Dear J: Y2K Preparations
Dear [J],
At work, they’re quite concerned with Y2K In fact, we just discovered problems in one of our software apps. And this problem is quite typical of the types of Y2K issues one might expect to experience. This software is used to prepare answer sets for customers. An answer set is a collection of related documents. The relationship is defined by each of our customers. Anyway, when an answer set is created, one of the things you must supply to the system is an expiration date for the set. This date determines how long from the date of creation, that the set remains in our databases on disk. After the date passes, the set is deleted by nightly cleanup processes. This date must be entered in the mm/dd/yy format (two-digit year). And when we tried entering a date after 12/31/99, the system would not permit it because it was mistaking the two-digit year for a year in the 20th century. I.e. 01/25/00 is interpreted as Jan. 25th, 1900, and not Jan. 25th, 2000. And a date with a year of anything prior to 1999 does not make sense since this expiration date is earlier than the current date. So, the application does not properly save such sets. Since we prepare several hundred sets each day worth thousands of dollars each day, this problem very quickly became top priority a couple weeks ago. It has been fixed and will be released to production on Tuesday. The fix involved changing the code to require the user to enter a 4-digit year, instead of a two-digit one. The rest of the software appears to be Y2K compliant though.
To prepare for Y2K, on new years eve, we’re switching all of our mission-critical computers over to diesel generator power at 7:00 PM. And they’ll remain on diesel until January 5th. Yep, they’re taking the whole Y2K thing quite seriously.
I’ll be working in Dayton on new years eve, starting at 10:00 PM and going to 6:00 AM on new years day. And they told us to bring flashlights, warm sleeping bags, and non perishable foods, just in case we lose main power – the generators only supply the computers and data center climate control but do not heat the buildings where we’ll be. It’s going to be exciting. I’ll have the digital camera and hope to get some good shots of us at work. Hmmm. Hope the camera is Y2K compliant. 