Mrs. NERC asks Mr. NERC an important question

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9 months pregnant Mrs. NERC asks Mr. NERC to test and check that their car is ready to get her to the hospital when her contractions begin. Mr. NERC has recently been upgrading their car's electronic ignition systems. To quell Mrs. NERC's fears that the car might not operate when she really really really needs it, Mr. NERC (with the help of 5000 utility friends) tests their car ---- by turning on the car's radio! Mr. NERC does notice that reception is poor on some radio stations. But Mr. NERC confidently reports to Mrs. NERC that he has just thoroughly tested their car and it is absolutely ready (with the exception of a few poor radio stations) to drive Mrs. NERC to the hospital after their baby Millinneum emerges.

-- Ron Sander (judy_sander@hotmail.com), September 13, 1999

Answers

Good one Ron!

Great analogy: one that is accurate and one that many people can readily understand.

-- Jim the Window Washer (Rational@man.com), September 13, 1999.


Except that it wasn't a test, and this isn't what was reported, and there have been many real tests not mentioned here for some reason, and the engine is already running just fine. Whether people will understand that they're being duped is questionable.

But I suppose Ron is just being deliberately misleading?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 13, 1999.


"there have been many real tests not mentioned here for some reason"

Flint, please, divulge whatever information you are privy to.

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), September 13, 1999.


VERY KOOL!!!!! <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 13, 1999.

Ummm, Flint. Links please?

sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

Night train

-- jes an ol' footballer lookin for light (nighttr@in.lane), September 14, 1999.



Just to get the drill part out of the way, it wasn't a test to see if there were y2k bugs in the system. It was a practice session for contingency plans just in case there *are* y2k problems that crop up. In this little analogy, it might be a timed session to see how quickly Mrs. NERC could get INTO the car in an emergency.

As for whether the car runs, well, we have lots of utilities known to be operating with clocks set to 2000. We have lots of personal testimony by people like "the engineer" and Dan the Power Man. We have the NERC reports of actual compliance testing.

So this thread becomes yet another attempt to conclude that we'll have problems because we have contingency plans, combined with an effort to describe *practicing* those contingency plans as a fake test of compliance. Either Ron knows better (in which case he is extremely untrustworthy) or else he does not know better (in which case we shouold inform him rather than applaud his mistakes).

And I KNOW that Sysman knows better. For shame, Sysman.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 14, 1999.


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