Prepared, prudent and paranoid for Y2K

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This guy contradicts himself paragraph by paragraph. And he's director of Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication. Scary...

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Prepared, prudent and paranoid for Y2K

CHRISTOPHER DORNAN

Thursday, December 2, 1999

So, with less than a month to go, is everyone all ready for what might or might not happen at the stroke of midnight, Dec. 31?

Got the tux pressed and the champagne on order? Sufficient supplies of potable water and tinned food stashed away in the basement? A manual can opener or two? Jerry cans of gasoline? Fresh car batteries? A couple of cords of dry wood? A small valise full of gold Krugerrands (sure to instantly explode in value if and when the global banking system collapses)? A high-powered rifle?

Nah, me neither. I plan to do my millennial shopping, like my Christmas buying, at the last minute. I'm on a footing for looting. My Y2K preparedness plan -- such as it is -- is to tune in early on New Year's Eve. If the CNN coverage from Christchurch and Sydney suddenly goes dead at the stroke of midnight down under -- that would be 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. respectively where I live in Ottawa -- and if electronic darkness starts advancing toward us with each passing time zone, I will be paying urgent visits to my local supermarket and hardware stores.

I don't actually expect that to happen. Glitches here and there, yes, but not system-wide failure, surely. On the other hand, the urban rumours get to you after a while.

I know a guy who knows a guy who supposedly works in computers for Citibank in Atlanta. If you have any sizable assets that exist purely in the memory of your bank's computer, I'm told, you might want to think about converting them into something more liquid. Not all at once, mind you. We don't want to trigger a run on the banks.

This doesn't apply to me. I have no wealth. I have debts instead, which the banks are welcome to eat if their memories get wiped clean.

The fact that there are no forces on earth that could make the banks forget about my debts reassures me that the Y2K problem is well in hand. I just wish I had the same confidence in other essential services.

Forgive my nervous twitch, but I lived through the ice storm of January, 1998. My major concern about the millennium bug is the possibility of extended power outages. No ABMs, no supermarket cash registers, no central heating. The Canada of January, 2000, could be a cold, cold place indeed.

Think it can't happen? The North American hydroelectric grid is only as reliable as its member contributors. Who knows if Uncle Joe Bob's Utility Corp. down there in Arkansas spent the time and money to become Y2K resilient?

The chances of a Big Blackout may be remote, but -- fess up -- it's crossed your mind, hasn't it? We're all suddenly in the risk-assessment business. Buying a generator seems a little extreme -- and how the heck would you hook it up anyway, especially if you live on the 10th floor of an apartment building?

But we wouldn't want to be too cavalier. If the power goes out, we're going to feel pretty stupid if we don't at least have candles on hand. So how paranoid is prudent?

We're a nation of Boy Scouts, as we continually remind ourselves, and the motto of the Boy Scouts is "be prepared." Personally, I'd like to see the last few months of credit-card transactions (not to mention the E-mail traffic) of people such as the president of Toronto-Dominion Bank, the clerk of the Privy Council, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the chief inspector of the RCMP. If they know something we don't -- if they've been buying up jumbo supplies of propane, insulin and non-perishables -- I'd start filling sandbags and finding religion.

Failing a clear signal from those who might have inside information, the judicious strategy is simply to behave like a true Canadian and stockpile supplies for what might be a particularly nasty winter. That way one need not be embarrassed by overreacting. Maybe not this year, but one of these days the purchase of that battery-free, dynamo-operated, hand-pumped flashlight is going to pay off.

Scoff if you will, but I hear from parents of school-age children that the kids are genuinely unsettled about the Y2K bug. They tell one another late-night scare stories at sleepovers about what might happen on Jan. 1.

Hey, if your entire world revolved around Web sites and Nintendo, the prospect of global computer failure would give you the heebie-jeebies too. Poor little tykes, forced to confront the loss of all that they hold dear. Still, anything that keeps their minds off Pokemon can't be all bad.

I don't mean to be vindictive, but if things really go awry shouldn't we be hunting down the person responsible? In the history of computer programming, there has to be a Prime Moron, a Cretin Zero -- the guy who first decided those two extra digits were superfluous. No doubt he never imagined computers would come to rule the world, but it still has to go down as the dumbest technical decision of the 20th century.

Nothing truly untoward will happen -- I'm pretty sure of that -- but the entire episode has prompted a mental dress rehearsal for what might go wrong. Since our dependence on computers is now so painfully obvious, can we withstand a serious short-circuit in the system?

How should I know? Ask someone who's keeping an eye on the purchase patterns of the Supreme Court justices. Christopher Dornan is the director of Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication. His E-mail address is chris--dornan@carleton.ca.



-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 03, 1999

Answers

Sounds like he's stuck in a conundrum! But his faith in banks?

"The fact that there are no forces on earth that could make the banks forget about my debts reassures me that the Y2K problem is well in hand."???

However he may be right about, "no forces on earth".

-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), December 03, 1999.


Order words random of meaningless just collection it's a.

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), December 03, 1999.

I get a different take on it. This man is on the edge of panic, you can see the hysteria creeping in arund the edges. He sees the specter of the possibilities clearly but can't commit because of his fear of ridicule. He is literally crying out for some governemnt leadership and truthfulness to give him the go ahead.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 03, 1999.

and this guy teaches journalism?????? Something tells me that he's never spent much time at the US General Accounting Office Y2K website.

Forget the chemtrails and the other conspiracy theories, there's enough truly scary information at this site alone to warrant mass preparation.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), December 03, 1999.


I can't believe he specifically mentioned Citibank and it didn't get edited out!!! Woah, can you say lawsuit?

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 03, 1999.


Mara, it shocked me too that Citibank was named. Guess the editor is on vacation...

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 03, 1999.


At least most pollies have a point of view! This guy is a basket case...

-- (omegaman@mindmade.up), December 03, 1999.

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