Here's My post-Y2K Analysis and a summary of Computer glitches globally

I am thankful that it didn't turn out as bad as I thought it would even though it's too premature to conclude all will be well. If I was sincerely wrong about the degree of severity, so be it. Better safe than sorry. I was a 7 (scale 1-10), now I am a 3 for this year. It's still better to be prudent than arrogant. There is no need to worry about what people might say about us if our motive is pure and we are sincerely trying to help people prepare. Here are my thoughts for whatever is worth.

The lack of severe, lingering glitches has surprised the most optimistic of experts. Most experts thought there would be severe problems only oversea, but they were wrong too! Most were afraid of the embedded chip systems, hey, they turn out to be just as surprised!

Y2K ain't no Hype. If it was hype, why would over 200 politicians, heads hiding in a safe bombproof bunker on New Year's eve. In city after city, in New York City, Japan, L.A., what were they doing deep underground if it was hype. They never had to hide in past years' New Year celebration! Watch their nervous action, not their smooth words. The fact remains that no one really knows how it would turn up. This Y2K rollover was unprecedented in history. If your pious friends give you this "I told you so!" Ask if in all honesty, whether he would have ridden in an elevator or a plane? Why not? Because until Jan. 1 arrives, no one really knows. All tests are simulations only.

Y2K is not a non-event. To hear the Government-media complex all reporting and mouthing similar phrases" not a problem", "the lights are still on", etc. Our government and our media already had a prior meeting and understanding that there would be limited access and reporting of Y2K glitches/news. To hear them talk of, " not a thing happened", makes me wonder if we are living on the same planet! During the last two years, we have witnessed repeatedly the awesome power of the media at manipulating the "sheeple"

A SUMMARY OF GLITCHES in 2 days so far(non-exhaustive):

power outages (no matter how brief) been reported in various parts of Florida, silicon Valley and scattered areas of CA., in East Texas, Wisconsin, Nevada, Louisville, Kentucky, Little Rock, AK., North Carolina, Canada, Cleveland, OH. , Spokane, WA., New Zealand and other foreign nations.

7-8 nuclear power plants here have minor problems, about 3 nuclear plants in Japan, fire at an Australia plant, 1 in Thailand.1-2 nuclear plants in Spain, minor and fixable problem(s) at Charles Schwab, I bank and 15 brokerages in Japan, China had numerous problems with bank emails and credit card systems, BART train in Bay Area, Hewlett Packard credit union VISA in Palo Alto, CA., numerous computers at Ford Co., US Post office in Tampa, FL, Pentagon, Air Force, U.S. spy satellite, 24 airports had communication problems in Iowa; Bank errors in Sacramento & Santa Clara, CA., Harrington, Delaware, and Indiana; water problems in San Diego & Huntington Beach, CA., Dallas, Orlando, Richmond, VA., Denver, Atlanta, Florence, Miss. Explosion in Minot, N.D., Train disruptions in Ackley, IOWA & orange county, food stamp in Santa Fe, Social security in MI., GA., online trading in St. Louis, telecommunications in CO., MO., MI, WI., MA., CA., GA.,

Scores of medical equipment's failures in Asia, Europe, Sweden, America, New Zealand and Australia ordered numerous emergency parts from IBM, 911 systems, insurance, tax errors, cellular phones (US WEST down all day), French bank system, Something down in South Korea, prisons, credit card processing, Slot Machines here, etc. All these were reported in 2 days and they call this a "non-event"?! I reality, we have had perhaps an unprecedented number of computer problems globally!

As of yesterday, 44 countries including Indonesia have not submitted their status of sectors to World bank. Gambia was in chaos I day. Pakistan stock market had problem for a period.

After about 1,000 hours of research into Y2K, I think the worst scenario is unlikely now, I have Said in many Y2K awareness seminars that so Long there Is power, we need not fear. Remember however that CNN reported this morning at 9:35AM ," 90% of the world's computers were shut down over the weekend. " That also means majority of the lights were shut down. We probably won't know the real impact until the end of January, maybe February since Feb. 29 may be another critical date with potential problems. Gartner Group said ,"Only 10% of the problems will occur during the first 2 weeks of January. " If there is no widespread software application problems the next few weeks, then we can breath another sigh of relief. I am still somewhat concerned about the oil, stock market and supply-chain area.

Since there were no riots, there will probably be no martial law/curfews . We should still be vigilante about potential terrorism, because there were no major outages, some terrorists may have switched to plan B at a more opportune time .

I have been studying the beautiful book of Ester in the Old Testament on God's providence. The plan to exterminate the Jews were thawted by a courageous woman. If indeed there was any plan to have martial law followed by restriction of liberty, it appears it might have been averted, at least for now. I salute the hundreds of thousands of persistent programmers and hundreds of talk show hosts, and many lonely voices in the Computer circle (I will not want to play God to judge their motives), Ed Yourdon, Michael Hyatt, Jim Lord, Rick Cowles, Gary North, etc. Without all their efforts and combined pressure on the respective government agencies, corporations, utilities to speed up the remediation process, things may turn out a lot worse.

I am tired of arguing and talking about Y2K since over 2 years ago, I'd rather be wrong than right about Y2K. I have not lost one night of sleep because of Y2K by the grace of God. I went to bed before midnight Dec. 30th and 31st. I was very concerned but not overanxious. I have done my best to raise awareness and was prepared. If it turns out to be a bump on the road, I can eat my mistake!

-- Watchman (Watch@foryou.com), January 02, 2000

Answers

Thanks for the excellent summary of Y2K glitches to date, and the great commentary too. Yep, can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), January 02, 2000.

Watchman

I only glance through your post before rushing out for dinner. I share many of your thoughts. I'm tired of some of bickering and nit-picking on some forums. For one, I am GRATEFUL that so far so good! It could have been worse. I don't care too much who's right, who's wrong. I rather not have chaos, long lines, anger on the street. Fortunately, I have only prepared for 4 months or so of food and yes if by this summer, nothing much happens, I may begin to eat some of my food. I suspect though there will be more problems down this year, but nothing that can't be fixed, so long we have power. I too am grateful for the sacrifices of many programmers and people who posted valuable information here. I learned a lot from many of you. Got to go

-- Paul (Amgrateful@thusfar.com), January 02, 2000.

Just a note to say that I appreciate your summary and feel the same as you about this situation. I prepared too, and feel as if I can use my supplies one way or the other. God Bless you

-- Judy Lange (heart323@mindspring.com), January 02, 2000.

Thanks, Watchman. You have quite a few on your list that I haven't seen posted here. Maybe they were, and I somehow missed them. You report, "water problems in San Diego & Huntington Beach, CA., Dallas, Orlando, Richmond, VA., Denver, Atlanta, Florence, Miss." Are there any threads here on these?

Maybe it's time for a new forum category---Rollover glitches/failures

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), January 02, 2000.

What a treat! I thank you very much, Watchman, for this astute, concise, and rational post. No screaming, hollering, chest beating, snide comments, just facts.

Indeed here in So. Calif., there was an electrical outage of several hours. No damage. Wee morning hours, so only my digital clocks knew.

If and when you come up with more of this type of observation, I sincerely hope you will continue to share this information.

-- Richard (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), January 02, 2000.

WOW...GREAT POST, THANKS!

Believe or not, I didn't even own a flashlight before I started to prepare. How's that for living on the edge. =)

Peace...Cin

-- cin (cinlooo@aol.com), January 02, 2000.

Thanks for all your encouragement. I too pick up news bits here and there, some from your previous posts. But try this list with about 50 glitches.Link please.

http://www.y2knewswire.com/Y2KNewswireHistoryProject.htm

-- Watchman (Watch@foryou.com), January 02, 2000.

What a silly post. Um, the vast majority of the stuff in watchman's post of "glitches" were either:

1) Non-Y2K. Examples? Power outage in Florida was the usual car hitting telephone pole. (INSERT MORON DOOMER RESPONSE HERE: "Yeah, right, good coverup, I believe that." Oh well, live in your fantasy world. I lost power here in Spring of 1999 for 6 hours because of a car hitting a telephone pole. Main reason besides storms power goes out.)

The vast majority of the other stuff is probably non-Y2K; the sort of stuff that's routine and never makes the news unless people are fanatically looking for "glitches."

There isn't a media COVERUP; the media is actually EXAGGERATING the problem simply by reporting this stuff at all. So the heat went out in a South Korean apartment building due to Y2k; How often does the heat go out in apartment complexes? When they happen outside the US, do you normally hear about it in the US? NO NO NO NO.

You have to be appallingly stupid to think there have been an "unprecedented number of computer problems." It's simply because this stuff normally doesn't get reported worldwide., and because panicked doomers are frantically LOOKING for them.

2) Not proven to be "not normal." How many pieces of medical equipment are there in the world? How often do they fail on their own? If a heartbeat monitor in Bumblehom, Sweden fails for 30 minutes on July 24 1999 does it make worldwide newswires? Nope.

3) Simply Bogus. The whole "Gambia in chaos" thing was a complete lie or media mistake (still sorting out that one and exactly what happened. A y2k media failure, perhaps? :-)

The massive IBM parts orders to New Zealand was totally bogus.

-- John H Krempasky (johnk@dmv.com), January 02, 2000.

To add to John K's response: even if all the listed breakdowns were Y2K-related, and even if the list were 10 times longer, they still wouldn't matter so long as the system as a whole keeps working. I don't care about a media cover-up. If the sum of all Y2K problems is managageable enough that it can even BE covered up, then Y2K isn't nearly the problem we thought. Some of the scenarios such as "cascading defaults" are way beyond what can be covered up.

-- Still Here (alive@ain't-we.com), January 02, 2000.

John

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this. Many of these glitches have been verified by some local papers or people who live there as occured during or around the time of roll-over. Yes, there is an effort to discredit or white-wash all these malfunctions as non-Y2K related. We will just have to agree to disagree. I am not interested to argue with you over which ones are genuine, which are not. Even if they are all certified to be triggered by Y2K, you probably still won't be satisfied. THe papers did report that indeed the media will have limited access to Y2K-related news. The government probably did not want to spoil the celebration mood or causE any panic. This morning's Washington Post ( I thought I read it earlier in another thread)clearly showed that the Pentagon lied and withheld information when they said at the rollover" Every military system is working fine..." They knew that Y2K knocked out a critical spy satellite and that they lost hours of critical information! Which nation or company would want to admit their computers got hit by the bug? What would happen to their stock price this week? Here's the link to the IBM emergency orders at http://www.michaelhyatt.com/discuss/ubb/Forum35/HTML/000009.html. And here's the thread on the Ford's breakdown story from an insider at http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002BKL. Enough said. You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

-- Jane (janmt@differs.com), January 02, 2000.

Thank you, John and still Here for debunking this self-validating, posturing drivel.

-- Bad Company (laughing@shootingstar.com), January 02, 2000.

FYI: The problem in Louisville, Kentucky was a very small, short outage caused by a squirrel.

-- in kentucky (jrenner@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

Jane

Because something occurs close to the rollover it must be a Y2K problem?

You realize how many people are careening around the roads drunk out of their gourds in the hour or so after midnight New Years?

My general life experience has been, in a given year, I lose power probably twice in the summer for several hours each time due to thunderstorms, and one additional time per year for several hours due to car-hitting-pole or simple equimpent failure. And I've lived in a LOT of different places.

Consider how many people live in the US, how many power grids there are, etc. Somebody needs to show there were more power outages than a normal Jan. 1 this year.

Are you sitting around message boards anxiously awaiting whether someone in Kansas reports their power out on July 22? Does it make national wires if some stupid drunk nails a telelphone pole and knocks out power for 5,000 people in Kentucky on April 4? Don't think so.

If the Pentagon's satellite problems are covered up, why do we all know about it within a day? Hmm? :-)

And believe me, I'm reading the Hyatt forum for amusement as well :-) Talk about your silly unproven rumor-mongering on the IBM thing. BECAUSE of that thread it's pretty clear it's bogus :-)

-- John H Krempasky (johnk@dmv.com), January 02, 2000.

John

It's because there was a second press conferences when some reporter asked about the satellite problem. Read it for yourself.H'mm It's a waste of time to discuss with people with a closed mind a I'm-right-you-got-to-be-wrong attitude. No well-informed person would deny that many governments including ours often lied and coverup. I'll let you defend this government of high ethics. This is clear proof from a credible mainstream paper. How do you know the IBM and Ford stories are bogus? It's your opinion. Why do you think we have a forum? It's to allow people to freely express their findings without sometimes having to reveal the name of the whistle-blower. Some things are hard to prove either way. Let us leave it at that. We can go in circles.

Here's the link to Washinton Post's article I just found. http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/02/135l-010200-idx.htm l

Pentagon Withheld News of Major New Year's Computer Failure By Roberto Suro

Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 2, 2000; Page A08

On New Year's Eve, top Pentagon officials withheld news of a major Y2K computer glitch that had cut access to a critical satellite intelligence system, telling reporters only after the big millennial celebrations in Washington and New York had finished.

Throughout Friday evening, Pentagon officials told members of the news media that the change to the year 2000 was proceeding without a hitch throughout the defense establishment. But yesterday the same officials revealed that a major computer failure occurred shortly after 7 p.m. EST--which is midnight Greenwich Mean Time, the time standard for many satellite systems.

A ground-based computer system that processes information from a major satellite intelligence network failed after 2000 began at Greenwich Mean Time, and the military lost the ability to collect data from the satellites, Deputy Defense Secretary John J. Hamre said yesterday at a Pentagon news conference.

"We did have one significant problem, one that I had wished we hadn't had, but we did," Hamre said. "One of our intelligence systems, a satellite-based intelligence system, experienced some Y2K failures last night shortly after the rollover of Greenwich Mean Time. And for a period of several hours, we were not able to process information from that system."

However, at a 9:30 p.m. briefing Friday, more than two hours after the system went down, the Pentagon denied that it was having any problems with computers misreading a two-digit date of 00 as 1900 rather than 2000.

"We've been monitoring the state of the world very closely, and particularly our systems, as we rolled past Greenwich Mean Time at about 1900 this evening, 7 p.m. And I'm happy to report and continue to be encouraged to report that all the Department of Defense systems remain in green status," Rear Adm. Robert Willard, head of the Y2K task force for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced at the Friday briefing. "Our systems thus far are free of year 2000 glitches," he added.

As Willard was speaking to reporters, military programmers were completing a temporary repair of the processing unit that allowed it to start working again, though at reduced capacity, officials said.

Asked yesterday why the breakdown was not reported to the public on New Year's Eve, Hamre said he arrived at the Pentagon as Willard was giving the briefing and did not learn about the problem until a half-hour later.

From 11 p.m. to midnight EST, Hamre hosted a small reception in his offices for members of the news media and Pentagon officials who were keeping the millennial watch--including Willard. There was extensive informal conversation about Y2K matters, but even though the intelligence system had been fixed for more than an hour at that point, no mention was made that it had had any problems.

Even after officials and reporters watched the fireworks at the Washington Monument from the Pentagon parade ground and returned to the Pentagon's public affairs offices, officials continued to insist that all systems were operating flawlessly.

Around 2 a.m., well after the crystal ball had descended at Times Square and the nationwide live television audience had shrunk substantially, word of the computer failure was leaked to reporters.

"We did not want to release incomplete information," said a senior Pentagon public affairs officer.

-- Tom Anderson (tom@peace.com), January 02, 2000.