To all the little girls and boys, don't worry. I've been extra-vigilant this year making sure that my workshop and sleigh are Y2K ready (but Mrs. Clause has baked some extra cookies just in case, Ho Ho Ho). So you can expect to see me this Christmas Eve delivering all those presents Ho Ho Ho.

-- Santa (north@pole.today), December 02, 1999

Answers

A very pleasant post. My only comment would be to hope that you have a fully functional and updated GPS. An old WW2 British Type 284 radar set on your dashboard might be very handy as well. Have a good trip this year.

Ho Ho Ho to you too big guy!

-- Irving (irvingf@myremarq.com), December 02, 1999.

Ho Ho Ho, not a bad idea. I fly by wire, triangulating via a Palm Pilot and NavStar GPS X1.3. But I'll keep it in mind, Ho Ho Ho.

-- Santa Clause (North@pole.today), December 02, 1999.

Was this press release approved/coordinated by the Office of Truth a.k.a The J. Koskinen Society For The Perpetuation Of Nostalgia? Sure smells like it.

-- profit of doom (doom@helltopay.ca), December 02, 1999.

If you're Y2k compliant, why are you making guarantees for this year? Shouldn't you be promising us good boys and girls toys next year?

-- Virginia (is there really@Santa.claus?), December 02, 1999.

Hey Lard Belly, are your elves gettin' antsy over the Seattle WTO bungle?

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), December 02, 1999.

If I'm still on your "good" list, please bring me a windmill. Thank you.

-- Gus (y2kk@usa.net), December 02, 1999.

Here is the post from the Westergaard Group at y2ktimebomb.

The have frequent posts on differnt jobs and how they may/will be affected.

Here is SANTA's

Santa Claus, Delivery Man By Mike FletcherDecember 23, 1998 Situation December 24, 1999 300,000 hula-hoops! 600,000 Pet Rocks! 500,000 Beatle wigs! Santa wondered whether the kids receiving them would even know what they were. He had no Furbies on order, and he was completely out of video games. Santa was exhausted. Facing the final push before any Christmas was tiring enough, but 1999 looked to be a particularly difficult year. He hated to think what additional surprises January 1, 2000 might bring. Who would have thought a year earlier that the Millennium Bug would have posed such an enormous threat to the mighty Father Christmas Global Enterprises. With the global population increase as well as the increased commercialization of Christmas, Santa's manual systems had become totally inadequate thirty years ago, so Santa had invested heavily in computers. Relying on his local supplier of ELF (Electronic Logistics and Finance) systems, Santa had progressed through mainframes and minis to his latest client-server set up with desktop computers on every desk in the organization. His was a specialized operation, and he had customized his software over that period of time. The first indication that he was headed for trouble was back in May of 1999. Like many commercial enterprises, Santa Claus scheduled his year-end for his least busy period, in this case at the beginning of summer. Usually inventory was low and activity was minimal so that closing off the previous year and starting the new one was pretty straightforward. Not however in 1999. Since he was somewhat isolated up at the North Pole, Santa Claus had not heard much about the Year 2000 problem, and hadn't understood that it could affect computer systems well before January 1, 2000. He wasn't expecting any problems. On May 31, everything was running as usual, and all the year-end procedures were finished. On June 1, 1999, the elves turned on the computers, and chaos erupted. First to go was his inventory and production operations. Purchase orders went out based on toy patterns over the last ninety nine years, which was why Santa had so many hula hoops etc. in stock. But it could have been worse. Over the years, Mrs. Claus had switched from being the original expert in manual systems to specialize in prioritization and contingency planning. Thanks to the skills of his wife, Father Christmas Global Enterprises would come through again. Certainly the amount of overtime was going to be unbelievable; production was still off by 17% and the inventory system was back to being kept on cards. But Santa shuddered when he thought of the alternatives.

Far more serious was Santa's little list as to who had been naughty and who had been nice. Even though his monitoring system was fairly good, he had found it easier over the centuries to simply keep track of those who had been naughty and assume that if no bad marks had appeared, everyone else was good. So a system had been put in place that his little list (computerized of course) defaulted to "good" if no naughty acts had been noted up to May 31 of the current year (in this case 05/31/99). Then the default date was changed to 05/31/00 for the year 2000. Suddenly the system showed that everyone had been naughty for the last 99 years. Luckily Santa had backups with which he could restore the original data, but even so a lot of people got away with unrecorded misdemeanors over the next three months until the programming could be fixed.

What else could go wrong?" thought Santa gloomily.

"Mr. Claus, Mr. Claus!" A voice interrupted his reverie. It was Kos Kinen, the elf who now headed up all of his Y2K efforts. "We've just run into a major difficulty with Rudolph!" Hurriedly, the elf explained that in an effort to help out, a junior programmer had tested the famous nose (the original red nose reindeer had had his illumination upgraded a couple of times from the crude biological reaction of the first nose to an embedded chip that only functioned at Christmas). The elf had advanced the date in the chip to make sure the nose would continue to function. Not only had the chip proved to be non-compliant, but Kos Kinen had also found that it was impossible to reset the nose to a 1999 date. Santa's guiding beacon would not light! "That's it!" thought the thoroughly exasperated Santa. "I don't mind the programmers making a mistake thirty years ago. But if over the last five years we had had any leadership other than that of Tony Blair about this issue, we wouldn't be in this fix now. Every world leader has been feeding us a bunch of hooey: let's see how they like getting their stockings filled with the same sort of rubbish. And while I'm at it, what about all the stockings for those other so-called leaders in the opposition parties."

Santa pulled a pad of paper towards him and started making a list...

Westergaard Year 2000's "Y2K on the Job" gives concrete examples of how Y2K may impact our careers and livelihoods. The characters described are purely fictional. Any likeness to certain individuals, living or dead, is purely accidental.

Well, who you gonna' believe.

-- woody (WOODY11420@A0L.COM), December 03, 1999.

It's a damn good thing Santa has Rudolph so he won't have to rely on the FAA!

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 03, 1999.