I've been following reports that state Canada leads the world for Y2K readiness and feeling a little complacent.........until the other day. I was watching Canada A.M. when I heard Valerie Pringle talk about surprised hydro customers receiving their bills with a due date of January 01, 1900. Valerie smiled and said not to worry it was just a typing error (???????) and I haven't heard another word anywhere on the subject since! Anyone else heard about this or have any insight into what it might mean?

-- Jadin Green (Jadin_2000@yahoo.com), December 27, 1999

Answers

Jadin: we have news reports of the same thing happening here on the west coast. I am a CPA. My understanding of what it means is that that particular system is NOT compliant. This "billing" system for hydro is referred to as Accounts Receivable. The collections that the company bills for providing a service. If the bills say the bill isn't due until 1900, then that companies Accounts Receivable Aging Report will be corrupted and the company will not be able to accurately predict their receivables from their customers (without hours of doing it manually) within a few weeks to a couple of months. They need to get this repaired within the first quarter of 2000 or budgets and projections and possible cashflow problems will arise.

-- carolyn (carolynnicks@msn.com), December 27, 1999.

I am from Canada, and I watch Canada AM now and then, but NOT for the sake of Valerie.

She has to rank up there with Cherri for cluelessness.Talking Head extraordinaire.

This story was reported on this forum a few days ago, and our expert Cherri assured us that since it involved only the billing, and not the actual energy-generating aspect of the company, that there would be no problem.

CHERRI: Has your one lonely search-and-rescue brain cell returned yet from its fruitless mission of finding your only other functioning brain cell, which is still lost? Enquiring minds want to know.

-- profit of doom (doom@helltopay.ca), December 27, 1999.

Thanks for the info but it sure isn't very comforting since hydro has been spending a lot of tax dollars first 'fixing' things and then informing us that they had successfully done so........wonder what else they forgot to fix. Perhaps what bothers me most is how and why that news item has just disappeared.

-- Jadin (Jadin_2000@yahoo.com), December 27, 1999.

Jadin:

Probably something along the lines of panic control. Let's put the herd back to sleep just a bit longer shall we?

THINK LIKE A POLITICIAN: With all our obfustication, confusion, contradictory statements and assorted Bullshit, we've managed to prevent the vast majority of citizens from alerting to danger and taking reasonable action.

A. If nothing goes wrong, we consolidate our control over the masses. B. If all hell breaks loose, we say "we did the best we could" and take executive action (martial law) to consolidate our control over the masses.

You just have to understand that TPTB don't care about you. They deride you, tax you and abuse you--all the while recognizing that the ONLY thing keeping them from being lynched is a mass population too self-serving and gluttonous to take a stand on ANY ISSUE.

Ignore what they say. Watch what they do.

-- (Kurt.Borzel@gems8.gov.bc.ca), December 27, 1999.

Too many of these 1900 dates cropping up.

If these have not been found, and they're easy to find, they appear on the output goddammit, I fear heartily for the internals.

Bad Sign!!

RonD

-- (rdavis@ozemail.com.au), December 27, 1999.