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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (8342)	8/24/1999 12:17:00 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

CK, I think I mentioned the 4 hour shutdown issue when this article first appeared back in April. Btw, the article was one of the reasons that I began to get a sense that the refinery industry may not see Y2K be a show stopper. As far as being able to bill customers, that seems a fairly easy issue to deal with. They pump product from one tank through the system into tanker trucks or via pipeline to another storage tank. It is fairly common to "dip" the tanks on a daily basis to see how much product you have left. As for filling tanker trucks, that's pretty simple as well. Since these trucks have a limited capacity, they can either fill them up, or use their "dipstick" to determine the quantities. Regards, Ron

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (8342)	8/24/1999 1:32:00 AM
From: RFH	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Hi Cheryl and all. I received an advertisement in the mail today, which is basically a doom and gloom newsletter by a Dr. North. It is entitled, "The Silence of the Trains," and deals with Y2K scenarios. Anyway, in his list of "essentials," he recommends one pound of ascorbic acid crystals for each adult. Can anyone think of a reason to have this on hand other than the need to keep from getting a cold? Sincerely, RFH

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (8342)	8/24/1999 10:55:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Cheryl-- You wrote: >>>Texaco's been working on this for a looooong time. Started sooner than most oil companies. So, I imagine they're pretty far along on remediation. Just hope they catch everything. There sure are a lot of devices to check.<<< What fascinated me about the article upon first read was that here(/there) it was April '99, I knew Texaco had started early and they were still having problems after having remediated through replacement the RTU and SCADA system they were testing. >>>Texaco has hundreds of RTUs like this one out in the field. Fixing the devices involves going out to each unit, changing the chips inside it, and installing new software - about an hour's work per unit. The first round of replacement chips the RTU vendor sent them didn't work; they had to wait for another. Then the Scada system needed upgrading. And that was just for this one device.<<< (I assumed the last sentence applied to the system that was being tested at the time based on use of the past tense.) A year earlier in April '98 World Oil Report had stated that the industry "can expect to remediate less than 30 percent of the overall potential failure points in the production environment"...which did/does not mean the 70 percent of the oil-related systems around the world will fail, only that the industry will be able to address 30 percent of the total possible problems. I thought the World Oil report pessimistic at the time, but in light of the Wired/Texaco article perhaps not. >>>Jay Abshier was one of the first to come public in early 97, with actual embedded systems and process control problems encountered in oil industry. His office was 3 miles from my home in Houston.<<< Were you ever able to meet and talk with him?