STL Time Machine Report #34 - Sunday 22 November 1998 (1998-11-22) The STL Y2k'ers gathered at Krieger's last Monday, and there were some new faces. We heard from St. Louis County water (recently bought by an out-of-state private water utility) and the Bi-State Development Agency. Bi-state is our municipal Bus company and also includes our MetroLink light rail system. Bi-state is in pretty good shape with their business and financial software, but seriously neglecting the compliance of their suppliers...we'll probably still have water. One of our brethren had recently worked at Minnesota Blue Cross/ Blue Shield. They're toast, can't spend their Y2k budget, way behind on their assessment and inventory. Besides Steve Dover's story about making your tax checks out to the "Department of Treasury" instead of the IRS, we also heard about a hospital that receives 55% of its income in federal medicare reimbursements. How typical is that? Cory likes salary stories. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on November 19th that Missouri State is considering raising their programmer salaries by 25 to 50%. "Agencies can't compete with pay offered by private businesses." Entry-level starting pay would jump from $25,668 to $39,048, and a "computer specialist" with five years experience would increase from $41,868 to $64,680 (more than twice the annual salary of a Missouri state senator). "Some young professionals would earn more than their supervisors". I guess this breaks DD's maxim that you can't pay a good programmer more than a bad manager. The local CBS and NBC affiliates ran multi-part Y2k preparation stories on their ten o'clock news programs last week. My bank is now issuing checks that say "Date________" instead of "_______19__". Stock Market News In one week I received three investment fliers warning me I'm about to lose everything in the coming Y2K crash. But if I subscribe to their $200-a-year newsletters, they'll tell me the six funds and two stocks that will not only survive the crash, but make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. Don Scott and Paul Milne are both wondering why the DJIA is so high. According to James Dale Davidson in the November issue of "Strategic Investment", the Clinton administration is rigging the market. Quoting Bill King, "As we keep carping, the best trade in the last 5 years has been to go long (especially S&Ps) before a Clinton press address/conference. The gains have been stupendous, and we don't recall a single loser, provided you sell just as the address commences." Davidson again,"...the NYSE is no longer a free market, merely an arena for Asian-style, crony capitalism". If the market is being manipulated, as James Dale Davidson believes, the inevitable correction will be much worse. Imagine the DOW going down to 3500, and staying there for eight years. Time Machine Testing Beta testing is slowly picking up momentum. On Monday I get to carry three beepers, the backup that I carry all the time, the primary production beeper for one week's rotation, and the Time Machine beeper for a week's rotation, plus the company cellphone. My pants would probably fall to my ankles (be quiet, DD!) if it weren't for my superlative geek physique. The contractor who carried the Time Machine beeper last week says no problems so far. We have three test periods covering rollover 2000, leap year 2000, and rollover 2001, during which the clock runs normally for several days. Internal compliance testing began in January, 1998. Time Machine testing with external users goes live in January, 1999. COBOL class, beyond COBOL II On November 12-13th I attended an offsite class on "COBOL for the New Millennium", with course materials developed by Steven Comstock and taught by Jeff "Boomer" Bakalchuck. My company had 14 people out of 20 attending this class. It covered COBOL II features, COBOL/LE features, Year 2000, and IBM Millennial Language Extensions. I recommend this class. It became obvious to me that many programmers in other groups have converted to COBOL II so quickly they haven't had time to learn the new ANSI-85 features in COBOL. The class covered the 1989 intrinsic functions for dates in COBOL for MVS & VM. It also covered calling Language Environment date routines such as CEELOCT and CEEDATE from COBOL II programs. We dialed in to REJIS and modified the class example to return current date as "Fri 13 Nov 1998". We now have multiple ways to get four-digit years and calculate day-of-week and date intervals. I saw veterans with ten years of experience shaking their heads, saying, "I wish we'd had this stuff last year!" Another update to the PHM story Longtime readers know I have a buddy working at a retail company with a hornhair problem. So a couple of weeks ago the CFO calls a meeting with the PHM and all his direct reports. The CFO is very apologetic, I hope you guys don't mind, but we're starting to worry about this Y2K thing, so we've hired an independent auditing firm to review our Y2K project. The PHM doesn't like it. All his direct reports think it's a good idea. My buddy is nervous. He's been warned not to offer opinions or volunteer information to the auditors, and he's on the interview list. "What do I do?" he says. Answer the questions honestly. Their Y2K plan consists of a two-page memo that lists the names of the applications the PHM plans to replace with COTS packages by December, 1999. Most of the current replacement projects are behind schedule. Some of them will never work. The PHM has already ordered a new CMOS IBM mainframe replacement, with FEWER MIPS than the current model! "We don't run anything on it anyway, and we can save $2000 a month in maintenance fees." So if they're shutting down the mainframe in December 1999, why are they signing a three-year lease? Web Page Updates A couple of weeks ago I made several changes to my web page. There's now a separate page for programming resources: http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/proglnk.htm I've also enhanced the page for Y2K links: http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/y2klink.htm And added some stuff to the Y2k download page: http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/y2kdl.htm All these links can be found off the main page or the STL Time Machine page. I'm open to suggestions for other links as well, but I have a preference for free information over marketing hype. As of 1998-11-22, My countdown now reads: -21 days until 1998-11-01 (Beta Test in progress!) 40 days until 1999-01-01 (External Testing begins) 405 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!"