Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Report V2, # 38
          "September 22, 1998 -  465 days to go."  WRP94
                        Final                      $2.50 Cover Price.
    (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://GONOW.TO/Y2KFACTS
   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.   Getting Ready
2.   Y2K Wise
3.   NOVA Y2K
4.   Public Power Meeting
5.   Bug Out Bag 2
6.   Rexx
7.   CCCC


Enterprise--- Getting Ready ---------------

You will not have access to your hotsite.  That is predicated on a
statistical model that assumes that only one or two members will declare
a disaster at any moment in time.  The Y2K disasters will occur in
parallel.

In addition to the failures of the infrastucture (comm, power,
transportation), geek bailouts and trading partner failures put your
enterprise and your bottom line at risk.  You can't anticipate and solve
all these problems.

There are things that you can and should do.

For batch and primarily batch centric systems, here is the check list:

Power: UPS, backup power, fuel for backup power, power outage drills

Consumables: Increase your inventory of paper, toner, tapes, forms, etc.

Staffing: Alert your operations staff for overtime and double shift
duty.  Cots, food, blankets, lockers for a change of clothing, showers,

One client has a war-room next to their data center.  They call it the
operations conference room but it's really a war-room.  There is a
glassed in meeting room that overlooks a bay of workpositions. Each
position has a computer, phone, office supplies, manuals. It's there, if
they need it.

Capital: Cash, company credit cards, company checks, credit lines with
suppliers, be prepared to operate when (not if) your bank fails.

Applications programming: manuals, source listings, a rock solid test
bed (more on this later), programmer teams led by superprogrammers or
with access to superprogrammers.  Required reading, Lance Hoffman's
"Rogue Programs", the section on recovering from the Internet Worm.

Lock down: Is your data center physically secure?  Have you taken down
the signs and corporate identity and left up just the address.  Is your
building security force armed?  One client's security force dresses in
business attire, coats and ties with breast pocket ID badges, but with
small portable radios and unobtrusive weapons.  Inside their facility,
the security force has access to assault rifles and riot gear.

Bailouts: Do you have a remote operations site?  Not a shared hotsite
that the other 20 members will be bidding for but your own dedicated
recovery site.  The cost of hardware has fallen to the point that you
can build and equip a small datacenter based on:

  30+ MIPS FSI Flex
  60+ MIPS IBM Warthog (3000-A10/A20)
 100+ MIPS IBM Multiprise

If you pare down your batch streams, identify the absolutely mission
critical applications, you may be able to run your Fortune 500 jobs on a
surprisingly small system.  One warning, be sure you understand your
multiprogramming mix and the pathlength issues before you select your
hardware.

This is not your hotsite in the traditional sense, this is your masada, 
the last bastion, the job of this machine is to save the core of your 
enterprise.

Staff Retention: Bonus plan, incentives, equity sharing, identifying and
keeping critical personnel.  In 1997 some organizations paid separation
and early retirement bonuses to people and 9 months later were
offering signing bonuses to the same people.

This is no longer a software engineering exercise, that was then, this
is now. IT must prepare for war.  You prepare for war by building up
supplies, training, and designing and building weapons in advance of the
conflict.

If you wish to put your enterprise on a path to survival, drop me an
email. I'll put you in touch with the right people.  I am working with
personnel/HR firms, physical and computer security consultants, and Y2K
enterprise survival consultants.

Community------ Y2K Wise -----------

Conference: The Social & Economic Implications of the Year 2000 Computer
Crisis.
Speaker: Jim Lord, author of "A Survival Guide for the Year 2000
Problem."
Date: September 25, 1998. 6:30 pm to 9 pm
Location: Pascal Center, Anne Arundel Community College, 101 College
Parkway, Arnold.
Fee: $3  Call: (410) 757-0821

Quote from one of the members, "I started educating myself in May when
corporate America and the government authorities were confidently saying
they could complete Y2K plans on time.  Now it's September and they're
talking about just taking care of the (nation's) critical components and
I think it's time for contingency plans."

Wait a minute, Al "techno" Gore said that the Feds would be done March
1999. The FAA said they were on schedule for September 1998... Oops,
that was before the DOT's Inspector General caught them streeeetching
the truth.

Community------ NOVA Y2K -----------

Meeting: Intro to Y2K
Date: September 23, 1998. 7:00 pm
Location: E.C. Burke Library, 4701 Seminary Road, Alexandria, VA
Sponsor: NOVA Y2K
http://www.novay2k.org

Infrastructure--- Power ------------

Seminar: Y2K and the Power Grid
Speakers: Dennis Grabow, Millenium Investments
          Jon Arnold, CTO, Edison Electric Institute
          Ken Cohn, IT/Y2K, Potomac Electric Company
Moderator: Robert McLane, The Washington Post Company
Discussant: Stuart Umbleby, Professor, the George Washington University
Date: October 1, 1998. 6pm-9pm
Location: The Community Room, 9th Floor, 1150 15th St NW, Washington, DC
RSVP to "Wafa Abou-Zaki" <74563.1454@compuserve.com>
Include: Name, email, phone #.

Personal -------- LDS Bug Out Bag 2 --------

An email came in from an LDS member asking that I clarify that the LDS
72 hour kits are not formally called Bug Out Bags.  I either saw that
name on misc.survivalist.nut-case or made it up in one of my fitful
halucinations, it's not a LDS term.  He recommended that everyone check
out http://www.mormon.org

He said that his family uses sturdy plastic cannisters because they can
be used for seats if you're hold up in a community shelter and for
carrying liquids.  Things you can't do with a soft pack.

I was at the Giant Grocery today, they had 6 oz packs of Sun Maid Fruit
Bits on sale for $1.49.  The good-until date is 18 Feb 2000.

Sun Maid Fruit Bits - 6 oz, 480 Calories, raisins, apples, apricots
and peaches, essentially carbohydates (sugar) and dietary fiber.  If I
were feeding a bunch of people, I'd cook up some oatmeal, toss a pack
in, spoon on some honey.

I got 3 packs to try and if these work out, I'll rotate through a few
dozen of these.

Last week, we discussed this on the Y2K Chat.  Buy 3 packs of fruit
bits this week, try one out.... I'm eating some as I type... "it tastes
good."  Toss two packs in my Bug Out Bag.  Next time these are on sale,
I'll buy 6 packs, replace the two in the Bug Out Bag, put two in
long term storage and have four to eat.

When these go on sale again, I'll buy another 6 packs, take the oldest
four out of storage, rotate 6 in, and so on, gradually building up
inventories, keeping the expiration dates current.

I also got 2 boxes of pasta, 50 cents off, more 'Bee brand Albacore,
$1.33 instead of $1.60 a can, a gallon of distilled water, a box of
Graham crackers... gradually, an extra $5.00 or $10.00 a week, rotating
food into and out of inventory. I had an extra $20 for canned soups but
the sale ended.  So what, it'll go on sale again or I'll get a couple
jars of honey, more peanut butter, a couple bottles of cooking oil.

I'll get the 20 lbs of rice out of my car, the price was $8.99, up a
buck from a few months ago.  No problem that's still enough for two
adults for a month and maybe next month, I'll get it on sale.

...and if I don't need the food because Y2K is a fizzz. So what, I like
tuna, rice, crackers, not as much as u-na-gi su-shi but this is prime
Albacore for $1.33/can.

The Bug Out Bag is the first order, long term food is next.  I'm aiming
for full rations for 6 months by this winter.  I won't get there on the
$5.00/week plan.  I will make a couple bulk purchases and have an offer
of a couple hundred pounds of grains, hard red winter wheat, dried beans
and such.   Half of that will go into the basement and half will be
cached at DragonRanch.  Then the serious hoarding begins.

Check out Jim Abel's Webpage, http://www.glitchproof.com  I'm looking at
his 6 gallon containers, I heard from paul "I'm burying food" milne that
jim's got quality stuff, gasketed covers, oxygen absorbers.

Heard this tip from paul milne: put a mix into each container, 10 lbs of
rice, 5 lbs lentils, 5 lbs wheat, 5 lbs pinto beans, 10 lbs pasta.  It's
even better if you buy separate bags.  Toss in a couple pieces of dry 
ice or a use a nitrogen cylinder to drive off the air (oxygen and
moisture are the enemy) Once you have an inert atmosphere, carbon
dioxide or dry nitrogen, seal the cover and you're good to go.  Having a
mix lets you crack one container at a time.

There may be a few insects and insect eggs in some of the food.  The
carbon dioxide or dry nitrogen will keep them from florishing.  It will 
also retard spoilage.

Currently in the queue:

8 lbs sugar
10 lbs wheat
37 lbs rice
3 lbs pasta
8 cans 'Bee tuna
2 small bags of dried fruit (and another lb, home dried)
4 lbs coffee
2 lbs honey
2 lbs orange marmalade (refrigerate after opening)
1 lb graham crackers
4 gallons distilled water

There's no pattern to the above, I'm buying what's on sale.

Darn, gotta remember the triple antibiotic cream, toothpaste... and
for those with a "private itch", fungicide ointment.

Enterprise ----- Rexx ---------------

Rexx will save you.  Every IBM operating system comes with Rexx as the
scripting language.  Rexx is the Basic of the non-Microsoft world, the
DCL of the non-VMS world, the Perl of the non-Un*x world.  Oh, and Rexx
is on Microsoft and Un*x too.

Rexx is an interpreted language but IBM has Rexx compilers.  I run it
interpreted, I've found situations where the interpretor is faster than
the compiler.  Oh well.

Rexx has clauses, not instructions or statements.  Rexx is essentially
typeless.  Variables contain strings.  If the string contains only
numeric data, you can perform math on it.  The oddest thing about rexx
is that it seems loose.  For example

   say "heyman"
   say 'heyman'
   say heyman

all produce the same thing.  Well, close; the last line produces HEYMAN 
because variables as initialized to themselves.

----------------- CCCC -------------

Personal, Enterprise... the edges blur for me.  I met R Adams Cowley, 
was his guest for dinner in Little Italy, I did some pro bono work for
MIEMSS once in a past life. Do you know the name?  Do you watch Trauma
Center or ER.  R A., his first name is just the letter R, there's no
period after it, invented trauma medicine.

All trauma centers owe their heritage to R Adams Cowley's MIEMSS
in Baltimore Maryland.  One of R A.'s disciples was responsible for 
Chicago's Trauma Center.

R A. was a military surgeon (he's an LDS, by the way.) who took the 
battle to save lives to the Baltimore inner city.  He discovered the 
"Golden Hour", if an accident victim receives aggressive, surgical
intervention within one hour of the event, they live; if they don't, 
they die.  It's that simple.

The reason....  Shock-Trauma.  Trauma is a severe injury, your leg is
ripped off, your abdomen is crushed by a trash compactor.

Shock is your body's response.  Your body responds to trauma by lowering
blood pressure and redirecting the available blood away from the
bleeding extremities, preserving the blood flow to keep your brain 
alive.

Shock is a good thing in the short term. Your body is reserving its 
most critical resource, blood, for its most important organ, your 
brain.

After an hour, something horrible happens.  With the reduced blood
pressure, your body is unable to perfuse oxygenated blood into your
tissues, organs, and your body begins to die.  ...and it is 
irreversable. Once the dying begins, it cannot be stopped, you cannot 
fix it, the collapse of the system is preprogrammed.

It might take a few days, it might take a week but death cannot be 
prevented.  This is how a system fails.

Sometimes the problem is a failure of a critical internal organ, it 
dies, your blood chemistry goes to hell, and the failures cascade.  

Sometimes it's necrosis, gas gangrene, a raging bacterial infection, 
again the barbarians are at the gates and the failures cascade.

Aggressive surgical intervention fixes the trauma, transfusions
raise the blood pressure but this must occur within an hour.  It's not 
enough to start the transfusions, D5W is not blood.  In severe trauma,
blood bleeds out faster than you can pour it in.  So fast, that the 
surgical staff has blood burns, that blood runs in rivers across the 
floor.

The question before us is how much trauma will Y2K give our 
technological civilization?  How much shock will we experience? How
long is the Y2K "Golden Hour"?  Will we provide aggressive surgical
intervention or will the government and the corporations continue the 
irresponsible denial?

Once the dying starts, it's irreversable.

----------------- coming soon ---------------

The paper on water and infections I alluded to earlier... I'm calling in
a chit with R A.'s infectious disease expert. They've promised to write 
a piece.  I've also asked other experts to write original articles for
the WRPs. 

cory hamasaki  465 days, 11,165 hours. 100 days until January 1, 1999.