January 28, 1999
Dear Everyone:
Today’s the day I give my presentation to the
supervisors and manager on which
records
management software application to buy.
I can remember, in the dim reaches of the past, how my hand shook
the first time I ever wrote a check for over $100.
Today, I’m blithely recommending spending about $84,000 (give or
take a few hundred), and that doesn’t even include the hardware and
underlying database
software. Of course, it
helps that this is way below what management had originally budgeted for
replacing
Versatile.
It almost looks like I’m saving them money.
Anyway, wish me luck.
If you hear a howl of anguish coming from the West
Coast, you’ll know they picked the wrong one.
In other news, I spent a very interesting, if
back-breaking, day learning about
Contingency
Planning on Tuesday.
(Back-breaking because those conference room chairs are hell on the
small of your back.) It was
billed as “Y2K
Contingency Planning Training”, but it soon became apparent that this
was total contingency planning.
They just tacked on the “Y2K” because Y2K is trendy.
If you’ve just come out of hibernation, and haven’t
heard about Y2K, it refers to “Year 2000” (Y=Year, 2K=2000).
Many older computer systems, some written as much as 20-30 years
ago, indicate the date as MMDDYY.
It’s assumed that the year is somewhere in the century 1900.
They did this to save space.
Early programming was limited to what you could fit into 80 or
132 spaces. And no one
dreamed that these programs would still be running this long.
Back in 1978, a scientist at Company asked for
computer printout of all “subjects” in California, listed by the date
that each “subject” was first begun.
The system printed the report, but noted that two “subjects” were
“invalid”. The computer’s
reasoning was, “How could these “subjects” have been begun in 1979 if
it’s only 1978 today?” It
turned out that the “subjects” were begun in 1878.
This was a pretty minor bumble.
But now, the missing first half of the year is beginning to
present some problems. Many
systems may just think it’s January 1, 1900 when next January rolls
around. Others may get
hysterical and refuse to operate at all.
The general consensus ranges from “total anarchy” to “what was
all that fuss about?”
Here at Company, we started preparing early last
year. At first, the idea was
to correct all computer functions by last December.
Now, it appears that this was a tad too optimistic.
Critical stuff will get taken care of, but for the less major
things, they’re moving on to contingency planning.
If you can’t guarantee that the computer won’t get the screaming
meemees, what are you prepared to do as a backup.
What does this mean to me, myself?
Versatile is already
Y2K compliant, meaning it handles 4-digit years with grace and style.
But then, so do all good records management systems because
records managers are accustomed to dealing with documents that are a
hundred years old (like the files on those two “subjects”) or that have
to stay in effect past the next century, such as long-term contracts.
No, the reason we’re replacing
Versatile is because a) we’ve outgrown it’s true capacity; and b)
it’s not GIL compliant. The
GIL computers, on the other hand, are guaranteed by
HP to be Y2K
compliant. So they’re OK.
But the server that holds all the files that everyone uses may
not be. So we need to check
that. And Spectrum, another
software we use in the warehouse, is already known to fail Y2K, so we’ll
replace it, one way or another, before the end of the year.
As for me, personally.
I plan to have plenty of emergency rations on hand.
Water, food, flashlights and batteries, candles, extra cash.
And lots of good books to read.
If I wake up that Saturday morning to discover that “there’s a
63% possibility of a power failure” wasn’t just a made up figure, I’ll
be prepared.
It’s not unlike being ready for the next
earthquake, except that you know exactly
when it’s going to happen.
12/31/99, 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time.
(That’s when it starts on the other side of the
International Date Line.)
We just don’t know exactly
what’s going to happen.
Keep that Earthquake
Box handy.
If you live on the
East Coast, you can call it a
Hurricane
Box.
Love, as always,
Pete
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