BEST ON Y2K: 'DC Y2K Weather Report (Egan, Food, Hawaii, CCCC) '
Those of you in Boston, did ya catch the Y2K article in the Globe, it's
about Fast Eddie Yardeni, very nicely done but it misses an important
point. Yardeni is one of us code-heads. He used to program in S/370
assembly language (true fact, he confirmed that at our secret meeting
a few months ago.) Yardeni has coded down to the bare metal on IBM
mainframes. That's why he's concerned about Y2K, he knows.
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Author:
cory hamasaki
Email:
kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net
Date:
1998/11/25
Forums:
comp.software.year-2000
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Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Report V2, # 46
"November 25, 1998 - 401 days to go." WRP102
Draft $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 or provide a link to the
header. I do not grant permission to a commercial publisher to reprint
this in print media.
--------------------tearline -----------------------------
In this issue:
1. Egan on the Fortune 500
2. Food Coop
3. Food Canning
4. Hawaii
5. CCCC
Preface -- How Bad --
I asked Bob Egan for permission to rerun his Fortune 500 analysis in WRP
102. This is an excellent technical analysis but I am saddened by it.
It confirms my fears. The Fortune 500 is on a path to failure. What
SHMUEL and Infomagic have expressed from their experience as enterprise
systems experts, Egan and his team have derived from a compilation and
an analysis of the 10Q filings to the SEC.
Enterprise -- Analysis --
From: comp.software.year-2000
Fortune 500 Report
by
Robert Egan
Introduction
============
I'd like to first thank the volunteers who helped me collect this
information, Cullen McHough and Jeffrey Bane. I'd love to get more
volunteers to analyze additional information in these filings, so if you
have the time, send me an e-mail and I'll sign you up. The hardest part
has already been done.
--- The text of the Fortune 500 Report is omitted from the Usenet
version of the WRP ---
Commentary -- Cluelessness --
Some in c.s.y2k considered Bob Egan to be in the Pollyanna camp while
others claim that I am in the Y2K hype business.
(I learned a long time ago to ignore troublemakers, bullies, and those
who think the world orbits around them. Sometimes you have to whack a
bully, but do it so fast and so hard that he doesn't have time to
react. Mostly, just ignore them.)
There are a couple problems with the list and the analysis. I don't
have any evidence, it's just a gut feel (and you all know my gut). The
where-are-they-now, list includes lots of insurance companies. My
guess is that as an industry, insurance is ahead of everyone else, that
includes banks, aerospace, government, electronics, manufacturing,
chemicals.
Insurance is special. Insurance is the one business that is about risk,
long term planning, and doing tomorrow's work today.
Some concrete items - State Farm is known to be ahead of the game but
they're on the list. United Services is way ahead of the pack and
they're on the list. United Services built the original Time Machine in
San Antonio Texas.
This doesn't invalidate Bob's work; the work is good. The problem is
the full story is still not known.
Local -- Food Coop --
From: Yyyy
Subject: Y2K at XXXXXX Food Coop
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 05:11:09 -0500 (EST)
Cory,
I'm a card-carrying member of XXXXXX Food Coop, and someone put a query
about "supporting their community for y2k" in their question/suggestion
box. The response was (paraphrased) "we're thinking of doing a test late
this year. If this isn't what you meant, talk with Larry." I talked with
the head staffer on duty (who wasn't Larry), and I mentioned that lots of
people were predicting severe distribution problems and were stocking up
now. And her response was "and lots of people aren't." The information
on y2k does not consistently reflect what (I think) the probable magnitude
of the problem will be, or at least she said it "wasn't consistent enough
for us to do anything."
The only problem with this is that Koskinen (and others like him) won't
admit defeat until October 1999 at least, and then it will be too late
to do anything.
Grrrr. And DeJager says we get what we deserve in the way of leadership.
It is tremendously hard to break through and get the general public, which
isn't already clued in to y2k, to realize that THERE MIGHT BE A PROBLEM
and that much of government and industry is lying through their teeth.
There. Just wanted to say that.
-Yyyy
---- end email --------
I'm talking to two members of local food coops.... yes, they tend to be
tree huggers and WoooOOOOooooo, slightly on the too-mellow-for-me side
but they are on to something. These food coops are in the business of
supplying their members with good affordable food, close to the base of
the food chain. I got hard red winter wheat at one place for my bread
experiments.
Y2K'ers, check into the local food coops, badger them.
Years ago, just after the gas crisis, I thought about buying a gas
station. Here's the deal. I'd find a couple dozen wealthy types,
dentists, striptease artists, whatever. Get each to pony up five grand,
five grand is not a big deal to some people.
For that money, they are owners, silent partners in the gas station.
They get a dime off the price of gas, a 20% discount on repairs, and if
they need a tow or loaner car, hey, they're an owner, here're the keys
to the station's Biscayne beater. The coffee is always hot for them.
When we service their car, we pick it up, fill the tank (a dime off),
wash it, and return it to their garage and park it face out, with 6
quarters in their coin bin.
The pay off is when the gas crisis hits. Then we close the station and
it's owners only. Anyone getting interested in your local food coop?
Preparedness -- Food Canning --
On Wed, 11 Nov 1998 22:56:57, "Dave Howard" <dhoward@chromedata.com>
wrote in c.s.y2k:
> I don't know about nationwide, but Portland OR has closed to non-church
> members. We got in just before they put this restriction on. They told us
> that they normally restocked their warehouse with about 1 truck per month.
> Lately, they have been up to 2-3 truckloads per week.
This is getting strange. While it still looks normal out there, these
reports are clearly the signs of the herd snortin' and pawing the
ground... what's that? the sheeple bleat, "I don't know what it is
but I'm afraid."
I drive around here (Dee Cee) with a couple cans of food and some water
in my trunk in the winter. Some pals noticed it a few years ago; since
geeks have memories like elephants, every fall, they ask about the cans
of food in my car and have a good laugh at my expense...
..even though I know 3 people who have been trapped overnight in Dee
Cee area traffic. One was caught by a Woodrow Wilson Bridge accident
about 1986.
Another was driving back from Baltimore and was caught by a sudden
snowstorm, this was 1988 or so, fortunately for his blind, diabetic
wife, they had some snacks with them.
The third was driving from Arlington to Pittsburg, he got as far as
Rockville, and was stuck on I270 for 12 hours, a truck had turned over.
Finally he gave up. He was on I270 for longer than it takes to drive to
Pittsburg.
So I keep a can of Dinty Moore, a couple granola bars, and a two
liter bottle half filled with tap water in my car.
Considering the way things break down when everything is working, I'm
glad that I have 4 months of food cached now.
> A local grocery store had a big canned food sale. Stocks were wiped out in
> the first couple of days. They re-stocked and the next day they were almost
> all gone again. I highly recommend that if you are considering buying food
> to do it now!!! Don't wait until it's too late.
If that happened around here and the TV news picked up on it, it would
take 6 months before things quieted down. The problem isn't you guys
calmly tossing a couple extra cans of hash or soup in the ole basket,
saying, "one for this week, one for Y2K."
The problem will be the hysterical yuppies who suddenly wake up
screaming, "Oh my god, it's true!" and rush down to the foodmart
grabbing everything in sight.
You know them, the ones who all rushed out to buy SUV's at the same
time.
They're there every day-before-Thanksgiving pushing baskets full to
overflowing.
note to non-USA'ians.
Thanksgiving is a really wacky USA holiday, for one thing, it falls on a
Thursday. For another, it celebrates, well, the fall harvest or
something like that... no one seems to know anymore. It's characterized
by people franticly shopping for turkeys, potatos, and pumpkin pies,
it's almost like a sickness. The grocery stores are packed with people
buying 5X as much food as they need.
You're supposed to have a *big* dinner with your relatives, even the
ones you can't stand, the weird old biddies, your uncle who should be
institutionalized, your sister-in-law the promiscuous alcoholic slut,
all of them. Then there's tons of food left over... but that's not
all...
Some people will race from their parent's dinner to their in-laws and
have two or more meals, huge, 3,000-4,000 calorie meals. Why, why; stop
the insanity. Why are people driving hours to eat a meal when they're
not hungry? I'd rather spend the day sleeping.
Some people drive several hundred miles for these dinners... because
"it's a family tradition" and "if we didn't, it would mean we don't GET
IT."
When I point out how nutz it is, I'm the misfit. I tried and tried to
start a real family tradition, our thanksgiving would be in... oh,
August or October, we'd be buying food and traveling when no one
else was doing that.
The grocery stores should be pretty quiet for a couple days after
Thanksgiving, now is the time to add another month. If Y2K fizzles out,
you'll use the food and other supplies anyway.
I also tried to talk them into having Christmas 12 days after everyone
else. ...mostly so I could buy all the stuff on sale. Sure, we'd have
a token something, maybe a nicely wrapped apple or some oranges, but
around January 5th or so, I'd buy stuff at a big discount. Couldn't
talk them into it.
Buy a tree on December 26th? It's not $45.00, it's $1.00. The stuff is
1/3rd to 1/2 off. We'd even have our own song ... on the twelth day of
Christmas...
It means you don't *care* if you pay less than you have to.
end note to non-USA'ians.
Last week the county stickers expired in Loudoun County... uh, here's
the deal, in Northern Virginia, cars (and other things) run around with
state license plates, a safety inspection sticker (plus an emissions
inspection), and a county sticker (which costs $20-$25) but you can buy
the county sticker only after you have paid the annual car tax which is
like paying the sales tax every year. A nice car will carry a tax of
about a thousand dollars.
So last week a whole bunch of people ran down to the county office to
buy their stickers on the last day. The computer was down. Probably
running Windows NT (I don't know, I'm just picking on NT because it's
junkware.) Since the county didn't want to sell the stickers if they
couldn't verify that people had paid their tax, they tried to shoo the
people home....
..oh no, I need that sticker, I don't want to get a ticket.
Now I don't know why they don't just drive to DeeCee where you can get
any kind of counterfeit sticker, tag, license you want but 70 people
stuck it out.
As the day went on they started to get surly, what kind of service is
this, we're taxpayers, you can't push us around, surly turned to rowdy
and the county workers had to call the police to calm the crowd down.
and everything else was working, 9-1-1, the power was on, there was lots
of food and the ATM's worked. One small computer breakdown, 70 people
can't get their sticker and a riot egg hatches in Loudoun County in
Northern Virginia.
All I can say is, uh-oh, Infomagic, how much ammo did you say I should
get?
Preparedness -- Hawaii --
A few days before my "emergency" job in Waikiki, this thread popped up
in c.s.y2k. I've edited it down to serve as a lead in to my clueless
comments.
From: Maren Purves <m.purves@jach.hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: Y2K on Nickelodion
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 10:35:00 -1000
Bill Vojak wrote:
> Rev Tim Burke (asciiset@hotmail.com) wrote:
> : eskwired@SPAMBLOCK.shore.net wrote
> : >Rev Tim Burke <asciiset@hotmail.com> wrote:
> : A Good Idea, fer sure. But I suspect it'll take a well-publicized systems
> : failure (or two or three...) for the sheeple to wake up in sufficient
> : numbers to truly effect the supply chain/prices.
>
> Problem is if only ~1% of the people are preparing now and the supply
> chain is overburdened, adding only another 1% will crush it. Come
> May-June of 99 your chances of buying any long term foods will be
> minimal. So then people will start stocking canned goods and dog food.
> Not guaranteed, but there is a distinct possibility that we could start
> seeing food shortages at the local grocery stores by July-Aug 99 as
> everyone starts buying ten extra cans of food a week. . .
People (well, some people at least) are stocking up on canned food and
pet food (cat food in our case) now. And, if you're worried about
supply chains, don't even think about living in Hawaii. Just imagine
that you'd have to get used to grocery stores being out of things
on a daily basis. Not usually bread or rice, but most good priced
sales items after about day 3 of the sale.
Maren
(who had to wait 6 weeks for a new fridge after hurricane Iniki,
because everything got shipped to Kauai first. I've done 'living
in the tropics without refrigeration'. Can you say: been there,
done that?)
---
Maren, go native, live off the local economy, yummy sea snails, guava,
and jabong. The jabong tree is a small citrus plant, more a big shrub
than a tree, but the fruit, oh my, the jabong fruit is the Anna Nicole
Smith of the citrus world. It's like an orange or grapefruit the size
of a basketball.
You'll see jabong trees in people's yards, an eight foot, maybe ten foot
tall sparse tree with a half dozen yellow basketballs hanging from it.
Closing -- CCCC --
This is last week's WRP, a week late. I had to make an emergency trip
to Hawaii, as usual, I can't discuss why a client wants me to do
whatever odd thing it is I do. The Malasadas (a donut made from potato
flour), the $3.50 Mai-Tai's on the beach, the spam musubi, and shrimp
tempura are fair game but not the meetings with the leadership of
Hawaii, the CIO of a billion dollar facility.
Did those meetings happen or is it a dream sequence? Did they say,
"When will you be back? We need to schedule meetings with the Governor
and the President of the University." Or did we just spend the time in
the nudie club on Keamoku Street across from McDonalds or sniffing the
Plumeria and playing with the moi-moi grass?
Who knows... none of this makes sense. An enterprise takes decades and
spends hundreds of millions of dollars to build a system, a problem is
about to devastate the system, they're sniffing the Plumeria and playing
with the moi-moi grass.
Here's the Y2K info. Leonard's Bakery in Kapahulu has 4 gallon buckets
with covers for sale, only seventy-five cents. Less than the price of a
cup of coffee. They get sugar and other ingrediants in these. The
buckets are washed out and ready to use. I got one to try out, I
brought it back east and will be comparing it with Jim Abel's buckets.
The people at the airport asked me what I had in it... Dirty clothes!
Speaking of coffee, one of the guys ordered a pot of coffee in
Billionaire Richard Kelly's Outrigger on-the-beach, it was, brace
yourself, $16.00.
Lunch places visited, Wisteria, fine local kau-kau, tempura, saimin,
affordable prices. The Pagota, OK to good buffet, fair prices, great
atmosphere, carp as big as a medium sized dog.
Hawaii is a special situation. The power will stay on, there's no
danger of freezing but food is flown in on 747 refrigeration freighters.
Every few years, a dock strike cleans out the store shelves.
Those of you in Boston, did ya catch the Y2K article in the Globe, it's
about Fast Eddie Yardeni, very nicely done but it misses an important
point. Yardeni is one of us code-heads. He used to program in S/370
assembly language (true fact, he confirmed that at our secret meeting
a few months ago.) Yardeni has coded down to the bare metal on IBM
mainframes. That's why he's concerned about Y2K, he knows.
Next issue, the long awaited PART 2 of Infomagic's SET RECOVERY ON.
cory hamasaki 401 Days, 9,638 Hours.
Ad -- Jim Abels Preparedness Store --
glitchproof.com
Review -- Countryside Magazine --
A terrific alternative to the Mother Earth News. More information on
doing it low tech. You know that strange little diagram of a homestead
that's sort of the hallucination of the Mother Earth News, it shows
fruit trees, a small garden, maybe some chickens but it never made much
sense. Well, Countryside Magazine is the real deal. They actually live
and do what Mother Earth News dreamed about.
Gritty, you can sense the aura of the manure in Countryside Magazine.
They're running a series on Y2K and you can get back issues but, well,
they got some of the computer stuff wrong. You want Countryside
Magazine for the info on goat ropin' not on how to code ISREDIT macros.
Countryside magazine has a special for their subscribers too, they're
reprinting a 1940's pub called the Havemore Plan, some overlap w/ my
booklet but their book is post electrification.
check them out.
countrysidemag.com
Fine Print -- Subscriptions, Don't Read --
You don't have to subscribe to the WRPs, you can keep reading the issues
on the web or in Usenet or however it gets to you. I'm collecting a few
"members only" items. These will be mailed to both shareware and print
edition members.
We had a couple people fax in their subscription requests without
including a mailing address. I understand why some of you are a little
on the shy side but please include some kind of mailing address, maybe
the address at the office or a P.O. Box.
1 Year $50/shareware memberships or $99/print edition.
Mail a check or your credit card information to:
Kiyo Design, Inc
11 Annapolis St.
Annapolis, MD 21401
or you can fax your credit card information to:
Fax (410) 280-2793
We take Visa, MC, or AmEx.
Please include your name, address, phone number, and email.
WRP -- Members Only --
I'll be closing off the count for the low tech, no power required,
gardening, and vegetable storage booklet on December 1. This has
all the secrets about how great grand mama did it. Well, not all the
secrets, I don't have any info on why your great uncle looks just like
the milkman. If you sign up too late, I can't promise you'll get
the book. I'm not selling the book, I'm giving it away.
Yes, I'm printing an extra copy for Frank, even though he's too cheap to
subscribe, he wants one because, well, I guess it's because he's Frank
and has been a good sport to take all the ribbing.
I'll be sending these to member/subscribers in December. You don't have
to do anything to get this, I'll be sending it to everyone.
Fine print -- publishing information --
As seen in
USENET:comp.software.year-2000
elmbronze.demon.co.uk
sonnet.co.uk
gonow.to
ocweb.com
kiyoinc.com
Don't forget, the Y2K chat-line: ntplx.net any evening, 8-10PM EST.
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, please host the Weather Reports. |
