Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Report V2, # 35
"August 26, 1998 - 492 days to go." WRP91
(c) 1997, 1998 Cory Hamasaki - I grant permission to distribute and
reproduce this newsletter as long as this entire document is reproduced in
its entirety. You may optionally quote an individual article but you should
include this header down to the tearline. I do not grant permission to a
commercial publisher to reprint this in print media.
As seen in
USENET:comp.software.year-2000
http://www.elmbronze.demon.co.uk/year2000/
http://www.sonnet.co.uk/muse/dcwrp.html
http://www.kiyoinc.com/HHResCo.html
Don't forget, the Y2K chat-line: http://www.ntplx.net/~rgearity
any evening, 8-10PM EST.
--------------------tearline -----------------------------
Please fax or email copies of this to your geek pals, especially those
idiots who keep sending you lightbulb, blonde, or Bill Gates jokes,
and urban legends like the Arizona rocket car story.
If you have a Y2K webpage, feel free to host the Weather Reports.
Did you miss Geek Out?
Project Dumbass needs you.
In this issue:
1. Hurricane Bonnie
2. The Jo Anne Effect (again)
3. Secret Weapon
4. Get Well card
5. CCCC
--------- Hurricane Bonnie Hits North Carolina -------
Half a million people on the move... -bks- and other denial-heads block
evacuation routes, Don't fall for the hype, it's only a little wind and
water, they call out, panic monger, panic monger, they taunt.
Here's the actual reply from -bks-
On Wed, 26 Aug 1998 15:40:12, bks@netcom.com (Bradley K. Sherman) wrote:
> You've got me there, Cory! I would love to ride out a category
> three hurricane. I miss that East Coast weather. I know people
> who go climbing rocks, people who go downhill skiing, people
> who go boogie-boarding off Diamond Head, and people who go
> hang gliding, but nothing beats Mother Nature to get the
> adrenaline flowing --bring it on.
A hurricane is just like Y2K, nothing to fear, only a bunch of hype,
ride it out, it's not an infrastructure collapse, it's fun.
...and yes, 90 % of the time, it's not a problem. A little wind, some
trees fall down, a few clueless who can't swim get carried off, the weak
and elderly are culled from the herd.
but wait, I've been to Galveston, Texas, where they still talk about the
hurricane that came through about a 100 years ago, the hurricane that
killed tens of thousands of people.
...and boogie boarding off Diamond Head is for gremmies, real surfers
wait for North Shore winter storm surf and bring out the big gun
boards. Guns, surf runnin' heavy, falling down a wall of water... who's
the gremmie in Y2K.
Please people, stay in your shore front condo. Nothing to fear. It's
just more hype. No one is ever killed by the weather. What nonsense.
Professionals are working on it. Banks get it. Pull on your speedo and
run down to the surf, what fun. Trains, I'll show you a switchyard.
Don't bother preparing, and evacuating? Only a nutcase would do that.
...so, tell me... do you feel lucky today? Well, do you?
> >I'll feature a reply to the above in a future DC Y2K WRP.
> (Fine, but please correct my typo: s/adrenalin/adrenaline/)
darn, he's making work for me. OK.
> > ...
> >You're not reading the thread. The Jo Anne Effect is about sorting
> >transactions into fiscal years. It's not about what-if's and
> >projections. ...
>
> No, I was reading it (hey even Jo Anne claimed some confusion!).
Jo Anne was griping because I lapsed into a nattering of '00', '19100',
100, 100365, and so forth. Darn lucky I didn't drag in:
KL Key length nbr of bytes in R0 key
DL Data length nbr of bytes in data area
ecc Error Correction Code generated by 3333
G2 Separates Record zero data components
Key 0 to 255 bytes of data
ecc Error Correction Code generated by 3333
Which is really what's on my alleged mind these days... that and I got a
cigar catalog in the mail today.
> What I meant was that bookkeepers in the only job that I
> had in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real estate) sector
> laid out the books years in advance. The good bean
> counters are forever moving numbers around and trying
> out different possibilities --they live and breathe
> that stuff. I'm not quite getting when the Jo Anne
> effect kicks in and why? Using your date of 1 Jan 99
> as a likely time, what exactly happens then that did
> not happen in Dec 98? It can't be a past-tense
> transaction, or can it?
It has to do with systems that log thousands, millions of transactions.
Imagine a system at a survivalist nutcase supply store. Orders come in,
are processed, product is shipped. At some point each transaction is
sent to a subsystem that logs the purchase into the master set of books.
These books drive tax payments, dividends, recapitalization, all the
mumbo-jumbo of the management suite.
Consider a simple transaction, such as...
oh, purchases of barrels of nitrogen packed, hard red winter wheat.
Here comes one now...
08/26/98 $25.75 2 SKU-1056 to: gregs90210
Quick, ship the order before the geek gets surly... phew, it's on the
UPS truck. Record the transaction so we know how our business is doing.
What fiscal year is this? We're on a calendar year basis so the bounds
are 12/31/97 and 01/01/99
if (12/31/97 < 08/26/98) and (08/26/98 < 01/01/99) <---<< the mind of
then log the $25.75 as within this fiscal year. the computer
next year, the fiscal period bounds are 12/31/98 and 01/01/00
So the first transaction to come in, in January might look like this...
01/03/99 $57.50 2 SKU-1054 to: fedinfo
if (12/31/98 < 01/03/99) and (01/03/99 < 01/01/00) <---<< Duh Computer
then log the $57.50 as within this fiscal year. thinks again
The second test will fail because 99 is not less than 00. The
transaction won't be logged as current year revenue. It might fall into
the bit bucket, it might make something else go wacky. Who knows what
will happen? This is an event that's never happened before.
What's nice about these linked systems is that the act of making the
sale sends the transaction to various subsystems. What's bad is that
here and there, date checks that have been refined and perfected over
decades will fail. They won't work correctly and the consequences
are undefined.
This is the Jo Anne effect. Note the date in the example above is
January 3, 1999. This is a failure that happens a year before Y2K
This is a trivial problem but so are most of the others.
I'm guessing that there are tens of thousands of systems that do this
wrong. Some are big systems that run Fortune 50 corps and state
governments. They all can go a little wacky. Is this a big deal?
When the idiot in the corner office sees his revenues slip and he
fires your butt, I'd call it unfortunate; although it's not as bad as if
the 7-11 is out of those filled pastries... now that's a disaster!
Geeks know that the code snippits above are contrived but with a
litle poetic license are representative of the problem.
Non-geeks, read each line... if december 31st, '98 is less than
january 3rd, '99 AND january 3rd '99 is less than january 1st '00;
oops, january 3rd '99 is NOT less than january 1st '00, because 99 is
NOT less than 00. If you non-geeks have taken the time to grunt out the
computer logic, you should now understand what the geeks are doing and
why it takes so much effort to fix a problem as simple as the two digit
year.
This isn't hard to fix but it has to be done.
The solution is to write the code as:
if (12/31/1998 < 01/03/1999) and (01/03/1999 < 01/01/2000)
then log the $57.50 as within this fiscal year.
...ah, now it works, the Jo Anne Effect is solved...
Here's what's scary.
With all the yip-yap about Y2K this and Y2K that. All the chatter
from the remediation vendors trying to hype the problem and create a
sense of urgency, why haven't the vendors listed the Jo Anne Effect?
Why don't they realize that a class of failures occurs in 127 days?
It's not because this is a false effect; you've read the code...
well psuedo-code, and understand the problem. You know that accounting
systems will fail. I'm guessing that not enough people are cranking
code that factoids like this have entered the public consciousness.
127 days until the Jo Anne Effect, anyone worried?
> You do not have to respond if this seems particularly
> dense. I freely admit that bookkeeping is not my strong
> suit (if it was, I'd be retired and living on the mountain
> overlooking Paul's propery).
nah, it's not dense; heck, de Jager, Yardeni, Yourdon, all the other big
brains missed it. Even the self-styled big brains like Jerry
Pontificate has no idea of what Jo Anne discovered here in c.s.y2k.
...and you know Pontificate, if he stumbled upon it, he'd be crowing
like a rooster about the Pournelle Effect and demanding time on national
TV to report his startling discovery.
--------- Secret Weapon at Pentagon -------
For months I've seen a top secret device on display near my office.
What is it? A particle beam death ray weapon, a communications device,
this week, the Washington Post broke the shocking story.
--------- Begin Virtual Xerox -------------
Monday, August 24, 1998; Page D05
Pentagon's Solar Panels Attract Attention
by Alice Reid
As demolition crews and other workers proceed with a $1.1 billion
renovation of the Pentagon, a 50-foot-tall structure has been plunked
down at the edge of one of the building's parking lots.
Because the Pentagon makeover is so far-reaching and affects so
many of the people who work there, the Army Corps of Engineers,
which is overseeing the project, has created a Web site
(www.dtic.mil/pentagon_renovation).
Although the contraption in the parking lot isn't, strictly speaking, part
of the renovation, it has drawn the most questions to the Web site.
The usual question: "Is it a new weapon?"
Nothing so exotic, say Pentagon officials and the Department of
Energy, which is responsible for what is actually a solar collector, built
with federal and private funds. It uses mirrors to focus sunlight into an
engine that generates electricity.
On a good -- meaning bright -- day, it can generate 22 kilowatt-hours,
which then help power the Pentagon.
The Pentagon's South Parking Lot was chosen as a showcase site for a
couple of reasons. First, there's no shade.
And second, "It's adjacent to the highway," said Gary Burch, who
heads up solar energy research programs at the Department of
Energy, "and can be viewed by a maximum number of commuters."
Energy Department scientists hope that having the solar device in
such a prominent place will spur curiosity from the public about a
promising technology as well as support from lawmakers across the
river.
The machine, which was erected in April, is due to leave the parking
lot in October and head to Arizona, where scientists say there's
enough sunlight to make it generate twice as much electricity as in the
Washington area.
Meanwhile, the 14-year renovation, begun four years ago, is still in its
infancy. Demolition is almost finished in the first fifth of the five-sided
building. Known as Wedge I and emptied of personnel over the last
year, the area is awaiting approval of interior plans, according to Tom
Fontana, spokesman for the Army Corps Pentagon Restoration project.
¸ Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
--------- End Virtual Xerox ------------
Shades of Francis "Solar Still" Ney, this monster is enormous and bangs
out a whopping 22 KWH; Oops that's only 2.2 KWH/H or about 20 amps at
115VAC, a little more than you can pull out of a single 115 VAC outlet.
I've eye-balled it from the highway and it looks expensive, like
something that would fold out of the space shuttle's bay. Let's see, if
I get Greg, Frank, and a couple others, what's the chance of us hauling
this bad boy out Route 7 to a certain survivalist nut-case's farm.
<to the humor impaired out there, this is not a conspiracy to commit
grand larceny, this is a joke.>
Still, 22 KWH isn't bad, beats the 50-100 watts that my solar panel will
produce.
----------- c.s.y2k regular, get well soon --------
C.s.y2k regular Jack R. Voltz, aka Pirate Pete, aka the Christian
Privateer has had a problem with his eyesight and it took a turn for
the worse this week, friends can send him E-mail: voltz@ovnet.com
One of the geeks on my deathwatch went blind due to diabetes, it was
shocking to see someone gradually lose their sight over a couple years.
----------- CCCC ----------------
I had lunch with an old geek today, it was great... I had roast chicken,
boiled potatoes, and greens... the old fogger worked on the one billion
dollar system along with Shmuel. I asked him how things were going with
his client... He said that the Y2K work had stalled because the
management didn't understand the issues and he expected the work to hit
in the last 3 months of 1999.
B-bu-but, there's 5 to 10 years of work to do...
I know, the old geek shrugged, but you can't tell them that.
Another one who knows, the systems will fail. They can't be fixed.
What are we going to do? Even now, with 492 days to go, there are still
people in serious denial, with elaborate fantasies about fix on failure,
manual bypasses, creating solutions out of pixie dust and wishes.
I know what I would do if I were a Fortune 5,000. It would be hard but
I would build a solution that would ensure the survival of the
enterprise.
I've started getting requests for subscription copies of the DC
Y2K WRPs. Is this worth considering? I really don't want to take up
any more projects.
We've got too much do, we need to link up into groups, share the
burden with our life partners and support circle. Come on, everyone,
put down your AR-15 (preban, iron sights, 30 rnd mags taped
'jungle-style') join hands and ... no, a group hug, everyone hug,
peo-ple... who need peo-ple... are the HAaa-pi-est peo-ple in the
woooorllld. Wipe your tears away...
It will be tough but we have each other and we can draw strength from
the commitment and resolve that we each have. ...and maybe set aside a
little more to be able to help others.
cory hamasaki 492 days, 127 days until the Jo Anne Effect.