Seattle...Back To Work With Few Y2K Glitches...

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Back to work with few Y2K glitches

The Associated Press 1/4/00 4:48 AM

SEATTLE (AP) -- After years of concern, the millenium bug was largely a no-show as workers in the metropolitan area returned from the holiday weekend.

From software to aerospace, banking to coffee, managers and executives reported only a handful of glitches, most of which were easily fixed.

Microsoft Corp. Y2K coordinator Don Jones, at home with his 1-year-old son for a rare break, said Monday that most Microsoft customers apparently heeded Y2K warnings and installed software to avoid any problems.

As businesses opened Monday morning on the East Coast, Microsoft's tech support lines received fewer calls than usual, Jones said.

"This is far better than I had hoped," he said.

Microsoft did find a Y2K date problem in its WebTV product, which allows users to send e-mail and surf the Web through their televisions. New users setting up monthly WebTV access accounts were given a faulty error message if their credit card expiration date was in the year 2000 or later. If the user clicked "Continue," however, the account was created anyway. Microsoft said the problem would be fixed by this morning.

Julie Boyer, director of the state's Y2K Coordination Center at Camp Murray, said $100 million worth of locating, fixing and testing software and so-called embedded chips in state government computer systems paid off.

"Jan. 3 has been business as usual, so far, for state government and those citizens who depend on their services," Boyer said.

The Y2K center, scheduled to remain in operation through today, has posted status reports on the state's "Access Washington" Web site at http://access.wa.gov.

Some problems that were noted at the center:

--The Clallam Bay Correctional Center's perimeter fence system gave false readings because the software would not accept a zero in the last position of the date field. A temporary fix was made, and a vendor will make final corrections. Overall security was not affected, Y2K center officials said.

--Telephone service disruptions were reported and fixed at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla and at the Reynolds Work Release program in Seattle.

--The University of Washington Medical Centers reported minor date-display problems with a handful of medical devices. The problems were corrected Saturday and did not impact patient care.

--The city of Redmond uncovered problems with older city-issued fuel access cards and its E-911 automatic dispatch system. Both systems were fixed.

--The city of Olympia reported a problem with a computer software system that handles emergency services reports. A vendor was contacted for resolution.

Some companies remained in wait-and-see mode as computer systems got their first real-life tests.

Washington Mutual opened its branches as usual Monday, according to spokeswoman Libby Hutchinson. ATMs were processing withdrawals as they occurred, she said, but another test was expected as branches processed their daily business.

The watch also continued at the Boeing Co., which plans to staff its Y2K readiness center through the end of the week. The company is coming back from a week-long holiday shutdown, according to spokesman Bob Jorgenson.

A handful of small glitches were found over the weekend, including a problem with employees' electronic timesheets. The program refused to compute work time that overlapped between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.

The problem affected two people, required a rewrite of six lines of computer code and was fixed in four hours, Jorgenson said. He added that the problem was typical of what Boeing was dealing with Monday.

Starbucks Corp.'s site on the World Wide Web was inaccessible for at least two hours Monday morning, but that was due to a site upgrade and not Y2K, according to spokesman Alan Gulick. The site returned to normal later Monday morning.

The coffee company had shut down all computers at its corporate headquarters as employees left Friday. While the bulk of Starbucks' employees aren't due back until Tuesday, technical staffers went in Monday to turn systems back on and check for problems. No major troupble was found Monday, Gulick said.

-- Vern (bacon17@ibm.net), January 04, 2000


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