I don't know what I am yet. There is no logical way to determine what will happen on 1/1/2000. I do know this. Y2K projects are terribly tedious and boring. I have been working on one for several weeks that is ten times the work I thought it would be. Check the inventory, go to the web page, document, recheck the software go to the web site. I'm doing my damned best but I gotta think a whole lotta people are missing a whole lotta stuff. This is just an awful assignment. Any other Y2K fixers out there struggling with this? what does it all mean?

-- eric (ericnamy@yahoo.com), July 21, 1999

Answers

It means in 2000, Hoppin' John ain't just for New Year's any more...

-- a (a@a.a), July 21, 1999.

It means we are all in the same boat and probably worse off than you.

-- twinkletoes (twinkletoes@twinkle.com), July 21, 1999.

eric, be sure to read Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Reports. Geek woes chronicled.

-- A & L (allaha@earthlink.net), July 21, 1999.

Yeah, Eric, it's like sandbagging a levee - the worst job in the world until you consider the alternative.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), July 21, 1999.

It means 'looping' - once you think you've got everything, a specification or process changes - then you've got to go back and touch everything again, over and over again. The looping never stops - even without Y2K, but with Y2K the loops are much larger and more frequent.

-- Jim (x@x.x), July 21, 1999.

What's the URL of the DC hamasaki thing? I like the sandbagging a levee analogy. Guess we should've started the sandbagging a little sooner. I'm sure I'll make it but what worries me is I'm doing just the routers, servers, and related software and closet stuff. It's going OK with only a few Y2K related failures that I can fix but what a chore.

-- eric (ericnamy@yahoo.com), July 21, 1999.

http://www.kiyoinc.com/current.html

Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Reports

3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), July 21, 1999.

Ashton & Leska: I give up. Please explain what

3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0

means. Something religious, or just a pretty pattern, or kinda both? Thanks in advance.

-- would (like@to.know), July 21, 1999.

Ah, well, we used to offer all those xxxxxx's to the ravenous cybergnomes as sacrificial offerings, so they'd be content to munch xxx's instead of the last words/sentences of our posts. But then yesterday on another Board we were hit with the sudden inspiration to let our hair down a bit (after all, Time Is About To Tell real soon now) and play more with keyboard characters -- an impish pasttime of ours. 3~0 is a rather drawn-out attempt to imitate the beautiful sacred Aum symbol, the Holy Sound upholding all creation, the song of the atoms.

When we upgrade (starting the process today, horrors!) we'll get the real thing, well, the correct symbol anyway, in some font package -- have it on Mac LC on PostScript but guess we gotta get it in TrueType for HTML. Really don't know yet. It's the sound that counts ;^)

3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), July 21, 1999.

That's their new (and very decorative) sacrifice to the line eater, which seems to be lurking around, snarfing up text from the end of their messages. I first encountered the critter on Usenet back in the early 80's, but it was my understanding that it had been eradicated years ago. Apparently not.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), July 21, 1999.

O Cascadians -

Perhaps the upgrade (if you're changing your browser software as well) will eliminate the line eater critter. I always thought it was only associated with postnews and a few flavors of text editor, such as EMACS (*shudder*). Mayhap your imporoved system will work and play better with the Greenspun forum.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), July 21, 1999.

O Benevolent Mac! It *would* be you to solve the mystery, at ease with that which sneaks,lurks, hides, snarfs ;^) Thanks! We're relative newbies but the line eater follows us from Board to Bored. How comforting that we have not been singled out alone for its teeth. We're off now to buy the Imation SuperDisk USB Drive to backup the 5000+ eMails and Favorited BookMarks before we start the scary tedious upgrade process. No disasters! *fingers crossed*

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), July 21, 1999.

You've been working on a Y2K project for "several weeks" and you already think it's "tedious and boring" and "ten times the work" you thought it would be?

Are you really a programmer? Do you have any experience with program maintenance?

My own Y2K project has been going for over two years. Some weeks I've put in nearly 80 hours, and I worked a stretch of six months in which there was hardly a week I didn't put in at least ten hours of OT.

I work in a public sector DP shop. I am the project leader and (usually) only programmer on the project. There are about 1000 programs and 1500 files for a total of over 1,000,000 lines of code in the system I'm fixing. And it's all written in RPG--one of the worst computer languages ever foisted on the world.

Analyze, code, test, analyze, code, test, ...

This is the reality for most of the programmers I know who are working on a Y2K project.

You should thank your lucky stars you have it so good.

-Peter

-- Peter Harlan (pharlan@efn.org), July 21, 1999.

Each and every day I pray for *all* the people working on fixing y2k problems. I pray for them to be given patience, endurance, wisdom, insight, and humor, that they are able to continue on this seemingly endless and thankless task and get things to where it truly is a BITR.

-- Mommacares (harringtondesignX@earthlink.net), July 21, 1999.

I am a programmer with 20 years of experience on manufacturing systems at high-tech companies. I can tell you that Silicon Valley will be dog meat in 6 months. Every programmer that I talk to about Y2K shares my experience. The companies do not want to deal with it seriously. They have kept budgets low and cut corners wherever they can. They have continued to modify systems at the same time that other programmers are trying to remediate them. Developing new web applications is more important to them than Y2K.

The proof that Y2K won't be fixed is that profits are so high. If most businesses had spent the money to do a first-class job, their earnings and stock prices would be much lower. The only companies showing big profits would be the first-class remediation and enterprise software firms like Keane and SAP.

-- Mr. Adequate (mr@adequate.com), July 22, 1999.

Sandbag a levee? I thought it was put a finger in the dyke.

-- vbProg (vbProg@MicrosoftAndIntelSuck.com), July 22, 1999.

Peter, I guess that's the problem. I'm not a coder I'm a WAN guy. I got thrown into this because I designed the WAN and all the routers dsu's, ATM switches etc. are in the closets with the servers. I guess I do have it pretty good.

-- eric (ericnamy@yahoo.com), July 22, 1999.