Quote from So.Cal. Water Co. 10Q:

"Registrant does not have, and may never fully have, sufficient information about the Y2K exposure or remediation plans of these third parties to adequately predict the risks posed by them to Registrant. If the third parties have Y2K problems that are not remedied, resulting problems could include loss of utility services and disruption of water supplies."

End Quote.

How does this equate to readiness. According to the 10Q, this company supplies water AND electrical power.

This situation becomes more surreal as time passes. The warnings become bleaker, starker and plainer and big business (and its subservient taxing arm, the federal government), become more sanguine.

Who's the fool? Me for prepping only for a month? Is polly the fool for ignoring the 10Q's, the Senate Reports, the Senate testimony, Commerce reports and the like. Is Milne a crazed fool or a genius? At this point the entire landscape is one big Dali with illusions within illusions within illusions.

Reports like this 10Q really just confuse things terribly.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), November 04, 1999

Answers

"Reports like this 10Q really just confuse things terribly."

Maybe that was the plan?

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), November 04, 1999.

Water distillation equipment is looking better all the time, but it needs to be something that doesn't require electricity.

I have a Berky and two sources of water besides storage barrels. And every day I think that may not be enough.

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), November 04, 1999.

If you prepare, and the worst happens, you have an edge. If there is a lower level of disruptions, you have an edge. If nothing happens, you have, at the very least, saved money and time better used in other endeavors besides shopping. I bet Mr. Milne just hates his rural location. The quiet must drive him crazy. Clean (relatively) air, trees, grass and other growing things. No traffic jams-probably no stoplights even. No sidewalks, no trash, no construction, no 7-11's (I have one a block away). Oh, the horror of it all...why...I'll bet he could throw a rock as hard and far as possible and not be in danger of hitting anything except a cow or a tree. (sigh).

-- chairborne commando (what-me-worry@armageddon.com), November 04, 1999.

To Puddintame, Donna, Diane, and all other Southern Californians on TB2000.

The Southern California Water Company disclosure statement that I received this summer in Cypress was pretty scary.

"SCWC formed a Y2K readiness team in August 1997 and expanded the team in 1998. ... An inventory of the company's HW,SW, and embedded micro-controllers is complete and significant progress has been made to upgrade them as necessary to Y2K compliance status."

"Other non-compliant equipment has been identified and are scheduled for upgrades or replacement."

These boys are definately behind.

-- Dana (A_Non_O_Moose@xxx.com), November 05, 1999.

Dana,

You must be near me. I got the exact same insert in my water bill just a month or so ago.

-- Wild Celt (mightbe@thirsty.com), November 05, 1999.

Wild Celt:

Hi, I live in Fullerton and got the insert from my deceased Dad's mail in Cypress. What concerns me is if you saw the same language a month or so ago then they have no new changes of real consequence to brag of. I believe I got that "schlok piece" in August but it might have been July. Fullerton uses those folks for back-ups in case our wells can't handle the demand.

I also looked over the speech from this summer's state Y2K conference of a leader in the state water department. It was comforting because this guy was incredibly competent and went into a fantastic amount of technical detail on what they were doing to remediate the embedded chips.(i.e. They were reverse-engineering ROM chips to see what their algorhythms were that were determining the signals that they were sending to embedded chips. How many towns/counties/businesses can do this?) The down side was that he guesstimated that there were 20,000 embedded chips in the Orange County water department or system that will need to be replaced. How many of these are in the realm of the SCWC's domain??????

Per the state of California, embedded puppies are a serious issue for our drinking water.

-- Dana (A_Non_O_Moose@xxx.com), November 05, 1999.

Puddintame

Their insert hints (I would say admits) that they got off to a slow start by increasing their Y2k team from 97 to 98. Now comes your great post.

What do you think of the idea that they are merely laying the groundwork to point the finger at others with your quoted disclosure?

-- Dana (A_Non_O_Moose@xxx.com), November 05, 1999.