Initial thoughts on Rollover and the Oil Industry

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Allright, I've had a bunch of people pounding for information and or comments. I know about as much news as you do, maybe more or maybe less. None of my oil contacts have reported anything to me. They're all busy working. So that leaves me only to issue thoughts FWIW. Before I do so, let me reiterate what I stated before sooo many times that I never predicted TEOTWAWKI and the only thing that I did do was rule out BITR and TEOTWAWKI. Neither will happen. --------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm reminded of the old song "Autumn Leaves" ... which 'drift by my window' and I consider a variant Y2K version with failing embedded chips drifting by my MS Windows system slowly and SLOWLY but surely piling up. We could use the analogy of a snowstorm... and seeing the first few flakes before blizzard like conditions take effect. I could go on but I think all but the deranged Pollies get the picture. The idea is "slowly". Sure we all pictured a sudden simultaneous instant collapse of infrastructure at midnite. The oil embeddeds systems are a different breed from the electrical industry and thus the results should be far different..

I did not nor do I now think that we will experience TEOTWAWKI. I was never quite the doomer that the pollies made me out to be (as I leaned more towards the worst outcome than the least) but I did expect and do still expect troubles of a moderate to severe nature (depending I suppose on one's definition of those 2 adjectives). We've only just begun this venture into 2000 but its clear to me the TEOTWAWKI theoretical potentials are now impossible. That's right. The premise of TEOTWAWKI required simultaneous catastrophic crashes at the midnite rollover that would paralyze potential resources. We didn't get that. It didn't happen. We all know it now. Doomer's can't avoid that fact nor will the Polly's allow them, but that is okay cause the Polly gloat is not likely to remain for long. Y2K will surprise everyone in a variety of ways and the Polly's have yet to experience their inevitable surprises.

So the actual rollover has passed. The results are in. NO significant problems reported YET with main utilities. I predict that there will not be simulaneous Electrical failures down the road. This is good news and this means that we didn't get a "10." A "10" would have had to have things crashing right off the bat at midnite. I don't see a "10" now. Not even close. I do expect problems though in a variety of sectors. The big embedded debate was when to see the worst of the problems. A worst case scenario was based upon all of the software and embedded systems (in all facets of society and business) simply going out at once on the New Year rollover and thus compounding repairs. All we can expect now are delayed reactions that will hopefully give remediators time to move from one problem to another. This gives us a better chance for swifter recovery and less disruption. This (I think) applies across the board including the oil industry. I still think the oil industry (and chemical manufacturing) remain the most vulnerable for glitches and still serious problems.

Allow me to review with you the basis for my risk assessment projections. Confidential reports from workers on scene in the oil industry for oil wells and refineries reporting to me on remediation efforts plus reporting statistics from the TAVA report (which related first-hand results of testing and remediation failures and reported statistical facts) and the US Dep't of Commerce NIST Report. This includes my oil well remediation sources that pointed to locked up oil wells that failed under testing. Of course, there were few of these, but they had a 100% fail rate. Didn't take too many to figure out this was not a good avenue to take, thus theoretical type-testing was done in the industry, albeit only a small slice of what was needed.

What concerns me most are the large oil wells with massive systems that were untested and unremediated for various reasons. My contacts were indicating (as of early 4th quarter) that most of independents still had done nothing to fix these systems at all as far as they knew. Sources in the major oil companies indicated to me that there was minimal remediation based upon type-testing. The NIST report and other embeddeds experts felt convinced that 'end-to-end' testing was essential. This was not possible for the oil industry without creating production problems and interruptions in revenue streams thereby creating a catch 22. In regards to the embedded systems of large oil wells we can hope that perhaps they can be fixed more quickly because the infrastructure to support repairs remains intact. One remediator in West Texas in regards to these independents not fixing their wells told me that if they actually did fix them it was done by a competitor that they were unaware of... he didn't think that this had happened because his co. was still doing maintenance and they would have known of another company performing remediation. So we still remain concerned about the oil wells. I suspect we won't know about these for at least 30+ days yet. TAVA reported chips having problems on the 32nd of January, among the various other problems. These 'delayed' failures included critical shutdown problems.

Pipelines are another concern too. The big pipelines were taken down and there could be problems in bringing them back up. We will know more on within the next couple of days. Embedded problems though may still not be revealed for 30 + days. Though the more time passes the likelihood of significant quantities of disruptions diminishes.

Refineries ... many will still have problems. I still expect we'll have at least 4 (west coast?) refineries having problems. Still the worst part has passed for refineries. Power, phones and water have apparently stayed up (for now) everywhere. Those were the wild-card complication factors. Those were more problematic at rollover if simultaneous. The simultaneous support factors are gone. Now we have left to face the individual failures. These will be much easier for refineries to deal with. The window of opportunity for the worst possible scenarios to transpire have passed. Again, we will likely see at least a handful of refineries with problems. How severe? I don't know. No one knows. We can say that no matter how severe, the infrastructure support is in place to remediate much more quickly. I think the likelihood of long term oil disruptions of significant consequences have greatly diminished by virtue of the infrastructure remaining afloat simultaneously. We may see as many as a dozen refineries with significant problems. These may still take 3 to 6 months to fix. At this point we still don't know what has broken already. Things may have broken and have yet to be caught. Breaks may already be known and will not be publicly reported as Y2k problems even though they are Y2K problems.

Based upon what has now transpired with the critical infrastructure not collapsing in toto, I think it is now likely that a "7" on the famous 1 to 10 scale is now far less likely. I no longer think that the electrical industry will fail now simultaneously. I'm still expecting a "5" in the oil industry. For most of 1999 I waffled in the scale between a "4" to a "7" (though at times I toyed with the notions of an "8" or "8.5" if the infrastructure collapsed). I still don't see it being lower than a "4" but as I've said soooo many times before..."I could be wrong."

I still think we stand a good chance of at least a 2% loss of oil supply at the minimum...this is roughly the equivalent of the 73/74 arab oil embargo and 1979 oil shock. I still think there is a good chance for a 14% loss up to a 30 or 40% loss. I've not seen any information yet to make me think other wise...and frankly we just don't know yet. It's even possible for a 70% reduction in theory, but with infrastructure surviving, I think fixes generally can be handled faster and thus preventing that level of disruption (as I projected in my other reports)and thus I think problems will be limited and remain in the 3 to 6 month time frame for significant oil disruptions.

Bottom line... Y2K impact on oil is most likely limited to a less than 6 month oil problem...enough to still be an oil shock on the nation's economy. Thus, I see overall the likelihood that Y2K is now a "5" based solely upon the oil factor even without any other problems, which I still expect. We've still got to consider other petrochemical, chemical and manufacturing firms that may experience significant disruptions next week. I rate this as 50/50. It might be higher or lower but no one knows. Still, I think we can live with a "5". I think its quite survivable. So in the overall scale adding other significant manufacturing disruptions a "7" level of pain is still possible and I wouldn't count it completely out, but I'm still inclined to lower my expectations to a "5" for at least 2 to 3 weeks. The outcome one way or the other won't be known for weeks or months to come. The statements of victory by Pollies are like the Japanese declaring victory after Pearl Harbor, or the Confederacy after Fort Sumter and we know how the end turned out for those folks.

Folks, I wish you a Happy New Year !

-- RC (racambab@mailcity.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

RC;

Thank you for checking in, even though you do not have any new data to report, I for one, appreciate your opinion. And I view it as that your opinion, abet, better informed on this topic than myself.

I for one will be looking forward to your future posts.

-- Helium (Heliumavid@yahoo.com), January 01, 2000.

Thank you R.C. for all your efforts.

I think there may be another possibility: We assumed failure meant that a system ceased functioning completely. However, a control failure may not manifest itself until a non steady state condition is encountered. Example: A pressure controller does not accutate a relief valve until an over pressure situation occurs. As long as equilibrium is maintained a failed control may go unnoticed until something else causes the pressure to increase and the failed controller does not properly accuate.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), January 01, 2000.

R.C.: I told the boys not to fire the first shot at Ft. Sumter; it's exactly what that tyrannical egomaniac Lincoln wanted us to do. Still, we whipped the hell out of the yankees for two years.

-- jefferson davis (prez@csa.net), January 01, 2000.

RC, excellent post!!!

Many thanks for your past and future posts!!

Happy New Millennium to You.

-- (karlacalif@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

He's unrepentant!

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 01, 2000.

RC,

Let me help you out here....

The gist of your repeated contentions on embeddeds was wrong.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 01, 2000.

Subject: (REUTERS) ***GLANCE - Y2K/Millennium Stories*** Date: 01/01/2000

The third millennium dawned amid fireworks and revelry without crashing the world's computers, leaving experts to question whether the $600 billion price tag to immunise business and government against the Y2k bug was necessary.

The United States began scaling back emergency preparations Saturday that had put it on a virtual war footing for any possible Year 2000 technology disasters.

But governments and computer analysts warned the unwary that the Y2K bug still lurked in systems and could yet cripple networks and disrupt ordinary life.

U.S. and Asian stock and bond markets are expected to open Monday with no technical problems related to the new year, but Wall Street officials cautioned that their evaluations were still not complete.

-- karlabeanfang ;-) (karlacalif@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

You are a good man, RC. Thanks for checking in.

-- semper paratus (happy@new.year), January 01, 2000.

Downstreamer,

You have no clue about embeddeds, Downstreamer. The opening salvo just began and you're like the rebs at Fort Sumter crying out victory? Stop and think, man and wait til you have more data. OH, I forgot the oil markets are GOD..OMNISCIENT and all-knowing. They said it couldn't and therefore can't happen. WRONG again. What a religion you have.

RC

-- RC (racambab@mailcity.com), January 01, 2000.

Rc, I appreciate the analysis. Thanks for all.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

Downstreamer,

I echo RC's sentiments.

Check back in March.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 01, 2000.

No cheeps, cheesebugga, cheesebugga.

-- (johnbelushi@billy.goat), January 01, 2000.

RC,

I'm not going to waste my time or your embarassment by linking in all your faulty predictions such as "The entire Persian Gulf is now confirmed as TOAST". If this weekend is no big deal, why were you harping on the GMT rollover so much on Thursday and Friday?

In no way have I contended the oil industry is out of the woods. I am contending that based on the lack of power outages, dirty power incidents, refinery problems and other embedded systems that have operated smoothly through the rollover without apperant incidents, it diminishes the likelihood of embedded system problems down the road. Do you dispute this?

I don't appreciate being called moronic on a previous thread and find it rather incredulous that you're slinging mud this weekend.

Its one thing to be wrong but its the way you've been wrong thats rather pathetic. All Fall you didn't even entertain the possibility that you could be incorrect. Anyone who disagreed or looked for other sources or verification was an idiot. In Dec your hubristic attitude was already assigning blame for this embedded rollover catastrophe. When did gov officials know everything was going down? ...The blame rests with Clinton and their cronies.... What and when did the oil executives know everything was toast?Now here we are past the rollover. Oil is predominately flowing smoothly and anyone who asserts this is ...making moronic statements and totally DOES NOT understand embedded systems. :)

Fortunately, my skin is thick enough that I can just chuckle.

I strongly advise you and Andy stay away from futures markets. One very important prerequisite to success is being able to admit when your wrong and act accordingly.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 02, 2000.

I strongly advise you and Andy stay away from futures markets. One very important prerequisite to success is being able to admit when your wrong and act accordingly.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 02, 2000.

======================================================================

I say again, I bought out to April with the full understanding in my own mind that it would take ***TIME*** for shortages to manifest themselves.

You are not reading what I wrote above, do I have to repeat myself?

I'm sticking with my play. That's why I bought OPTIONS not FUTURES DS!!!

And by the way, how on earth can you believe what you hear fron Saudi, Nigeria, Ven, mexico etc.

Look at the production statistics, not PR and Politician's rhetoric.

TIME DS -....... TIME...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

Downstreamer called it right. RC was wrong on the embeddeds. End of story.

I am still amazed at the credibility many here were willing to give RC. Let's review what we know:

- He's an anonymous poster with anonymous sources

- He has refused many requests to verify his credentials (while still protecting his anonymity)

- He made a post in Aug 99 that said his sources told of him about problems brought on by the date 9/9/98

- He's batting .000 so far with his predictions

Watching people here treat RC as some great expert just reinforces the notion that in TB2000-land "expert" translates as "person who tells me something I want to believe". How long are you going to give RC's scenario? When will reality intrude?

-- Johnny Canuck (j_canuck@hotmail.com), January 02, 2000.

Johnny - he's posted his credentials to me. I am satisfied. You and DS haven't given this TIME to play out yet...

Johnny - to be honest you really piss me off. Every time you post you whine about this and that. Why don't you give us something of substance for a change.

Here's your chance.

take this one apart - IN ADVANCE for a freaking change.

let's put your intellect on the line...

1) Banking - next 3-4 weeks - what will happen.

2) Tear apart this prognosis you moron.

Even though 10% of the world is experiencing minor glitches randomly in the basic infrastructure now, it should be noted carefully by all IT professionals and computer experts that the other 90% of the system hasn't yet been fired up in real-time testing. As people will go back to work on Monday fire up those systems and then we will soon see what kind of interconnectivity problems surface as the whole system is then put into full operation. If we start seeing snowball effects happening over the next few weeks we wil soon know how far the system can cope without collasping on itself.

The small glitches that we think are 'minor problems' now can easily at any time start escalating through the infrastructure, so its a waiting game to see how many of these glitches will surface. If there is enough of those little tiny glitches or outages happening all at once this can clog up or collaspe the infrastructure and grind it to a halt, but only time will tell if the glitches start increasing in their accelerations or remain at a stable level that the system and the programmers are able to cope with, for this is the big hidden danger of the y2k issue now.

I am sure there will be an increase in the amount of glitching when the other 90% of the code is put into operation when people go back to business as usual and with those systems that couldn't get their embeds upgraded because not enough time, in the meantime last minute fixing is probably being done during the holidays to try to turn back the glitch bomb before people go to work. We must also take into account that this is where the "non-compliant or incompleted systems" around the world start to play the part in provoking a interconnecting glitch snowball effect for nearly half the world's computer systems did not make it to the deadline of 31st Dec 1999 and so technicians hope to try to fix things in 2000 after the glitching starts for the danger is far from over, if the glitches snowball, it may outdo the number of technicians and programmers to fix it, it's just the beginning, wait and see.

Now it all depends if there is enough glitching to outdo the number of programmers patching the systems up, this will be quie interesting. The bomb has gone off, but it hasn't quite detonated fully yet, its a Year 2000 Timebomb, not a Day 2000 Timebomb. So many think that because everything in the basic infrastructure is still operational so far with only minor glitches that this y2k bomb is only a fizzler.

We will know if the infrastructure stands once it starts going into full real-time testing, we can't know if the system is going to pass the test until the whole thing is tested. Before we celebrate thining the y2k bug has been beaten, not everything was put in full operation on New Year's celebrations, because we see the power and phones still working or basic utils, this don't mean that the whole system has jumped the hurdle over y2k.

TO SUM UP =========

The immediate effects of y2k are not really immediate but over time, its a timebomb, not a daybomb. Not until the whole system is put into full real-time operation will be begin to know of the ramifications of y2k over the next few weeks. y2k is not a day event, its a year event, possibly even longer. Pollies can gloat all they like about the rollover event, for it dosen't matter to the billions of glitches and unfixed systems around the world, they don't take day events. If there are problems with embeds, they might take a while to show up. The non comp ones though would probably crash as soon as they are fired up. But the y2k in the software code plus the billions of glitches will prob slowly detonate over time.

(Brent N)

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

I'm completely with Downstreamer and Johnny. Here's my explaination why and a challange to RC. If you meet this challange I'll change my position.

Following exerpts are from my posts in:

Why nothing was ever going to happen with the embeds

After the rollover I put my brain in gear, rather than relying on the "experts" as I have done to now about what goes in the embeds. I'm not a hardware guy, but I went back and thought about my only hardware project from 20 years ago in university (back when memory was expensive).

Any thing that is in hardware that deals in time is going to use counters to determine when time has elapsed. They are not going to use dates because you have to use more memory to store it and then convert it to a number to do the calculations and then more memory to convert the number back to a date. So they'll count seconds or days. The point of storing a date calculation is know when a certain amount of time has passed. If you use counters (even thousands of seconds for many days) it is the simplest, cheapest, and bug free way to do that - regardless of date. Now some of the more fancy hardware that is newer may have some date functions for things like maintenance (since memory is not a problem now) that has been arbitrarily decided to be done at month ends rather than on a fixed interval, but my guess are those are very few and between.

I'm willing to bet that 99.999% of all embeds are like what I describe above. That's why the world could tollerate a 0.001% hiccup in the number of embeds out there and not blink at all.

I'm willing to bet if you turn on 99.999% of the systems with embeds there is no place to enter a date or even set one - after all I don't see every one of these systems with a keypad or keyboard to enter a date if the current date is incorrect. These systems are black boxes like your modem. Yes they track time (with a counter) not by knowing what day of the year it is. They don't care about dates they care about durations of time and days passing.

You may be absolutely correct, but I have two questions before I can take your arguments as being reasonable:

1) Could you explain to me what critical processes on an oil rig/refinery operate based on it being a certain date vs a certain time interval having passed?

2) On all these sealed boxes with boards you talk about how many have an interface or keypad that lets you set the date on the boards?

I read your reports and your latest assesment and every one of your arguments was made for utilities (end-to-end testing, lack of work done, lack of testing, etc.), all of which turned out to be false. I think largely because of my basic premise above. You may still be correct, although I'd need to know the answers to the above two questions before I could reasonably say "you have a case".

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 02, 2000.

Why nothing was ever going to happen with the embeds

======================================================================

This is all very well IS

BUT WHY DIDN'T YOU POST THIS LAST WEEK!!!

Sunday morning (after rollover) quarterbacking like this is VERY TIRESOME...

Where were you last week with these pearls of wisdom???

You had plenty of chances to write your piece, you had plenty of opportunities to

PUT THE BOOT IN LAST WEEK.

I'm disgusted.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

Downstreamer,

It appears that you didn't bother to read for comprehension the post that I gave. You have mischaracterized my current post and my previous posts. For instance, You say that I never said I could be wrong. This is yet another instance of your not getting the facts correctly. I've stated in numerous posts that I could be wrong. Especially about the severity levels. You sir cannot seem to get the facts straight and choose to now sling mud. For someone who edited your own oil trade newletter you've certainly demonstrated to me your journalistic inadequacies by not getting the facts straight. My projections were stated as percentages of like-lihood. None were ever chiseled into stone because as I had stated ... "I could be wrong" and "no one knows for sure." I find your comments rephrensible and completely off- base and without merit or foundation.

You also mischaracterized my comments in regard to the Persian Gulf nations being "toast." I was referencing a Bloomberg Newswire story that referred to a UN official and a Persian Gulf remediator. I simply summed up that news story assessment.

From Part 3 of my final evaluation... what did I say Downstreamer??? What were the projections??? Please, let me refresh your memory.

"I think there is a 5% to 10% chance that no refineries will go down. I think there is a 5% to 10% chance that half the refineries will go down I think there is a 50% chance that 9 or 10 refineries will go down for 6 mo. I think there is a 20% chance that 20 to 30 refineries will go down for 6 mo."

I presented and gave all the possible ranges as percentages. I didn't state that what has happened couldn't happen when I gave it a 5% to 10% chance.

ALSO: Had you bothered to comprehend what I actually wrote in the above you would note that I clearly have now reduced the levels of likelihood for potential problems and none of my projections were set in stone but rather percentages of likelihood just like a weather forecast.

I NEVER promoted the idea TEOTWAWKI in my posts. For the most part I gave a 4 to 7 range of scale. I ended my projections estimate at a "7"...I just stated above that in light of the lack of simultaneous problems inflicted upon the infrastructure during rollover that we now would NOT see the more TEOTWAWKI forecasts fulfilled that were made by others and that TEOTWAWKI would not come to pass for oil. I never promoted a TEOTWAWKI for oil either. PERIOD!

I have also noted that we have no verifiable evidence yet that there has been no embedded system problems with oil. Even the oil co's don't know what has happened...even if systems are still functioning ... problems can be percolating unknown to operators. That is and has been my point in all of this. For you and others to assert otherwise is incorrect extremely premature and foolish.

As I said, we've just gotten underway and you are out here promoting a premature conclusion regarding oil and Y2K and telling us that the oil markets knew all along. See your quote in brackets from an earlier thread:

["In terms of embeddeds and the oil industry this thing looks like its gonna be a 1 or a 2. The oil industry consensus was right"]

That's a load of bull. You ascribe to the oil market a god-like religious status that is thoroughly unwarranted. Frankly, from what you've demonstrated here, I would not want to assign you to direct any of my investment funds in the market unless I was looking for a tax loss.

You also stated:

"In no way have I contended the oil industry is out of the woods. I am contending that based on the lack of power outages, dirty power incidents, refinery problems and other embedded systems that have operated smoothly through the rollover without apperant incidents, it diminishes the likelihood of embedded system problems down the road. Do you dispute this?"

Hold it... you just stated in a previous post today "In terms of embeddeds and the oil industry this thing looks like its gonna be a 1 or a 2."

Hmmm ascribing things to a 1 or a 2 is indeed saying that the oil industry is "out of the woods." So now you're doing a backstroke while you attempt to attack me. Why attack me? Has this become an ego thing for you? It's not been so for me. I'm just an average guy who realizes that potential disruptions from embeddeds has just begun. I am still concerned that people like you mislead others into premature and foolish conclusions that might result in further problems for those who prematurely dump their preps. We're not sure how all of this is gonna play it. Some of those folks may need their preps after all, though it might not be employed in quite the same way as had been envisioned. This is the only reason I stand up vociferously here. It's certainly not an ego thing. Even a "5" could be an extremely serious "Depression" in which food could be hard to come by. Folks have followed your comments carefully in the past. Reading your 1,2 comment might lead to false conclusions and rash actions regarding preps. If this were March it would be one thing, but your posting this crappola just hours into a 6 week watch window while all the time not being cognizant of any of the statistics regarding embeddeds found during initial assessments and testing.

Had you bothered to read and comprehend my comments at the top of this thread you wouldn't have had to ask the question about disputing you regarding 'diminishment'. Instead you just fired from the hip. Reducing the max level from a 7 to a 5 is "diminishment" in my book but perhaps not in yours. As I've stated previously, it is premature to assume the embeddeds problem cannot still cause major damage to the oil industry structure. We're not going to know til sometime in February what the impact of embeddeds really is. You never bothered to take the time and do the research on embeddeds in oil or you wouldn't be making the pronouncements that you've made. You didn't read the Tava report did you? You didn't read the NIST report did you? Neither did you read Paula Gordon's white papers did you? Again, your comments are based upon a lack of research and understanding of the potential impact.

Again, one more time...just for the record again... no one knows ... neither you nor I and I could be incorrect, especially on percentages of likelihood, as these have been (like everyone else) just guesses, but based upon some statistics as its all we have had to go on. But its more than you've had. (OH, that's right, I forgot, you got it straight from your god...the ominiscient oil markets).

ONE FINAL POINT: My final evaluation including projections because many people kept asking fervently for some sort of likelihood or level of potential risks. So I went out on a limb. I did so not presenting these as absolutes...but as percentages but it people like you who twist and distort what I or others say ought to be ashamed.

-- RC (racambab@mailcity.com), January 02, 2000.

RC,

I certainly don't want to get into any personal attacks and I've communicated with you long enough to know you don't either. I'll shift gears, stand down and look for substanitive oil industry problems and issues. I can't find any problems yet and I'm sure there's a few out there.

I told myself before the rollover, the oil industry has more potential for immediate and embedded problems than any other. Embedded problems would be surfacing on rollover weekend and probably extend out for several weeks. Now that rollover, embedded, power outage and not even Russia, Iraq, Lybia type problems have yet to surface, its time to scale the dire forecasts back considerably. If you want to take issue with this, go right ahead. You're digging youself deeper.

Andy, Thats right I'm saying you should stick with your simplistic buy-call strategies. Also monitor those 3 spreads I suggested. Ted Spreads (long TBill, Short Eurodollar) firmed another .02 on Friday even though early rollover indications were benign. They would have moonshot on rollover probs. Long Feb / short Mar gasoline spreads will be dumped on Tues on very small losses. Crack spreads, bought near contract lows will do fine in coming weeks, especially if your's and RC's contentions are correct.

And RC, I've made good money in '99 and in the '90s trading NYMEX markets, and again, a fundamental reason for this is I'm not to bullheaded or proud to admit when I'm wrong.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 02, 2000.

And DS sometimes you need to hold 'em not fold 'em :o)

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

Andy:

Firstly monday back quarterbacking is a very bad analogy because during a game you don't know how it is going to turn out, whereas here we had hundreads of thousands of engineers who were supposedly testing these emebeds and the fact I presented above should have been established BEFORE the game if we were being given the straight goods by them.

Its called a postmortem. All professionals do them to learn from their mistakes so they can improve the procedures. The last procedure we used to assess the situation (i.e. rely totally on third party expertise) was obviously flawed (I see from your response in Looks like banks will be OK you're still following it since you just obnoziouly reply to the poster to believe what has already been posted by others in the banking cateogry-I belive you called the poster an Asshole for a rather straightforward post) since the expectations were so far off the mark. So now I'd like those providing expertise to answer a few questions some of low lifes have. After all not being experts we can't pose very difficult questions for them. What is your problem with this? Like to keep you head stuck in the sand?

Well there are two proverbs.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who keep their head in the sand get kicked in the rear end.

Put the two together and you get kicked repeatedly. I don't like that happening to me and neither do most professionals. Hence my two questions to RC which I notice he chose to ignore. Why RC? Hiding something? If not come out and say it. I've said clearly if you can answer them satisfactorly then we can have more confidence in you. So why did you not answer them when you came back to post?

Andy, now with respoect to specifically answering your comments let me see if I understand you correctly:

It seems you feel my piece of wizdom has some merit. You're angry because I'm giving it now after the fact. Well go and read my full response to your similar objections in my thread:

Why nothing was ever going to happen with the embeds

Excuse me, but are you angry because I didn't use MY brain last week to figure this out, but finally did so after the fact. Well so far since rollover I have yet to see anybody to a reasonable explaintion about WHY the predictions were so far off base with respect to embeds. If you feel my explaination has so much merit you are angry I didn't post it last week, I ask you then if a software guy thinking about his only university project in hardware from 20 years ago provides such a crucial peice of insight, then it seems obvious that the "experts" have been feeding a line to everybody for the past 2-4 years.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 02, 2000.

It seems we should be able to wait for a week or two to see how this plays out before criticizing others so strongly. I appreciate RC trying to keep us informed about the oil industry. What he said made sense to me, and if he turns out to be wrong, he will get no criticism from me. Also, I don't believe that the oil "market" knows what will happen any more than the stock market knows what will happen. The stock market is telling us that everything is perfect and will remaim that way for many years.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), January 02, 2000.

Andy -

Having you vouch for RC's credentials on embedded system issues is a bit like having Dennis Rodman vouching for Madonna's chastity.

My point in this whole situation has been to highlight the continued double standard present at TB2000. An anonymous person comes along and professes to be an expert in a particular area. If the poster says that things are BAD and going to get WORSE, then the majority here nod their heads and say, "knew it, knew it". Then another anonymous poster (like Dan the Power Man) comes along and says "hey folks, electricity isn't in the bad shape that you believe it to be" and the doom chorus erupts with cries of "shill" "moron" etc.

Dan was challenged to prove his bona fides.....and he did! RC was similarly challenged and thus far has not responded. The unbiased reader can draw whatever conclusion they wish from that.

Andy, you and RC have both responded with insults to those with whom you disagree. Water off a duck's back, my son. Letters on a screen. Perversely enough, I think that in person you'd probably be a fairly likeable chap. You have the redeeming feature that some of your posts are leavened with self-deprecating humour, a faculty that RC seems not to be able to manage.

-- Johnny Canuck (j_canuck@hotmail.com), January 02, 2000.