"i HaTE yOu aLl!!!!!" - dIeTEr

But I still love you, dIeTEr.

I guess this is addressed at the "polly/troll" crowd.

While we may spend much of our time here in heated debate, does anyone here really think that Y2K isn't even going to be a bump in the road?

Is anyone ignoring even the "3 day storm" warning? What about the 7 day update?

The doomers and pollys may be at war, but we're all still people. I've had many "words" here with the eyes-closed pollys. But guess what. I don't "HaTE yOu aLl!!!!!"

Why should I care? I don't know. Let's just say that this place wouldn't be the same without you.

Hope to see you all next year...

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 12, 1999

Answers

y2k pro apparently has bought some extra depends.

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

I thought y2kpro was young and worked at burger king?

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), September 12, 1999.

premature senile dementia?

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

Y2K Pro is stashing stale french fries for Y2K!

-- 555 (555@555.com), September 12, 1999.

Since I am less worried about utility failures (especially long-term) than I am about general economic problems, I have not bothered to stock up on rice and beans.

Instead, I've been trying to make enough money to go through a year or so of unemployment (stretched out over the next decade.) That strikes me as more sensible.

Long-term food storage is for people who think they are going to sit around and eat while tens of millions in this country starve. If it gets that bad, I expect to starve or be eaten like the rest of the public.

-- You Know... (notme@nothere.com), September 12, 1999.

I'm not preparing.

I work in the Texas Y2K office monitoring 40+ agencies and universities. We have numerous MVS shops as well as client-server based agencies. (See www.dir.state.tx.us/y2k for details) We're spending $200M+ to fix our systems. So we know what Y2K IS.

We've been doing industry assessments for months. Got inside info from independent sources such as technical experts in universities and tech industries. Numerous consultancies, too. Lots of data.

And NO, I'm not doing anything to prep.

-- Nick (MailToNickAt@Netscape.net), September 12, 1999.

Nick,

So, if fact, you are betting your life and the life of your family that you know more than anyone else about y2k. You may be right, but you may be wrong.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), September 12, 1999.

Well that's the problem Nick. You are actually working on the problem. You need to stop working on the problem, and start spending all of your time over here. Then if we are lucky Y2K will be real bad.

Tell all of you co-workers to stop fixing the y2k bug as well. We are counting on you.

-- Smirky (smurfs@in.heat), September 12, 1999.

Nick, what is the reason for your not preparing? Things are going so well you won't need to, or things look so bad why bother?

-- Bill (y2khippo@yahoo.com), September 12, 1999.

Cannot, cannot, cannot ignore our fragile economy. I'm praying the grid stays up - but the grid up won't help the 1.4 million small businesses in US and who knows how many overseas that won't make it. It's the numbers that add up to the trouble.

The formula, once again...broadscale unemployment + interrupted supply lines + continued glitches and small failures = reduced cash flow + depression. Are there things you appreciate having today you might not be able to buy next year? Preps aren't necessarily all about grid failure -they can be hedges against feeding your family when things are hard to get or you aren't drawing a paycheck. Flint says - "get another job" uh, huh. I remember the seventies in Tulsa when the oil companies started pulling out. Since all the eggs were in the oil basket there and in the absence of the city government encouraging the development of diversified industry - Tulsa literaly had it's plug pulled. This effected everything. Many forclosures - people just walked away from their homes and went elsewhere. Many small businesses closed and many large businesses laid off the best of the best. Interesting results - there were PhD's shoving burgers out the drive-in window. Did Tulsa recover? - very, very slowly. If you choose to ignore this angle you don't really understand the magnitude of the problem.

-- April (Alwzapril@home.com), September 12, 1999.

Bill,

young Nicky boy is a CON sultant, one of the breed of arrogant idiots that will make this mess much much worse than it need be...

Nick - we are all suitably impressed...

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

You see what I mean Nick. The people who are being paid to fix the Y2K problem are not fixing it. Instead they are spending their valuable time writing paranoid messages to each other on Y2K forums all across the internet.

-- Smirky (smurfs@in.heat), September 12, 1999.

We've done the minimum preps but they feel too minimal. At least shopping is still easy due to the MiniMum .gov jobbie. That sterling report card prods another trip to the Grocery Outlet. All kinds of prep bargains galore for pennies ...

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 12, 1999.

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." Bertrand Russell--1872-1970

-- quoter (quoter@quoterrr.com), September 12, 1999.

I'm doing minimal preps.

-- Polly Troll #37 (aka The Rude Dude With The Bad Additude Who Is Not in a Good Mood When he has no Food and he's nude which is rather lewd (rocky2k@x-networks.net), September 12, 1999.

Sysman,

I like people. I like them best when they are alive. The dead ones make such lousy conversationalists.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), September 12, 1999.

Nick, you better pray that EVERYONE else is doing as good of a job as you are. PS- PRAY HARD!

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), September 12, 1999.

April -

Your Tulsa oil story reminds me of Seattle in the early '70's when Boeing was close to going bust (no divesification here either). Someone put up a bill board next to I-5 which read "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights." Now, thanks to Bill G. and company, technology actually outdoes Boeing in employment. Makes one really think!!!

-- Valkyrie (anon@please.net), September 12, 1999.

Why should anyone prepare ?

I routinely purchase toothpaste, deodorant, toilet paper, food and other consumables before I run out of them. Don't you ?

A sensible level of preparation, for a certain or probable need, should be expected from any adult capable of self reliance or similarly responsible for the routine welfare of a child, an aging parent or others.

Some preparations are by their nature short term; such as, filling a gas tank before a drive across town, ordering a birthday cake several days in advance or ordering airplane tickets several weeks early.

Some preparations are by their nature long term; such as, planting a tree for shade, painting the wood trim on your home or buying life insurance.

Living is about many things. But, we must win a few fights every day just to survive. It is that simple. A daily victory over fatigue, thirst and hunger is taken for granted by most of us today. But why?

Capital assets, that's why. Capital buys machinery and tools that increase our productivity, resulting in time to rest from our fatigue. Capital drills water wells and installs pumps and pipes to bring us water for our thirst. And capital buys farm land, equipment to till the land, raises crops and then sends those crops to us to feed us and keep us from hunger.

If we are lost in an unfamiliar part of town, we ask for directions. If we need food, we buy more. If a hurricane or severe winter storm is expected, we listen closely to the weather news. And if the bad weather is heading directly toward us, we urgently buy what we need.

Many ordinary people are stocking up and preparing right now for the century rollover problem. They are doing it quietly. So say the checkers at the stores I frequent. No fanfare, no reporters and bright lights and no talking about why. But they are preparing and in strong numbers. Maybe a still voice inside them, a voice of reason and conscience, says "That's bad weather heading your way. Go now. Don't wait. Be ready."

///I am preparing.

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 12, 1999.

Well, in my case, I re-located from Fairfax, VA (in Northern VA, a suburb to Washington, D.C.) to a 30 acre farm on a mountain top in Northwest Arkansas. I have a 15kw generator, battery/inverter system, and am in the process of storing 2000 gallons of diesel fuel. I have a few years worth of stored food, and have cashed out of the system, with the proceeds going to farm tools, guns, ammo, cash, gold and silver coins.

I am still in the process of preparing. I wish that I had more time, there is still much to do.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), September 12, 1999.

Airgun pellets.

Think airgun pellets. In New York City, with 10 pigeons for every human being...know any good recipes???

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 12, 1999.

Plunge pigeons in boiling water to defeather. Gut them and cook them like you would any chicken receipe. Pigeons are nothing more than flying rats.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 12, 1999.

SO MANY PIGEONS...SO FEW RECIPES.

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 12, 1999.

Use any Cornish Game Hen receipe. How about pigeon and dumplings?

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 12, 1999.

Pardon if this format looks Hoffmeister-ish. He has such a good style that I couldn't improve upon it.

Not Me -- That's my basic position. I expect the bump in the road to be economic. Stock prices are severely out of proportion to earnings. A big drop in the internet stocks as forecast by Bob Metcalfe would probably precipitate a much more severe sell-off. That would create a lot more caution, less spending, etc.

Carol -- We all bet every day. I bet that the locks on my doors are good enough to keep out most thugs. But I use experts' opinions to place my bets. If I were in South Africa, I'd do a lot more to secure my house.

Same thing about Y2K. I'm in the trenches every day with agencies and universities. I see what they're doing, how difficult (or not!) it is. I see who they deal with, what consultants they use, etc. I don't consider lack of preparation as a gamble because I know the terrain. You need money, not a collection of food. Money = flexibility. Excess food, guns, etc are an albatross.

April -- Been there done that. Texas suffered a huge oil depression from the early eighties to the early nineties. I lost my job and had to find a new one in a very tight market. That's why I suggest remaining liquid, not stocking up on physical goods.

Bill -- If things were as bad as some people claim, you'd be hearing about it on all the programmers' discussion groups. You'd see CEOs and CIOs cashing out their stock options and running to Barbados.

It's not just the one percent of the population who are techies, though. In general, users test the changed code because they know how it should work and what it should look like. And there are more of them than geeks. They would know if there's severe problems and they'd be making big noises in chat rooms, newspapers, any other media. You couldn't hide a debacle that big.

The only place you hear unmitigated doom is right here. Ergo, the problem is less than it's advertised. According to Gartner and our own experience, we've come across maybe 50% of all the Y2K problems and we're not even through 1999 yet.

Smirky -- Sorry. Lost my head. I'll go back to sleeping on the job like a good government employee. Would hate to disappoint all these fine folks.

-- Nick (MailToNickAt@Netscape.net), September 12, 1999.

Folks:

I have done little different than last year. Let me explain. In a normal year we have 6m of food on 1 Jan. It lasts until the next crop. We have lakes for water [lots of finned protein in those lakes]. We are at the top to the watershed and nothing drains into them. We didn't buy a gen. for Y2K. We already had one for use in the outback. We have piles of fruit coming in now. We have to leave most of it for the 4-footed stored protein. We have a wood lot and can heat the house without outside intervention. The one thing that we have done is to begin to store food for the cats and dogs. That is it. And to think, we have been living this way for >25y and make our living in technology.

Best wi

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 12, 1999.

Nick,

No comment, since you seem to "know it all". It's been a long few days here, debunking all this 9/9 and failed predictions crap. Sometimes, I hate this place.

Good luck to you!

Tick... Tock... <:00=

PS - It ain't Y2K yet... And, open your eyes...

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 12, 1999.

Nick, What if "they" don't know how bad it will be? You don't know, I don't know and "they" may not know either. Some areas seem more ready, than others, but the full shakeout of the y2k problems may take months or even years to resolve. I hope we can work through most of them, but I will be ready just in case we don't. My family and I have abandoned just in time inventory for food, water and fuel. Hope your cubicle has heat and power on 1/1/00.

-- Bill (y2khippo@yahoo.com), September 12, 1999.

Here is my preparation:

6 candles 1 torch battery I shall withdraw about $200 cash on december 30th I have already instructed my broker to buy US stocks every month from now on. (to take advantage of the market crash that some of you are predicting)

Malcolm

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), September 13, 1999.