Note to those of you who may have tried to read the Rick Cowles interview & haven't been able to get in because of heavy traffic- bear with us; we had a couple of high volume stories today, especially the Rick C interview, which tied up the server (or servers, whatever the case may be). It should clear up after a while. The Internet team worked on some software improvements to help the server accommodate the traffic.

My thanks to those of you who have posted thanks to me for the interview; believe me, it was a pile of work to get it done (editing it down from its original, even longer, length, arranging it, etc). As I get the chance, I'll try to respond to some of the very kind posts here; I'm just pretty swamped, as you all can imagine.

DP/CBN Nuze :)

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), January 07, 1999

Answers

Drew,

We appreciate all your efforts. Thank you very much.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 07, 1999.

hear hear!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 08, 1999.

If you get a chance Drew, what's your personal take as of this moment in the remediation game, are we going to have juice???

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 08, 1999.

Drew,

I read the article just before bedtime last night; BIG mistake! OTOH, the sunrise is so pretty on the snow....:)

Thanks for the condensation, as well as the info. You made the 20+ interview easy to follow & understand. I will use it as documentation for the last couple of stubborn DWGIs in my family. If this doesn't get it to sink in, I don't know what will, short of sudden & extended darkness...

-- Arewyn (nordic@northnet.net), January 08, 1999.

Drew,

I could not have been more pleased to be denied access to the article due to high traffic!

As you know, Rick and I greatly appreciate the hard work you put into the article, as well as the continued coverage of this issue by CBN.

Now, what's all this talk about being swamped? Somehow, I don't believe we have seen anything yet!

Talk to you soon.

-- Ronnie Beard (rbeard@eatel.net), January 08, 1999.

Catching up on the replies here...

First, thanks to all the people who said "thanks" to me :) Believe me, that interview was seriously hard work. It took quite a while, in between all my other duties/activities (I spent a lot of time on it on a notebook PC in my local hangouts). Arewyn, didn't mean to keep you up at night :) Ronnie, now you know why you can never reach me! :) But don't feel bad, no one else can either.

Andy, to answer your question about whether or not we'll have juice: as I started to think about my answer, I realized that my outlook hasn't really changed on this subject in nearly a year. I basically view this the way Rick does- ie, power shortages in different places, with possible blackouts/brownouts, etc. However, I don't hold this view *because* Rick does- in fact, it was formed before I ever talked to him. It came about after my own research into the subject last year, and also after our reporter, David Snyder, did his story on the grid (which can be found at:

http://www.cbn.org/news/stories/980609.asp

That story is probably still the best ever done on the grid, especially on TV.

Dave didn't find anyone in his research who felt the entire grid would go down, but most of those who had really looked into the situation felt that localized, or perhaps regionalized, problems were quite possible, and that there wasn't enough time to get all the repair work done.

Another way of saying this is that Rick's view is, from what I can tell, not uncommon among those who've looked into the grid & Y2K. It may be just a matter of degree more than anything else; ie, how severe people think the problems will be, rather than whether or not they'll have any problems at all. Rick at least has the guts to speak his views plainly & publicly- something not everyone in the Y2K field will do.

Drew Parkhill/CBN News

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), January 09, 1999.