My 82 year old mother in suburban Baltimore suffered a power failure. Her area got only moderate wind and rain from Floyd. It was not clear why her street had no electricity.

It was off for 6 days. 6 days! 6 days! 6 days!

That is longer than a holiday weekend. When they have the parts and they know how to fix it, it still can take longer than a long weekend. What are they going to do when the component fails because of Y2K and they go get a new one from the closet. Oops it fails too. It was just like the old one. Let's get a new new one. Oh, the new one doesn't fit in the same slot? Sorry - got to get a whole new thingamagig. Let's order it from Taiwan. Oh, the factory is a pancake. Oops.

DO NOT TELL ME IT WILL BE BUSINESS AS USUAL. I DO NOT BELIEVE IT!

www.y2kkitchen.com

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), September 23, 1999

Answers

Where do you suppose most of those "replacement chips" come from, hmmm...?

TAIWAN, a significant portion of which is now SMOKING RUBBLE FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE.

Where are those chips gonna come from now...?

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), September 23, 1999.

Peeps, I'm the Service Manager for a small computer shop, you would NOT BELIEVE how much RAM has gone up in the last couple weeks, also the boss said the supply of MainBoards is very limited. Don't know how long before this might improve but the point is obvious, it IS a global economy and if the rest of the world is going to have problems (they Will) we will be affected also.

-- Dan G (thepcguru@hotmail.com), September 23, 1999.

I agree with your original statement. The utilities are decrepped (sp?)almost beyond repair *right now.* (nothing to do with y2k, just old places, running down)

Did your mother learn any lessons that would be helpful? (And is she okay now?)

:-)

-- mar (derigueur2@aol.com), September 23, 1999.

This is from yesterdays Baltimore Sun. Note: There is nothing about chips. But lots of downed lines and trees. Hardly moderate wind and rain damage. You might also check the stories on their web site about past storms. Restoring power in 16-hour shifts Storm damage: BGE crews endure long hours and occasionally irate customers to get electricity back into thousands of homes darkened by Floyd. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- By Shanon D. Murray

Sun Staff Storm Season '99 SunSpot hurricane tracker Features tracking of 1999 storms, as well as five historical storms -- two that hit Maryland (Agnes in 1972 and No. 8 in 1933) and three that devastated other parts of the country (Andrew in 1992, Hugo in 1989 and No. 1 in 1900).

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- A powerful course in history A look back at the 1933 storm that hit Maryland plus an explanation of how hurricanes form. You will need Shockwave to view these presentations

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Photo galleries With nearly 26,000 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers still without power six days after Hurricane Floyd, some crew members say their 16-hour workdays are exhausting, yet effective.

Earlier yesterday, nearly 41,000 customers were without power.

By last night, 6,400 customers were still without power in Baltimore County; 4,900 in Baltimore City, 5,900 in Anne Arundel County; 8,400 in Harford County; 200 in Howard County; and 17 in Carroll County.

BGE says it expects to have all power restored in the area by tomorrow.

The shifts are staggered so that at any time about 600 BGE crew members are working to restore power. BGE also has added 272 visiting crews from six states, said BGE spokeswoman Rose Muhlhausen.

"We have real small pockets of scattered customers without power," she said. "We may have an instance where there are three poles down affecting 30 customers. Well, crews may spend half a day working on those three poles."

Crew members are generally received well when they go into communities, they say. Sometimes they are offered something to drink. Other times, they are the object of rude comments.

"During the first couple of days [without power], customers were a little testy," said Lenny Ciotta, an overhead mechanic who worked yesterday with five other BGE crew members to repair a utility pole broken by a fallen tree along Northern Parkway in Northwest Baltimore.

"They expect their power to be on within six hours, but when it takes more than 24 hours, they are concerned about their food spoiling and about buying dry ice," he said.

"By now, their food has spoiled and they're just glad to see us," Ciotta said. "When people are without power for days, we really feel for them and we keep on going."

Tracy

Smith, who worked in Northeast Baltimore with three other BGE crew members for about 90 minutes to restore power to two houses on Montebello Terrace, said he hadn't encountered one rude customer.

His crew was cheered after restoring power in a Park Heights neighborhood Monday. "Other places just offer us something to drink sometimes," Smith said.

Roy Cragway Sr., who with his neighbor were the last on Montebello Terrace to get their power restored, wasn't rude, but he wasn't happy with BGE.

Cragway said his home lost its power at 2: 45 p.m. Thursday. The rest of his neighborhood had power restored Saturday.

He said a BGE worker told him that day they would return that afternoon to replace the transformer above his home. They didn't return until yesterday, Cragway said.

"This makes my day. It really does, but I don't think BGE is honest," said Cragway, who turned 71 yesterday.

"I called them every day, sometimes a few times a day, and they always gave me standard, pat answers. I felt like I was being penalized for three days," he said.

After two BGE crews were done on Montebello Terrace, they called into a BGE service center and were dispatched to East Cold Spring Lane.

"We won't go home until whenever, and everyone gets tired, but we're in pretty good shape," said Bob Houck, a BGE overhead crew leader.

He said that, despite the long hours and sometimes bitter customers, morale among workers is intact.

Crew members are paid extensive overtime. For their entire 16-hour shift, they receive time-and-a-half in what the company calls "extraordinary event pay," Muhlhausen said.

But sometimes, Ciotta said, the money isn't enough. "After so many hours, it doesn't matter, really," he said. "I'd rather be working a regular shift."

-- The Engineer (The Engineer@tech.com), September 23, 1999.

I feel I can answer this with some sort of expert opinion, after having worked for a coal power electric utility for over 20 years. They borrow parts from other power plants in the system. Big inventories are out. Parts and equipment are shared by all the plants, so if one plant needs a spare pump or part, the other plant will send it. 9 out of 10 times the part or equipment sent is the wrong type or will not work, or needs work, or parts missing. And just finding the plant that has the partequipment you need is difficult. Line crews have a very dangerous job and they do excellent work under the circumstances they have to work under. Most are working understaffed, not enough or not the right tools for the job, and no inventory to pull from. Electricity is big business and is run like every other big corporation. Don't- have- a -clue -how- electricity -gets -through-those- lines executives calling the shots.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), September 23, 1999.

Please don't misunderstand me. I commend the crews for all of their hard work. I know they are working long, hard hours.

My mother is fine. It was an adventure for her. She's a trooper.

The point is that when they have Y2K problems, they will be working just as hard on problems they haven't yet seen and will not immediately know how to fix.

If we are all prepared, we can sit back, enjoy the fire in the woodstove and not hassle them while they do their jobs.

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), September 23, 1999.

Thanks for the great Recipes Sally...---...

-- Les (yoyo@tolate.com), September 23, 1999.

The "272 visiting crews from 6 different states" kinda says it for Y2K. Won't take many "isolated outages" before lots of people are sitting in the dark. Can't call the guys from "next door" to come help - they will be taking care of their own "isolated outages". This is what so many people don't see. "Our power is never out more than a few hours". We had a big storm out here Inauguration Day of 1993. Started about the time Clinton put his hand on the Bible (God got his coasts mixed up? :-)). The storm lasted all of about 2 1/2 hours, but our power was out for 5 days and 11 hours and we couldn't get out because of all the trees down on the roads. They had crews from BC and Oregon and Calif. up here working. Not gunna happen come New Years...

-- Valkyrie (anon@please.net), September 23, 1999.

So are we now given to understand that y2k resembles a hurricane only when the analogy suits our fancy, but remains unique when it does not?

Date bugs won't flood areas or knock over trees or generate lightning. Now you might argue that they will produce different kinds of problems, maybe better in some ways but worse in others, but in any case guaranteed to cause extended outages *because* a hurricane caused such outages in some places. This doesn't follow. We've presumably tested our generation and distribution systems pretty damn thoroughly by now. We've found the problems (which were very few) and we've fixed them.

Meanwhile, you could perform a "hurricane test" anywhere in the country at any time, and the result is sure to be long outages here and there. Our physical plant is simply not constructed to withstand a hurricane. We KNOW that hurricanes will break that plant, just as surely as we know y2k will not. So people here are panicking just for the joy of panic. It's a good thing we'll all "get lucky" next year.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 23, 1999.

I agree with Flint that Y2K is different from a hurricane. But I do have a problem with this:

"We've presumably tested our generation and distribution systems pretty damn thoroughly by now. We've found the problems (which were very few) and we've fixed them."

How have we done this? By having a few plants set their clocks ahead? We all know that the two grand NERC "tests" were not a test at all, but a drill of the communications systems. Please Flint, show me where we have tested the system thoroughly, and fixed the problems.

This isn't a physical problem like a down pole. It's a logical problem: what's broke? A hundred guys that string wires aren't going to have a clue.

And when a PE or someone else with the knowledge does find the problem, what's it going to take to fix it? A replacement part, that also isn't "compliant?" I hear ya Sally.

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 23, 1999.

Sysman:

Well, when I don't make blanket statements and try to recognize the complexity of the world, I get accused of being wishy-washy and doing flip flops [grin].

NERC has reported that almost no plants (not counting nuclear, which are under a different unbrella) even HAD any problems which would have prohibited the generation and distribution of power. That's a bold statement. Yes, the fine print said that maybe without remediation they wouldn't have *known* they were generating or distributing, or they may have lost track of their maintenance and other monitoring and data acquisition systems, and of course the business systems were no better than anyone else's, etc, etc. But the danger of blackouts was never real according to NERC. If you choose not to believe them on general principles, fine. I have yet to see anyone associated with the industry say anything different, including all the hands-on engineers doing the work. Even Rick Cowles doesn't go further than to say that corners are being cut but blackouts are unlikely.

And according to the documents I've seen, the large majority of generation capacity in the US has run with clocks turned forward at one time or another, and nearly a third is doing so right now. I'll assume you are aware that 90+% of our power is generated by 200 plants, and that about 80% of the utilities are coops and other power brokers, and don't generate any of their own. That's a small, manageable number. The remediation and test results look good. Not everyone is finished, many are waiting for scheduled outages.

As I recall, 35 nukes were still on the endangered species list. I don't know their current status, nor what percentage of total generating capacity they represent. Presumably even those 35 would make it before the drop dead date (Cowles estimates as Mid-December).

These seem like good numbers to me. I'm happy with this status, which couldn't get a whole lot more positive, to be honest. Sally's concerns are understandable because power is so crucial. But we have absolutely no indication that any fatal noncompliant devices EVER lived in the system, much less that they were not found, and all the replacements are just as bad. This just is NOT the case, period.

I'm sure there are better things for Sally to worry about.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 23, 1999.

Flint,

Ya know, I do love you like a brother, even if we are on opposite sides of the scale. This place wouldn't be any fun if I didn't have you and Hoff, and others to "play" with.

I'm sure you know that I've been a lurker on Rick's site for quite a while (I don't open my mouth often because I don't know what I'm talking about). But I've got to come down on Mr. Cook's side, another "grid" guy, on this one. We haven't seen a real test. I don't have a problem with NERC being the "common source" of information. I do have a problem with what they do, just like I have a problem with Mr. GreenSPIN doing what he does. It's self-reported stuff, CYA.

What's so special about the power companies? Are they going by the "manufactures's statement" that things are OK, just like the medical device manufacturers? We all know what the Senators said about medical devices, don't we? Many devices that were reported as "compliant" were in fact NOT. Look it up. What's different about the power industry? What's different about any "embedded system?"

I posted an article today (actually "hamster" posted it first):

Experts Say Power Will Stay On In Y2K, Concerns Linger

My favorite line, just like hamster's:

``A prolonged nationwide blackout will almost certainly not occur ... but declarations of nationwide preparedness do not mean much if the power goes out in your town,'' said Sen. Robert Bennett.

So much for your "large majority"

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 23, 1999.

Flint,

If you have something to say about assembly language code that gets packed into a ROM chip, I am prepared to accept it nearly as Gospel.

If you have an argument to present that is based on your opinion, and constructed with the logical reasoning that you have demonstrated your competence with, I am prepared to consider it and often when you have done so, I have agreed with you.

When you make the assertions that you have made on this thread however, based on nothing more than the self reported, invariably self serving, "happy face" PR releases of the power companies themselves who are constrained by legal obligations to stockholders and "normal" business practices to say exactly as they've all said, regardless of the realities of the situation, I simply must disregard your words for the same lack of credibility as those of the power companies themselves.

Perhaps typical, perhaps not; certainly not proof of the general case yet still compelling to my mind is this question: If Austin Energy, which is a producer of electricity, and fuels its generators with piped in natural gas and has current, on-site stocks of back up fuel, and is solely owned and operated by the City of Austin, Texas, and currently and for some time past claimed on its website to be completely ready in all respects for Y2K and the rollover, etc., and has made all of the statements that you advanced as being representative of the electric power industry as a whole in the US, is well and truly "ready", why is the City of Austin spending three quarters of a million dollars on stand-alone generators with the stated intention of placing the majority of them in its water treatment plants which, BTW, are also solely owned and operated by the City of Austin and supplied with electricity by said Austin Energy?

I'm afraid that, "bullshit walks and money talks", and that three quarters of a million dollars of Texas taxpayer's money says a great deal to me, and it says it loud and clear.

Your mileage may vary, but I share Sally's concern, in spades!

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), September 23, 1999.

Hi Hardliner. Long time, no see.

Well, what can I say...

KICK ASS! <:)))= (big grin)

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 24, 1999.

I don't believe it either. As Hardliner points out the governments actions are in no way reflecting its words. Underground bunkers, command centers, pentagon solar system and "Basement renovation", national guard troops on alert, police vacations cancelled nationwide. These all point directly to an expected major failure of the national grid. Not water shortages, not sewer backups, POWER FAILURE. WIDESPREAD EXTENDED POWER FAILURE.

But there are other reasons why I don't believe them. See I used to build power plants. 1976-77 I was a termination wirer in the master computer room of the Texas Utilities Martin Creek triple 750 megawat lignite fired plant. For 2 years a team of eight people hooked up tens of thousands of wires to the thousands of relays and interfaces which in turn fed the computers. Row after row of icebox sized computers in a special dust free climate controlled room. Every one of those tens of thousands of wires led back to an embedded system of some sort. They were still hooking them up when I left to work on the Comanchee Peak Nuclear Plant, South of Ft. Worth. It had even more wires than the other one. Now if we couldn't get all that wiring even hooked up in two years do you seriously think they have tested, remediated, and tested, and remediated, and tested again in less than a year? I know they haven't.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), September 24, 1999.

Jeez, Nikoli, I've "known" you for a while here, but I didn't "know" that.

Hummm... <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 24, 1999.

///

Many thanks Sally for your hard work and excellent results.

///

oh and here's a little input for flintc: potassium iodate

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 24, 1999.

(Groan.)

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 24, 1999.

*Very Big Sigh*

If a simple squirrel can do this, or one itty bitty human error can take out San Francisco, well, I just wonder what *some* non-end-to-end tested software (or plain 'ole goofs) and *some* of the undiscovered embedded chips can do?

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 24, 1999.

and then you add the terrorist factor....

Nikoli, You never mentioned any of that before. Why are you looking at trucks?

To midwest people,

utility companies will have their people working on new years eve on site ready to go....

-- Moore Dinty moore (not@thistime.com), September 24, 1999.

Thank you Dan G., it most certainly is a global economy. If other countries' businesses are unable to produce, it is our problem.

-- Klar (klarbrunn@lycos.com), September 24, 1999.

My husband knows a Baltimore Gas and Electric tech. My husband, (a semi-DGI), asked him:"So what's the scoop on Y2K?" The BG&E tech replied that there are still around 100 embedded chips that they haven't been able to find. Got batteries?

-- Charli Claypool (claypool@belatlantic.net), September 24, 1999.

Did the electrical utilities plan to announce "Y2K Ready" -- ready or not?
The Answer is "Yes"

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), September 24, 1999.

Why is it that I don't believe there will be terrorist attacks come Y2K? It sounds like baloney to me. Or is it just conditioning us so that when the power does go out, they can blame terrorists and declare martial law.

Tim

-- Tim the Y2K nut (tmiley@yakko.cs.wmich.edu), September 24, 1999.

Tim,

the reason you can't believe there will be terrorist attacks, is that you don't know that they are going on all the time in this country, but government official policy is to blame them on other things whenever possible, to control public reaction.

They tend to involve oil, money and aircraft. I believe this is because terrorists come from countries where society revolves around those things (rather than cattle, or football or computer networks).

Government is not preparing for Y2K terrorism because bureaucrats like to work. They are doing it because of past experience and current intelligence.

-- ng (cantprovideemail@none.com), September 24, 1999.

Why am I looking at trucks? Well for the last year I worked on termination wiring I did it 24 hours a day. It's bad enough to have to spend ten to twelve hours a day with a phone strapped to your head while you probe a bundle of a 1000 wires for the right one, but when you go to bed and do it in your sleep it's time to change professions.I also have a bad ankle which has gotten progressively worse over the intervening years and will not allow me to work on my feet at all anymore.

On the brighter side I have now quit the trucking industry and gone back to work as a grader operator locally as the increase in the price of oil has reopened the oilfield here in East Tx. and brought back the operating job market. I was enjoying the trucking but the wife hated me being gone all the time, and it is impossible to complete preps when you are only home three days out of the month.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), September 24, 1999.

Nikoli, with all your skills/experience you would be one valuable guy in a Fortress! Such versatility is very valuable. Too bad it's too late for Yourdon Land.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 24, 1999.

finger tapping----tap,tap,tap!

Uh, ---Mr. Flint?

We are all anxiously waiting!

-- D.Butts (dciinc@aol.com), September 24, 1999.

Sorry I don't have time right not to answer everyone. I'll try to do so in more detail later. But a few comments seem in order.

Sysman: Please read Bennett's words that you quoted. He says that IF your power goes out, it won't matter to you if you're the only one. This is true but VERY misleading. You will notice that nowhere does he claim that we have ANY evidence that power might go out, he can only say that all available reports are good. Kind of like saying that if YOU fall ill and die, it doesn't matter TO YOU if people are generally healthier than they've ever been. And while this is true, I'm trying to address the health of the industry in general, not how hard you personally might choose to worry just for the fun of it.

As for Austin's generators, I'm not sure if these are long-scheduled enhancements, or if they are part of y2k-inspired contingency plans, or if they are part of some larger plan I'm not aware of. I've been trying to say for some time that contingency plans are NOT guarantees that things will go wrong. I won't even argue that boy scouts who are prepared suffer MORE accidents as a result, but it sure sounds like that's the conclusion people here are coming to.

Yes, ultimately all the information we have is self-reported. It so happens that the real electricity experts who are the only ones who fully understand all the details, just happen to work for the electric industry! Imagine that. No, we have no way to know to what degree (if any) they are exaggerating their readiness. I believe we can safely assume that they don't have any more desire than we do to freeze in the dark.

More later, if I get the chance. From a quick glance, what I've read on this thread sounds like legitimate concerns raised to the level of religious dogma, rather than any real attempt to assign reasonable probabilities.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 24, 1999.

" From a quick glance, what I've read on this thread sounds like legitimate concerns raised to the level of religious dogma, rather than any real attempt to assign reasonable probabilities."

It is impossible to assign reasonable probabilities because no one is telling the truth. It is prudent to prepare for emergencies. Our grandparents did. It was good sense then and it is good sense now. The people in North Carolina who were stocked up with water and food for Y2K are much, much better off than those who believed the "bump in the road" stories.

www.y2kkitchen.com

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), September 24, 1999.

Hardliner:

You write:

"When you make the assertions that you have made on this thread however, based on nothing more than the self reported, invariably self serving, "happy face" PR releases of the power companies themselves who are constrained by legal obligations to stockholders and "normal" business practices to say exactly as they've all said, regardless of the realities of the situation"

Yes, I've agreed already that my assertions are based on self reporting. You should recognize that self-reporting is all we have. You speak of "the realities of the situation" but you carefully neglect to mention that EXCEPT for this self-reporting, we have little evidence one way or the other for these realities. We DO have (as I mentioned) lots of testimony from not just Cowles, but from Engineer and Dan the Power Man. Before Rick protected his forum, I read it all the time and I didn't see a single negative post from anyone actually in the know.

On the other hand, I saw LOTS of outright refusal to accept ANY good news, on the part of a host of doomies who wouldn't know a volt from an ohm. I'm rather disappointed that you choose to join this group, solely (as far as I can tell) on the grounds that you've decided to be *unsatisfiable* by anything short of the Voice of God (and you'd want a URL for that too!). If everyone involved directly in the power industry is confident, and nobody else has enough knowledge to say otherwise, it is nugatory to complain that all the confident people are in the industry. Sheesh, that's where the knowledge IS, whether you want to believe it or not.

Nikoli:

You basically make two arguments. (1) That contingency plans guarantee the contingency being planned against. This is factually and logically false. I won't go into it further. You know better, and I don't know why you make a stupid argument in public. (2) Because of the speed it USED to take to hook up wires physically, THEREFORE embedded systems will have bugs that can't be fixed in time! This is a stunning nonsequitur. You might state that you choose to err on the side of caution. But to justify your convictions based on how long some utterly unrelated task used to take is beyond belief. Uh, are you feeling OK?

No talking:

Try to stay on topic, just for a little while. If you feel the need for potassium iodate to counteract possibly invalid date stamps, be my guest. If you simply intend to say that nukes will fail just as a matter of dogma or policy, then you go to your church and I'll go to mine. I believe in examining evidence, not making things up. So far, the only evidence that the nukes will irradiate us is that we cannot absolutely rule out an evil miracle or black magic. Not very convincing.

Diane:

Certainly big problems are always possible. The idea is to avoid them. We can't control every squirrel, and we can't guarantee perfection either. We can only remediate and test, and retest, and retest again and again and again. That's what we're doing. We can run with clocks set to next year, and that's what we're doing. We can identify every possible noncompliance of every part in every system, and that's what we're doing. You are welcome to curl up in the corner and cower in fear of the unknown to your heart's content. You can frighten yourself as much as you choose by dreaming up increasingly unlikely or uncontrollable accidents. Hell, the aliens might land and turn off the power (Read Silverberg's novel The Alien Years). However, we're talking probabilities here. Your .0000001% probabilities are nonzero. Enjoy them, and return to reality when ready.

Lane:

Citing a URL to your own misrepresentation as support makes a fascinating exercise in infinite recursion. Yes, the utilities expected to succeed. Believe it or not, this is what happens when the problem is known, the solutions are known, the solutions are available, the schedules are reasonable, and accurate predictions can be made as a result. Golly!

I guess the case you're trying to make is that the utilities had planned to announce success no matter whether they experienced it or not, and had the incredible stupidity to announce such intentions in advance. And you cleverly picked up on this blunder. And therefore, since we cannot possibly know from their declaration of success whether it reflects reality, therefore it does not and we can safely ignore all other indications, known tests, insider reports, and all else and quiver in fear of this duplicity, right? Well, if that kind of thinking makes you happy...

Sally:

Your statement that "nobody is telling the truth" is religious in nature, just as I said. You cannot know this; you take it on faith. Of course preparation is good sense, and I'm doing lots of it. But when I speak of reasonable probabilities, it's because a certain amount of self-interest must be factored into these statements. Otherwise we'd be dealing with certainties, not probabilities. We have a very large number of pieces of evidence that power will be OK, from many disparate and uncoordinated sources, quite a few of which have no vested interest in sugar-coating the facts. From all sources together, a reasonable probability can be determined.

Finally, I really don't know how to address the secret government conspiracy to cover up clandestine terrorist attacks that nobody has ever reported as such because the government is so airtight that leaks never happen! And I have even less idea how to address those whose lips are glued to the rectums of the conspiracy loonies. I am not a psychiatrist.

I do look forward to next year, when we can debate just why the power *didn't* go off, despite all the denial of evidence y'all could bring to bear. Maybe Nikoli will argue that the power really IS off, but the government is keeping that a secret from our computers?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 24, 1999.

Flint -- you still think it's 1920 or thereabouts when you could fix almost everything with "baling wire" (for baling hay) and a hammer? Now, if something quits, you just toss it; there's no way to repair it that doesn't take as much or more technology than to make it in the first place.

Computers have made "Just in Time" (JIT) inventory procedures feasible. The "bean counters" (accountants) love it as it makes the "bottom line" look better. JIT depends on EVERYTHING working fine. One glitch and everything falls apart; many glitches, and everything could fall apart effectively permanently with no way to bootstrap back up, other than by taking a 50 or 70 or +++ period like it took to get to this position, starting over 150 years ago.

If one utility uses up its meagre supply of spare parts, it isn't gonna have them to lend to one in the next county.

Get real!

-- A (A@AisA.com), September 24, 1999.

Ok Flint, this won't take long. You responded: Nikoli:

You basically make two arguments. (1) That contingency plans guarantee the contingency being planned against. This is factually and logically false. I won't go into it further. You know better, and I don't know why you make a stupid argument in public.

I said nothing about the contingency plans guaranteeing the occurence of the contingency being planned against. Misdirection. What I said was the government is saying there is virtually no chance of widespread failures of the national grid, yet their preps are all being directed against this threat. If local water failures, which is the extent of what they will admit to, were indeed their worst case scenario we would be seeing prepositioning of pumps and storage , not preps for civil unrest to the extent they are going UNDERGROUND. FEMA operating out of Mt. Weather??!!! LA in a nuclear proof bunker? Remote cameras? Water Shortage? 3 days? LOL. ARE YOU FEELING ALL RIGHT??

(2) Because of the speed it USED to take to hook up wires physically, THEREFORE embedded systems will have bugs that can't be fixed in time! This is a stunning nonsequitur. You might state that you choose to err on the side of caution. But to justify your convictions based on how long some utterly unrelated task used to take is beyond belief. Uh, are you feeling OK?

The speed it used to take to hook up wires is totally related to remediation of aging plants which are still equipped with the same old technology as when they were constructed. This isn't fiber optic, it's plain old copper wire. The point is that it takes much longer to actually test each embedded system than it did to just hook up a wire from it to a relay. It has to be torn apart and the individual chips or circuit boards tested, then reassembled and tested again against all the other systems it is connected with, then torn down to fix what was missed, reassembled and tested again. Simple concept, I'm almost surprised you can't grasp it. ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE FEELING ALRIGHT?

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), September 24, 1999.

does the forum seem to be getting a little flaky to yall? sevral times I have posted a response and the thread just completely disapeared from recent answers, had to go to top level to retrieve it.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), September 24, 1999.

A:

I think you show some misunderstanding of how JIT actually works. Yes, I grant there is a very thin pipeline, so a breakdown will show up in a day rather than in two weeks. This is true.

But JIT giveth as well as taketh away. JIT means short product runs of many different products. Our assembly lines are MUCH more flexible than they used to be in the days of truly massive production runs. As a result, JIT switches from 2 weeks (or 2 months) of inventory followed by a LONG period of nothing, to 1 day of inventory, but no real period of nothing, because instead of a single missing part killing a whole process, we can switch quickly to producing less of each part, but some of EVERY part. So production slows down but doesn't stop. This is one of the beauties of JIT. There are others.

JIT is NOT just about reducing inventory. The major bottom-line side effect of JIT isn't inventory, it's quality. You can fix errors rapidly, find problems quickly and cheaply, make changes on the fly, do faster design turnarounds. On balance, in a bad y2k situation JIT is a decided net benefit.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 24, 1999.

"On balance, in a bad y2k situation JIT is a decided net benefit."

????????????!!!!!!!!!????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SAY WHAT????????

Could you repeat that please? Jesus, and I was arguing with this idiot?

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), September 25, 1999.

I really don't care what Flint thinks. My preps are ready to go. If nothing happens, great! I happen to really like my life the way it is. If Y2K is anything above a 3 (equaling trouble) then we are ready Freddy! What's the dilemma? As someone else pointed out, our grandparents and great-grandparents were usually always ready for contingencies in life, and now I have re-learned that lesson and will be passing it on to my young daughter. Flint, what is so wrong about that? (I am not assuming, however, that you have a problem at all with preps, it just sounds as if you do...) The truth is, NO ONE here has a crystal ball, so anyone who says they know what will happen is lying. It may sound simplistic, but I say keep it simple: Prepare for the worse, hope for the best. (Although I must admit, reading these arguments is fascinating. I really admire how cleaned up this forum seems to be from the last time I visited some months ago and it was just a bunch of trolling and flaming, no real discussion....so congratulations for that!)

Get prepping

-- Preparing (preparing@home.com), September 25, 1999.

You cannot have a rational conversation with an irrational person.

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), September 25, 1999.

Yes, Sally... too true!

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 25, 1999.

Prepping:

I agree, preparation is important. I've done a lot of it, about a year's worth, and I continue to do it. It's only prudent and sensible to prepare for the worst you can afford that you think is possible at all. But just because you are insured, doesn't mean you are guaranteed to NEED that insurance. So I also try to understand the probability of various kinds of problems. And like most insurance, it's against a high impact, low probability event.

So I argue that preparations are done IN CASE you need them, and shouldn't be thought of as being done BECAUSE you WILL need them. To me, that's a mistake. And those who make that mistake and cling to it in the face of increasingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary are irrational.

And I agree entirely with Sally on that one. If people can NOT change their mental clothing as the season of evidence changes, you just can't talk to them. You can point out that things are changing, and then you can either laugh at them or shake your head.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 25, 1999.

C'mon Flint!

I expected better from you!

Of course I neglected to mention your assertion, "that EXCEPT for this self-reporting, we have little evidence one way or the other for these realities." The reason that I did not mention it, is because that "reporting" is not, by any reasonable or logical standard, evidence. It is indeed, "all that we have", but evidence? Of the conflict of interest that most certainly exists for those providing such reporting perhaps, but of "the realities of the situation"? I think not. That is not to say that those reports might not be true. It is possible that they are, but as you surely realize about our society, a conflict of interest such as is obvious here, is always cause for suspicion. My point is that there simply is no evidence as to whatever the reality of the situation in the power industry might be.

As for the "testimony" that you cite, it is unfortunately in the same category as the "reporting" of the power companies. All of what you hold out as in support of your assertions, is hearsay, and as you surely know (again), simply not acceptable as evidence, and indeed, in the courts of our society, not even acceptable as testimony.

If you are disappointed in me because I have refused to lower the standards that I will accept to qualify information as evidence or testimony, then that is, unfortunately for you, your problem. The fact remains that a valid and correct conclusion is possible only when accurate logic proceeds from correct premises. Until those premises are proven, such conclusions as any of us may reach are only guesses, no more and no less.

As for the "VOICE OF GOD", I'm rather certain that it will communicate according to a different priority scheme than one which might include the state of the American power grid. In light of my expectation that I will not be given, or even given access to, information as to the actual status of said grid (which BTW, I assure you I am capable and qualified to understand), there is, in fact, only one thing which will satisfy me as to the true state of affairs. That is events as they occur in real time, as the future unfolds. To reiterate, anything less, is in my view, simply a guess.

But to dissect your reply even further, I have not even seen any "reporting", let alone evidence, that everyone in the power industry is confident. Certainly, the City of Austin (as the owner and operator of Austin Energy) qualifies as "someone in the power industry", and I would venture the opinion that their purchase order for three quarters of a million dollars worth of stand-alone electrical generation capacity is not indicative of "confidence" that there will be no interruption of electrical power.

And although I have never contended that all of the confident people are in the power industry, I will speak to that point as well. Wherever such people may be is of little consequence to me. Flint, I could not care less who might be "confident" and who might not be. I am interested only in accurate, verifiable information as to the actual state of the physical plant in our society that produces electrical power.

Now, just as a sort of qualifier, let me tell you that the question of whether or not the electricity will stay on over the rollover and whether or not it will remain on in the days that follow is largely an academic one for me personally. I live, and have for a lot of years, where it is simply prudent to be prepared for the electrical power to disappear without warning, and to remain gone for indeterminate periods. It happens all the time to me. The most recent time was last night, for a period of several hours, and it was occasioned by no more than a weather front which was loaded with thunderstorms. I have not purchased a generator for Y2K, but I have had a number of them for many years.

If the Y2K problem does indeed cause the collapse of the power grid for any significant length of time, our civilization is, as Mr. Milne puts it, "toast". In the event of such a collapse, at first, everyone except those in the power industry will simply "sit on their hands" for a while, waiting for "power to be restored", as they say. When the power industry workers run out of battery powered lights (should such occur before "power is restored"), they would begin to work by candlelight, and when all the candles were gone, they would revert to torchlight (Yankee "torches", the kind with open flames, not the British type which requires batteries). By that time, it would surely be evident that we were in for a different sort of "ride".

I am in agreement with you in that the knowledge of the true state of affairs is largely within the power industry itself, but that knowledge, whatever it might be, is simply not being released in verifiable terms. I am quite expert at recognizing the sensation of having smoke pounded up my posterior orifice, and to expect that I would accept any information from the practitioners of that "art" as reliable is more than unreasonable. It is unthinkable.

For myself, in spite of the millions of words that have been published on the subject in the last several years (and I would be interested to know just how much has been spent on "attitude and belief shaping" as compared to actual Y2K technical changes), I find myself in no different position than when I began. I know that a failure of the power grid for any significant length of time would spell the end of our civilization. I do not know whether that will happen, and I will not know until and or unless it does or does not. All of those persons who have attempted to provide me with information on the matter have refused to renounce "weasel" words and terms such as, "we are confident", "we have no reason to think", etc. and so I am left with nothing more than whatever conclusions that I can arrive at on my own.

Those conclusions are what I have attempted to present above.

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), September 25, 1999.

shouting off

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), September 26, 1999.

I can't let you have the last word on Hardliner's character and brilliant mind Flint, so I'll correct your mistatement on that last post. Hardliner doesn't just "pick" on optimists' illogical thinking, he does the same with the pessimists and even those who view themselves as realist if they think illogically. He's a realist plain and simple.

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 26, 1999.

Chris:

Now that I think about it, I agree with you. Hardliner is usually reasonable. Takes me a while sometimes to parse through his posts to figure that out, though.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 26, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr near Monterey, California

Thank yourselves lucky, you guys. You live in America. Troll alert. Fake Ruski. IMHO

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), September 26, 1999.

Flint, you seem to have forgotten that I have been making my living for the last 3 months as a long haul truck driver, dealing with JIT every day from supply and demand side. Additionally my wife is a recieving manager for Wal-Mart, and has been for the last ten years, with another ten years or so as recieving manager far Howards and Gibsons. I spent two weeks on didicated runs for the Toyota plant in Georgetown Ky, where the loads are scheduled into one hour slots over haul distances up to 1200 miles away. I have had to go without sufficient sleep or a shower for three days at a time to get a "hot" load delivered two thousand miles away so some idiot who couldn't place a timely order didn't have to send his employees home or shut down his production lines. In short I know more about JIT than you even begin to comprehend, and it didn't come out of books either, it's real world experience. Whether it's a load of engines picked up in Quebec headed for Georgetown, or Mercedes Benz seats and quarter panels picked up off the seaboard and headed for the Tuscaloosa Al Mercedes assembnly plant, or a load of alternators from the detroit area headed to the Shreveport S-10 plant, they all come to an abrupt halt when the deliveries stop. There is also a relatively new form of animal called "Logistics" depots, which act as in transit warehouses for many of the JIT companies, storing oversupply temporarily and acting as a regulator to the flow. These logistics centers serve multiple companies and employ temporary and part time dock staff to load and unload the trucks. they are monumentally inneficient now, and any disruption of the communications links or computers will slap them down completely. Even in the complete abscence of drastic Y2K problems domestically, any interruption of the availability of fuel is going to have a drastic impact on the trucking industry, and this will be immediately apparent in the JIT system.

On the OJ comments, you are correct. Unfortunately I have developed the habit of speed skimming you long winded post, and I should have gone back and reread the comments you made to be sure I understood your point thouroughly before commenting on it.

All this aside you still haven't addressed my origional assertion that the power companies in general could not possibly have remediated and tested their systems in the time frame which they claim.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), September 27, 1999.

I think I'll add afew lashes to what may be adead horse:

flint, the name Lordstown may mean nothing to you, but I assure you that the several thousand people who work in the Lordstown facility for GM understand JIT MUCH more than you, as they lost jobs because of JIT and the recent strike in the 2 factories that produced a specific part (and NOT a "critical" part, more on the order of trim strips IIRC) that shut down the WHOLE GM Manufacturing system, as these parts slowly ran out in assembly plants. This lack of part killed production in plants that had NO contact with the it, and in some circumstances, plants closed that had absolutely no dependency on the part, their products didn't even use it, but OTHER plants, which DID use it for PART of their runs, having closed, caused those plants to close also.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), September 27, 1999.

Chuck:

Without JIT, we did 3 or 4 turns a year in inventory. So the total loss of production of some part happened 3 or 4 months before the pipeline ran dry in the best case, and usually about a month in the typical case. But it a concerted effort was made to stop production of that part (a strike), after a while you were in the same shutdown condition as with JIT. You just didn't get there as fast.

But I should have (and did not) distinguish between JIT and "American JIT", which often amounts to shoving the responsibility for maintaining large inventories back onto the suppliers. JIT is not easy to do right. The goal of flexible lines, fast turnarounds, short runs, getting upgrades/redesigns into products quickly, etc. is not often achieved. What's often attacked isn't JIT as it's supposed to work, but what's *called* JIT and really isn't, it's just an attempt by the big guys to make life hard on the little guys, along with a lot of shortsighted errors.

In any case, even at worst JIT simply means production stops sooner. If problems can't be fixed quickly, we're in the same soup just a little sooner.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 27, 1999.

Hardliner, great to see you posting again on such an important subject. Makes me glad that I have sprung for another 400 gallon tank for diesel fuel!

95 days.

Y2K CANNOT BE FIXED!

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.~net), September 27, 1999.

Could someone help me out here. I thought NERC was only measuring the ability of nuclear sites to shut down safely meaning that 100% compliant by NERC standards means only that the site can shut down and in no way indicates that it can keep producing power come 1/1/00. Have I misunderstood this?

-- newbie (jabawaki@erols.com), September 27, 1999.

Mr. Flint (as usual) preaches to the 'ignorant doomers', that a few paper cuts will NOT be fatal, but, fails (as always) to acknowledge the death from a thousand paper cuts *fact*.

Flint, your granny groping contribution has been made once again. You've soothed the fears of every Ostrich on the forum. Blow the sand out of your nostrils and move on to the next thread. You've embarassed yourself enough on this one.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), September 27, 1999.