character is more than useless, it reveals the depths of his hypocrisy.

It also explains why regulars, QUITE WISELY, often assume that Poole and others are posting destructively under false names.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 04, 1999.

Enjoyed the music. (My LapCats were somewhat bemused.) I wonder, however, why Poole chose the "chicken song" to entertain us.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), July 04, 1999.

Brooks, why is the music called the "chicken song?"

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), July 04, 1999.

Gilda, I have no idea, but it is the same tune as some stupid dance you're supposed to do at functions like weddings where there is too much booze for people to care how they look.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), July 04, 1999.