STL Time Machine Report #19 - Sunday 07 June 1998 (1998-06-07) A good time was had by all at the last St. Louis Y2K'ers beer bash and general gripe session. Tim Oxler talked about his presentation. Doc Sewell couldn't make it. It was really nice to meet Steve Burkett, who had lots of interesting things to say. We all had a good laugh at the powerpoint slides from the three-letter agency, but it had pretty good information. Steve Dover had talked to a contracter working for the local Electric Utility, AmerenUE. Apparently, AmerenUE has nine days of battery backup for the systems that allow them to control their grid and start the diesel generators that bootstrap the coal-fired generators. This is reassuring. We can all be in the dark for nine days and the electric company can still start their generators and control their grid. There was no information on the Callaway Nuclear plant, but for safety reasons they should have bootstap capability. After calling my local bank over a week ago I received a short letter from them on their compliance efforts. The bank will remain nameless to protect my financial privacy. It was a form letter, but the cover letter was signed by the bank's Year 2000 project manager. Here's some quotes: "We have established a committee of industry professionals to lead our efforts in preparing software and systems for millenium-change events. (Our) data processing company has been actively engaged in converting its software to accommodate the year 2000 for the past two years, and has already completed the certification of several stages of the process. Finally, all systems are being evaluated by (x), a data processing company that supports (my bank), to ensure our readiness. "We are making every effor to ensure a smooth Year 2000 rollover for our customers. (My Bank) is aware of the potential impact of this situation and is committed to having all systems operational as soon as possible. This will allow an adequate period of time to ensure that all changes are functioning properly." (end of quote) Well, it seems a little light on details to me. Miscellaneous Stuff Group three testing is still in the dry run stage. This is the group that includes Unix boxes in the Time Machine. Group four is already gearing up preparations for combining all applications tested in groups 1, 2, and 3, and then beta testing runs to the end of the year. 207 days are left until 1999-01-01, when external testing begins for real. We're still working on preventing new date problems from creeping in with our remaining software upgrades, and with normal production support. I only saw the last 45 minutes of the CSIS conference on Y2K on C-Span. It looked pretty good to me, and I just might order the video for $90. If you missed Jim Abel's post, you can call 1-800-277-2698 and order tape number 106506. I was particularly impressed by the discussion of contingency planning. Another PHM Story A buddy of mine works for a large St. Louis retailer. They have a true blue IBM mainframe. It's a uniprocessor with 128 Meg of core running VM and VSE. They use VSAM and Cincom TOTAL database. They have a homegrown marketing analysis system that runs on their IBM with 120,000 unique items in inventory. About 14 months ago the PHM ordered that this system be replaced with an Oracle package on an HP 9000. The HP 9000 has 4 engines and 4 gigabytes of RAM. A Unix programmer was assigned to convert it, and the PHM said it should take a couple of weeks to do it. After 14 months they celebrated a major milestone in having loaded history for 1995, 1996, and 1997 to the Oracle database. Then the Unix programmer quit, and a newbie was hired to take over the project. The newbie accidentally entered an Oracle "truncate" command, and erased the entire database. The operators never backed up the Oracle database because it's a "test" system. Oracle says there's no recovering after a "truncate" command. So the historical data will have to be reloaded. No problem, reloading the history should only take one week this time! Predictions? I'm not in the prediction business. Your guess is as good as mine, but given the current economic situation in Asia, I believe there is a significant risk for a recession starting this year, and if not this year then certainly by mid-1999. How much more difficult will it be to fix the systems in a recession? I'm still thinking about the CSIS Y2K conference. One questioner implied there is a complete lack of leadership from government on Y2K. Specifically, the question was raised, is the administration damping down panic until after the November elections. De Jager's comment was, there's only 18 months left. If you wait six months, you will have wasted one third of the time remaining. My guess is that government is going to be largely irrelevant to helping the systems actually get fixed. The private sector will probably have to do it by themselves. Sauve qui peut! As of 1998-06-07, My countdown now reads: 146 days until 1998-11-01 (Beta Test begins) 207 days until 1999-01-01 (External Testing begins) 572 days until 2000-01-01 (Rollover) Previous Year 2000 Time Machine Reports are available at: http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/tmr.htm STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I am NOT an official corporate spokesperson. My opinions should not be held against my benevolent employer. -- Arnold Trembley http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/ "Y2K? Because Centuries Happen!"