I'm please to announce that Jim Lord will be a weekly columnist on my site, beginning today. His first article, entitled System "Failures" is now up. It is well worth the read.

-- Michael S. Hyatt (mhyatt@michaelhyatt.com), February 24, 2000

Answers

Jim, I see your true colors shining through! Glad the whole anti- government thing was not part of the Y2K sham. Any more secret government reports? What do I need to "survive" next?

Bye

-- Bye (miss@merican.pie), February 24, 2000.

Hi Michael: Thanks for the update -- good to see Jim Lord writing again; his sensibility and down-to-earth knowledge is refreshing. Good piece, too....y2k has more sides and more possibilities than any of us realized.

-- Anita Evangelista (ale@townsqr.com), February 24, 2000.

Good article. Good point about the oil prices and its impact on those who prepared for Y2K and those who didn't. You can ridicule me and Lord and other "doomers" for things not turning out as catastrophic as predicted, but that wood stove sure is warm, and that wood sure was cheap.

-- Markus Archus (m@rkus.archus), February 24, 2000.

I see Mr. Lord has finally re-appeared. Repeated requests by myself and others had failed to get any kind of post Y2k response from him. I see he refers to a "Y2k apology" in this article, due out next week. I look forward to it, and I hope he elaborates on what Mr. CEO has to say these days...

-- Dan the Power Man (dgman19938@aol.com), February 24, 2000.

Hi Michael,

I suspect you know who I am. If not, you can be assured that I know who you are [grin], having read just about everything ever written about you. One way or another, I know Jim Lord knows who I am.

Having said that, my point in posting to this thread (and I have not been a daily poster to TB2000 since last Summer, when I said my official farewell) is that--in all fairness, and from an historical perspective--I have to side with Dan the Power Man, with regard to Jims silence following the Mr. CEO debacle.

Why?

Well, anyone who followed that particular part of the Y2k Story knows that we Y2k Watchers were first alerted to the existence of Mr. CEO through this forum.

We knew that Mr. CEOs predictions for electricity in North America were extremely dire. We were told he was credible. We knew he was supposed to appear--albeit anonymously--on radio prior to the rollover. We also knew that he cancelled at the last minute along with the reasons for same--as stated by Jim Lord.

The thing that left a lot of folks scratchin their heads, was that there was complete and total silence on the Mr. CEO story, right after it evaporated--perilously close to the rollover. In the minds of those who were sincerely seeking trustworthy information, this did not bode well for Mr. Lords credibility, particularly because so many people in public leadership positions were concerned about the possibility of panic.

As for me, it matters not how Jim chooses to apologize, if indeed he chooses to do so. I am simply a Y2k historian. The clock pretty much stopped for me on January 4, 2000.

However, I can very much empathize with people like Dan the Power Man, who will go down in history (and Im one of those who will offer up much of that history) as one of those who not only worked inside the utility industry, but spent many hours trying to explain to the rest of us why the power would stay on. In short, there is valid concern underscoring his question, and he deserves an answer.

Now,...having offered my two cents on that particular issue, I consider it fair game (since you DID plug YOUR new forum here [grin]) to remind folks of the existence of my own forum, along with my forthcoming (and yes, I know--much delayed) book, The Toilet Paper Chronicles. A preview of the book can be accessed here:

Start Page for "The Toilet Paper Chronicles: Gallows Humor from the Y2k Underground"

To reiterate what I have stated before however, this entire Y2k odyssey was such a confusing mess, that in my book, I am refraining--whenever possible--from naming names.

Why? First off, I generally consider that practice to be counter-productive. On this, Steve Hewitt and I are of a similar mindset. Secondly, there comes a time in every big story, when the appropriate thing to do is, distill.

In the spirit of fairness, however, I hope Jim Lord will indeed respond to Dans comments.

Peace.

:)

P.S.: I would like to reiterate--if I never sell more than a dozen copies of this book--my motivation from the beginning, was to tell the story from the perspective of very good people who just did not know what to believe. That has not changed. The "Gallows Humor" aspect of the story emerged because at more than one juncture, if we hadn't been able to find the humor in this dreadful story, many folks would have been begging their doctors for tranquilizers.

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), February 29, 2000.