If everything is said to be ready and good to go. 1. Why is the National Gaurd going to be on duty? 2. Why is there a govenment bunker that cost 50 Million. 3. Not one organization says the are not going to be ready. With thousands of companies across the US, surely somebody is not going to make it. 4. Why can't you get any answeres from people working on Y2k?????? 5. Why the big code of silence except for government spin????? 6. If everything is "good to go" and we are all "ready and tested". then why was the Alantic command converted to civilian operations??? 7. Why is the 2nd largest petrolium pipeline going to be stopped in the US for 20 hours on December 31? 8. Why is Italy ready for Y2K. "They haven't even started yet!" 9. I can't even get answeres out of my friends working on Y2k!!!!!!

10. Why did a small business administration employee for Oregon say they expect 1/3 of small business to fail??????

why?why?why?why?why?why?why?why?why?why?why?why?

-- joe adam (rhwtech1@home.com), November 19, 1999

Answers

Good post, simple but good.

This one got to me:

'3. Not one organization says the are not going to be ready. With thousands of companies across the US, surely somebody is not going to make it.'

I work on non-compliant computers every day but these same companies are all telling their customers they are "y2k ready" right now.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), November 19, 1999.

I've always said that if y2k is no big deal then why did I have to fix it? I had to even change directory names to follow a proper naming convention (i.e. ACCT98, ACCT99). This turned out to be a lot of work because certain programs had to be changed to work with these names, not to mention all the other dates found in practically everything I have. I was provided no tools to change the databases, files or whatever. I wound up writing programs to change all the data on selected systems. I had no choice, there were too many databases with dates not to mention those flat files. Talk about work!!

Today my programs are all compliant. I can say they are compliant, not just ready. I'm already running compliant code. I extended the year to 4 positions or added 500000 to all the dates. I had to select which method based on what our software vendor was doing. I have inhouse programs but we also have software written by our vendor. My gloom and doom take on y2k scared me enough to get the job done. So, I ask what's wrong with a little fear if it motivates you to action?

What's so funny is those in my company that think y2k is overblown still have y2k work left to do while I'm done and have been since Jan 1999.

What convinces me y2k will be serious is that people think it is overblown and they do nothing or wait too long as a result. In addition to this programmers must deal with bureaucrats. They never mixed will in the past and they won't this time either. Programmers are really pissed off and it's no wonder 200,000 viruses are being launched Jan 2000. And who can blame them? They're being told that their work isn't important, that somehow computer code is insignificant to the world, that somehow the computer will know 00 > 99. It comes down to a lack of respect for the people who make our lives easier. We live easy today because of these folks. But we are disrespecting them when we say a date is insignificant. This can't be further from the truth.

-- Larry (cobol.programmer@usa.net), November 19, 1999.