STL Time Machine Report #36 - Wednesday 30 December 1998 (1998-12-30) The beta test is almost over. The Time Machine has been in operation for one year already. Most of 1999 is reserved, except for a couple of planned two-week periods for re-testing internal compliance. The only real news is that last Saturday we upgraded the Time Machine from MVS/ESA 5.2.2 to OS/390 2.5. Some jobs needed minor JCL changes, but no application programming problems were found. SAS is not working, and a vendor fix will be tried later this week. We don't use SAS (Statistical Analysis System) for production, but we do have some Y2k test setups and print jobs that use SAS. Normally, we do a mainframe OS upgrade in August or September. But we'll do OS/390 in March, 1999, in order to have more time to ensure the system is stable. We are also gradually shedding contractors, since the programming work is basically done, and no projects are scheduled for implementation in the last six months of 1999 for the same reason. We will do minor fixes and performance tuning, but no changes to business rules. AWARENESS The Kiplinger Washington letter reported in their December 18 issue that "spending by businesses on Y2K fixes will last into '00 and '01...because they can't do everything at once". They suggest it's best to fix as much as possible now, because "repairers" will be hard to find later on. Another quote: "So far, 95% of banks are believed to be up to speed on Y2K fixes, but gov't won't tell you if yours is or isn't". It's nice to know that Kiplinger thinks there is a hereafter. People thought that "60 minutes" would have a big impact on awareness. Wasn't it Steve Dover who told us "Awareness is futile"? The geeks who can fix the problems have had plenty of time to become aware. I doubt that Oprah Winfrey can help us now, with or without a burnoose. COBOL STUFF It looks like IBM's MLE (Millennial Language Extensions) is a variation of the Bob Bemer fix. I don't think it's that helpful, because it requires non-standard extensions to COBOL source code. And you still need to have all your COBOL source code. You still need to find all your date fields, change all your programs, recompile, and test, test, test. It's frustrating that the New York Times reports COBOL is such an old programming language that no one knows it anymore, and Russian immigrants must be brought in to fix the programs. I've been hearing "COBOL is dead" since I started learning it 20 years ago. Maybe COBOL will kill us instead. The real news with COBOL is that the 1997 Standard has been delayed, probably by Object-Oriented Programming issues, and may not come out until 1999, or 2000, or 2001... NEWSGROUP NOTES Someone wrote that there have been over 340,000 posts to comp.sofware.year-2000 since its inception. So is Gold money? Is Y2k like the holocaust? Now that you can rent "Titanic" at Blockbuster Video, when does the Y2k movie come out? Is Impeachment Y2k-compliant? Where can I get a generator? Will the IRS still be able to collect taxes after the gubmint falls? Who are the secret members of the White House "Plunge Protection Team"? How many days are there in the month of February, 2000? Hey, I know the answer to that one! THE "JO ANNE EFFECT" Will any outsiders ever hear about JAE problems? If you're not familiar with JAE, here is a link to it from Pam Hystad's FAQ: http://www.computerpro.com/~phystad/jae.html And here's Pam's Unofficial Smallish c.s.y2k FAQ: http://www.computerpro.com/~phystad/csy2kfaq.html IT'S A DILBERT WORLD (Another Chapter) The Y2k audit report has not been published yet. Chances are they didn't find out that the PHM is diverting money from the mainframe maintenance budget to buy more desktop PC's and LAN Servers. But the P&L statements for each store have been successfully converted to client/server! The greenbar reports weren't pretty enough, so now a PC downloads each store's data, runs a bunch of Excel macros, fonts it up, prints it out, and loads it out to the corporate intranet (Oops! We don't want EVERYBODY to see that!) It's fascinating to watch a PC run Excel all by itself, but the Excel script is always crashing and has to be manually restarted several times. And it takes longer to run than the mainframe job. Oh, yeah, the NT Terminal Server project has a few problems, but it's definitely going to replace VSE/CICS. The really funny thing is, my buddy's company uses computers so ineffectively they could "go to manual" right now. As of 1998-12-30, My countdown now reads: -59 days until 1998-11-01 (Beta Test underway!) 5 days until 1999-01-04 (Testing begins) 367 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!"