How did YOUR millennium experience go? Come and tell us about it.

Did you CAUSE a millennium bug? Confess to sympathetic colleagues.

Did you FIX one, or more? Share with us your clever (?) techniques.

WHAT (if anything) happened wherever you were at the dawn of 2000?

BRING your favorite (personal, hearsay or Internet) stories about Y2K.

No technical program this month. For this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the Chapter will hold a purely (unless you contribute otherwise) social gathering of members and friends to reminisce about what may be the big computer story of the age. Or if it isn't, rejoice, and just share the evening with your colleagues. Note the low, LOW dinner price, IF you make an advance reservation. 

Come and enjoy!

Roger greeted people from the long defunct Digital Computer Association (DCA) that carried on for many years as the Drunken Computer Association. Roger was the last designated "fish" of that organization. Roger requested "Tales and Tall Tales of Y2K" from the audience. He noted that the government had hired foreigners with no background checks to make Y2K fixes on some of their computers and were now worrying about whether they might have left any "trap doors" in the systems they worked on. 

Bob Berman, the first volunteer, brought greetings from some absent old-timers and provided some remarks on DCA. Bob ended by revealing that he was an arch villain who had (inadvertently?) stolen ten ACM tie tacks that belonged to the Chapter and that he found at his home. He expunged his crime by returning them to Mike Walsh, LA Chapter Secretary. 

Alan Frisbie, the next-to-last DCA fish, said he got few Y2K calls in 1999, but is getting more now. One said that their computer was printing out the wrong date. The man knew that it was a DEC computer but didn't know the model. He said it was white. It was used to run their bottling plant and they got it back in 1984 or 85. He said it was fairly small, so Alan asked if it was a PDP 11 and the man thought he had heard it called by that name. The system had apparently been very reliable and had not been rebooted for the last year or so. The last question was "Is there any way to back up this thing?" 

John Bagwell said he was surfing on the Internet yesterday and found a Portland Maine newspaper Web page that had a date of 3900. 

Alan Beek reported he turned on one PC that gave a date of January 4, 1980. He reset the date and everything was OK. Alan thought that his Volkswagen Bug turning over its odometer at 500,000 miles (and still going strong) was more remarkable than surviving Y2K. He wondered if the current stock market is the .com before the storm. 

Bruce Hamilton wondered if there is a risk because the year 2000 has 54 weeks. This happens every 28 years when a leap year starts on a Saturday. 

Mike Walsh told the doctor that there was no point in beginning a diet and exercise program immediately since the world might end because of Y2K computer failures, possible civil unrest, and a predicted extra-terrestrial invasion on January 1, 2000. 

Antonio Mendez has customers with systems dating back to Leading Edge 8086's. They have a large number of things to worry about including Y2K problems and viruses. Norton no longer has antivirus fixes for Windows 3.x systems so it is difficult to get a quick fix for a problem. He bought Norton 2000 to check for problems on Windows 95/98 systems. One system identified and printed 18 pages of problems, most from early versions of Quicken and Lotus Suite. 

John Halbur said that Quicken Version 5.0 on a Macintosh didn't like the date 00 and kept converting it to 99. The Quicken Web page reported that Quicken 5 was untested. For a fee they would replace it with Quicken 2000 or Quicken 98. John also reported that a data management system at work gave an error message on the 00 date. They discovered they had not installed a software fix, so the only problem was the installation and checkout delay. 

John Radbill mentioned the seed company that was advertising "Y2K compliant seeds". They had planted the seeds and then advanced their computer clocks to late December 1999 and let the clock rollover to 2000 several months before the actual event. Their seeds germinated and grew properly proving that they were "Y2K compliant". 

Robert Mercer was the only member admitting to have caused a Y2K problem, and not back in the 50's and 60's when every character counted. In 1991, with the Oracle database system not yet installed on the new HP workstations, he put together a 'temporary' system using 2-digit years -- just for a few months - to preserve, archive and retrieve NORAD element sets. Eight years later, the 'temporary' system has provided some recent employment! 

Alan Frisbie observed that when the ABC millennium countdown got past the 2 minute mark, it went to 1 minute 0 seconds and then to 1 minute 59 seconds before continuing. This happened at every time zone. At a DEC users' meeting he heard of a VAX 780 that had last been rebooted in 1985. On a Y2K survival night, it was nice to hear of a very reliable computer system. Microsoft and Intel - attention! 

This was the fifth meeting of the year and was attended by about 34 persons, with a number of "Old Hands" from the DCA era present. A good time was had by all. 
Mike Walsh, LA ACM Secretary