I sure hope this formatted right. the last one became one big paragraph: My favorite line from this interview is where she answers the question of what would have happened if NOTHING had been done. "Q: If no one had done anything about Y2K in computers and they all had the maximum of trouble, how serious would that have been? A: Again, it would be the panic over failure more than failure itself that would be the biggest concern." http://www.chicago.tribune.com/tech/news/ws/item/0,1308,9693-25085-37272,00.html ====================== City Y2K guru plans for boring Jan. 1 By Jon Van Tribune Staff Writer November 4, 1999 When New Year's Eve rolls around this year, Elizabeth Boatman will be joining lots of Chicago's movers and shakers by spending the early hours of 2000 -- and probably days thereafter -- watching for computer problems at work. As chief information officer of the City of Chicago, Boatman has concerns that extend well beyond whether the municipal payroll program still works or if the city's computer system can access the Web. Her concerns embrace nothing less than the safety and comfort of the entire community. She expects it will be a rather boring several days which will bring nothing catastrophic, nor even anything dramatic. Over a lunch of iced tea and steak salad at the new Burnham Hotel's Atwood Cafe Boatman discussed her conviction that people have far more to fear from hyperbole over Year 2000 computer bugs than they have over any actual malfunction caused by a computer chip's inability to distinguish whether the year is 2000 or 1900. An edited transcript follows: Q: So after working for three years to make the city's computer systems Y2K compliant, are you expecting a quiet New Year's weekend, at least from a computer perspective? A: Not just the city, but we've met with a lot of companies in Chicago, with railroads, utilities and the grocery stores--anyone we could think of that might affect the well-being of the residents of Chicago--and just about every company I've looked at has had a program in place for about three or four years. They've worked hard on it, made a lot of progress and usually when I talk to these folks they're cleaning up odds and ends. These are things not critical to their business they're working on at this point. So from what I can see, our biggest concern right now is the panic piece. Somebody runs into a power pole, knocks it down, the lights go out and everyone panics that a computer failure has knocked out the power grid. Q: So while there may be some computer glitches, you don't expect anything major to occur as a result? A: Yes. We've had some pretty good event horizons, things that break before 2000. It's generally in software on things like you have a license and it expires on such and such a date in the future. We checked for all of those, and we missed a few because it's kind of an art. So we missed a couple and they showed up early in the year. On average it took us two working days to fix them. So in general we're feeling pretty confident that if we did miss something, it isn't all that hard to nail down. Q: Even if a computer does think it's the wrong date, that might lead to a problem in billing, but it wouldn't necessarily cause it to shut off an electric generator or do something else drastic, would it? A: That's very true. We found there are very few computer-run business processes that spit something out at the end, other than a report. Commonwealth Edison found the same thing. What they found was they don't have computers that control the flow of electricity. What they have are computers that look for events and write them down. It's the same with the water system. Q: So a noncompliant computer might write a faulty report, saying that something happened in 1900 instead of 2000, but that's not mission critical. Do any of these bugs shut things down? A: We found a couple that did. For instance, we had this chip at O'Hare that would shut off the public address system if it hadn't been replaced. Then what you care about is if you need to evacuate a building. But there are other ways to get that done. Policemen telling them, people in ticket windows, so losing the PA system wouldn't be catastrophic. One thing we found, along with Commonwealth Edison, was that some of the things that failed were features that people weren't using. Q: If no one had done anything about Y2K in computers and they all had the maximum of trouble, how serious would that have been? A: Again, it would be the panic over failure more than failure itself that would be the biggest concern. Of course, if no one had done anything, then when they went to fix these things, they wouldn't know where to start. We saw in one of our tests that we were getting wrong answers from our computer and we didn't know we were getting wrong answers. Now that's a failure that could lead to not providing a service. We might have not been doing regular inspections of buildings. Is that a health and safety issues immediately? No, but eventually it is one. Q: So even the worst-case Y2K problems would be fairly low key? A: Not widespread chaos so much as just confusion. Q: As happens regularly when computers go down for whatever reason. A: Right, and that's what we get frustrated about. People don't really know precisely what would happen when Y2K bugs go unfixed because when we looked into it, we looked for a place where you had two digit dates and then set about to fix it. We didn't run the function to see what would happen if it went unfixed. What we'll be doing after the first of the year is that if we missed something, we'll know what the result was. We did some testing, like in the case of chips in bridge houses that are involved with raising and lowering the bridges. The vendor said they were compliant, but we wanted to be sure, so we tested them and they worked. They raised and lowered the bridges. So we don't know what would've happened if they weren't compliant. Q: For all you know, even with faulty chips, the bridge would still raise and lower? A: That's it. But we do have a manual override to them, so one way or another the bridges would work. And that's what we found with the water system. We have a manual override for everything that goes on out there. Think about how long ago that filtration plant was built. It required upgrades to put computer chips in it. Q: People tend to overestimate how much computers run these basic services like water and electricity? A: Very much so. The main issue even in computerized operations is have we forgotten how to do it ourselves? Like people haven't forgotten how to write payroll checks. But if the computer system failed, you'd probably have to call in everybody and his brother to get the checks all written. Q: Have there been some benefits to going through this exorcism of Y2K problems? A: In some ways we're now better equipped to handle emergencies. Before our emergency plans tended to assume our computers were working. Now we've made plans for what we'll do if they don't. We've got extra fuel on hand in case our suppliers can't deliver. We've got a back-up power supply for every water pumping station. We never had back-up power supplies, so we could lose power in a storm, and we lost the pumping station. So my feeling is that now we're safer than ever. ===================

XXX

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), November 04, 1999

Answers

what the heck?

sorry about the formatting, I've been relying on the auto-scrub program called TEXTSOAP and I'm getting complacent.

I don't get it, what happened to all my carriage returns and line breaks?

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), November 04, 1999.

To make sure line breaks appear you can load the text into Word and replace every special character ^p (More>Special>Paragraph Mark) with two special character ^p

-- a (a@a.a), November 04, 1999.

http://www.chicago.tribune.com/tech/news/ws/item/0,1 308,9693-25085-37272,00.html

-- Jim (x@x.x), November 04, 1999.

thanks "a"

I don't use WORD or any other Microsoft products.

I'll have to insert the html "p" paragraph thingie manually from now on.

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), November 04, 1999.

Rats !!!

-- Charles R. (chuck_roast@trans.net), November 04, 1999.

Nice formatting! :)

-- scooby doo (scooby@doo.com), November 04, 1999.