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Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Report V2, # 34
[From Gary North's web page: Gary says "Today, August 20,
this is the only thing I will post. Read this. Think about this. Start planning
in terms of this. Cory Hamasaki is a mainframe programmer with a quarter century
of experience behind him. He is card-carrying computer geek, with two sets of
propellers. He says it's over. We have 500 days to go. (Today, 499.) The
decision-makers have blown it. They forked over the money -- and not enough of
it -- too late. Y2K as a worldwide problem is not going to be fixed.
"Maybe you have a friend, associate, or relative who just can't see what all the
fuss is about. Email this page to him. If this doesn't convince him, he doesn't
want to be convinced. Start your personal planning in terms of this report. If
you are in second gear, move into high gear.
"I have my share of critics. Their main argument is against me, not the
documentation on my site. The documentation is overwhelming, so on that point
they remain discreetly silent. Instead, they say, "North is not a programmer."
Well, Hamasaki is a programmer. From now on, I invite my critics to argue with
Hamasaki. "Let's you and him fight!" I can't say it any better than he has. . .
."]
Cory
Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Report V2, # 34
"August 17, 1998 - 500 days to go." WRP90 Final (c)
1997, 1998 Cory Hamasaki
I grant permission to distribute and reproduce this newsletter as long as this
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. .
In this issue:
| Y2K minus 500 | Y2K not a big deal | Y2K and you. |
| What's going to happen | What can you do | Team starting up |
--------- Y2K minus 500 ---------
What does it mean... We're out of time for triage and the contingencies that
would keep a semblance of the infrastructure running. The work has not been
done. There is not enough time left to engineer and deploy emergency systems, to
rip out the complex systems and replace them with 90% accurate, close enough for
government work, simpler systems.
This is what I believe... a few large corporations will complete their
remediation work, a few essential systems will be 100% compliant, some cities
and towns will manage to function nearly normally.
I don't believe that any government agency including the SSA will be 100 percent
operational. There will be failures and confusion everywhere.
However... B52's will still fly. Most of the Navy will be operational... sure,
some of ship's administrative computers will fail but a good pork chop knows how
to bypass the system anyway.
In the old days, you had your checking account and your savings account. It was
simple. Today, you have interest checking with overdraft protection, direct
deposit, debit cards, 128 bit electronic banking, ATMs, automatic bill payment,
minimum balance for no service charge, and dozens of other complexities that are
not necessary. All this takes code, lots of code. Up to day 500 there was a
chance to return banking to its simpler roots. It didn't happen, there isn't
enough time to consider this alternative and to implement simple, Y2K-safe
banking.
It doesn't matter if it is still possible for a bank to actually create a
simpler way... the previous paragraph is an example of hypothetical triage -
contingencies that should have been planned for all industries. It didn't
happen...
What did happen is the FAA falsified their Y2K posture... they were caught by
both the GAO and the DOT's Inspector General. But the FAA is not the enemy...
they are just a convenient example, a fable for our times. Clueless management,
pomposity and arrogance raging in the halls, their Y2K TSAR declares himself to
have a Ph.D. from the school of hard knocks. Unsubstantial success stories...
This happy talk is happening across the board, in industry, in government, in
the utilities. No one has owned up to their problems... we seen a few shills
issuing platitudes, a few statements that NOBODY PANIC. When I hear the screams,
NOBODY PANIC, I start looking for someone to knock down so I can get to the exit
before them.
So what does this mean to you... and me, and your mom? It means you're on your
own, you've been abandoned by the corporations and the government. They're not
going to do it for you. You have to take action for yourself... and you have 500
days to do it... less if you expect failures to begin in January 1999 due to the
Jo Anne Effect.
The Jo Anne Effect
It's odd that the breakthroughs of Y2K understanding have come from the
grassroots movement in c.s.y2k, tm_year, SVC-11, Time Dilation, RAILINC, Rick
Cowles' book, cash on hand, grain, water, solar for every man... and now the Jo
Anne Effect, the understanding that accounting systems will start probing the
wall at 2000 in January 1999, some might start earlier... That systems that sort
transactions into last year, this year, and next year must know about 2000 in
135 days.
We're out of time, what do you do? The first thing you do is ... buy my book...
just kidding, I did start to
write a personal survival text for Y2K but
probably won't complete that project.
The first thing is decide on your strategy for six month survival and forever.
You can ride out a three month failure using stored provisions... and if we're
just talking food, it's only a few hundred dollars. Boil water or Clorox it.
Install Solar panels or a generator. Have some cash on hand, some? Try thousands
of dollars. You don't want to be in East St. Louis, Miami, South Chicago, or
living in Central Park... you know your area. You know where it's safe and where
it isn't.
Beyond six months, you must be self-sustaining. This doesn't mean producing
absolutely everything yourself. It means having collapse-proof money, silver
perhaps. Having a means to produce food or items and skills that can be traded
for essentials.
The more you strive for a comfortable and guaranteed safe life, the greater the
cost. For example, my forever scenario is living in a shed 65 miles outside of
DC. It'll be cold in the winter, hot in the summer and the water has to be
hauled in from the spring. It means living on beans and rice mostly, then
shifting to corn, squash, and beans. But it won't take a lot of cash because my
expectations are modest.
Security at the farm isn't a Springfield Armory M1A and a couple other assault
rifles. Security comes from the fact that the farm is miles off the state road,
up a county road, and then a mile of gravel road that snakes through another
farmer's corn field. Oh and we'll cut the road with the frontloader.
I'm not planning on firefights but my pal is a gun-nut and has a typical
gun-nut's armory... he's not the one with the Holland and Holland shotguns
though, that's another gun-nut.
The day 500 message is, they didn't do their job. Get ready. Get ready for 3, 6
months or forever. Milne, Ney, and others are preparing for forever... if that
is too much, remember, this too will pass.If you had five double eagles, two
sets of clothing, good boots, a cooking kit, a knife, a canvas tarp, an AR-15
and 100 rounds of SS109, you'd be wealthier that 99 percent of the people in the
world.
If you had a 5 acre spread in the boonies, a well, a two room shack, a wood
stove, Clorox, liquid detergent, a 10 watt solar system, an SSB/CW transceiver,
a shovel, axe, seeds, you could live better than any ancient king.
----------
Y2K not a big deal, can be solved! -----------
You've read the exhortations from Peter deJager, stay the course, code fellas,
we can do it. There have been confident statements that this firm (unnamed) is
doing well or that person (unnamed) works somewhere that's in fine shape. This
counters the rumors that this firm (also unnamed) is toast or that person
(unnamed) sees a train wreck in their future. Or does it?
Let's take a dispassionate look at this. If a firm is doing so well, why not
announce that to the world? I'm feeling goooooood today, I lost a bunch of
weight, found a twenty dollar bill, the minoxidil is working, and geekettes find
me irresistible. On the other hand, if the Viagra isn't helping, the athlete's
foot has spread to my 'recreational body parts', well, would I be running ads to
that effect in the Wall Street Journal? . . . or would I impose a news blackout
and the only way you'd find out about it ... pssssst, don't use my name but the
fat geek has this skin condition... I heard it from my barber who heard it from
his dermatologist.
Every time we hear good news and an independent review is made, it turns out
that someone is wishing real hard. What about the situations where there isn't
an independent review? This doesn't mean that some firms aren't getting the job
done. At the last WDC Y2K, the Y2K VP's from three corporations presented their
firm's Y2K posture and lessons learned. These were: Fidelity Investments,
Marriott, and Fannie Mae. They've been pressing hard, spending the bucks. and
they're not done yet.
Will they make it? Probably. Will they have problems? Absolutely but the
problems should be solvable since they've been pressing hard for years. But what
does this mean about all the other corporations in the world? ... Well,
BankBoston will probably make it.... same with USAA.
What about the others, the ones who haven't come clean? What does the absence of
proof mean? Is this good news or bad? Does this mean it can be solved or that
the wishful thinking goes on a little longer? And yes, even if BankBoston makes
it, if all their trading partners fail, they fail too.
----------- Y2K and you
-------------
The question is, what about you. At 500, it's time to decide for yourself. Has
the government, utilities, transportation, finance, manufacturing,
communications proved to you, beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty,
that they have things under control, that they are on track, and if not,
contingencies and backups are defined, in place, and tested?
Have they done this, do you have evidence that a reasonable man would accept or
are you being asked to 'trust me' but you don't really know who you're being
asked to trust? What happens if it's worse than their guesses? Who loses and
what do they lose? What is at stake? Are we talking about paying $1.98/gallon
for unleaded or slogging over the Shennadoah mountains in mid-winter to escape
the ragtag army of Free Delaware. ...as they sweep west on another campaign to
subdue and loot Appalachia. Darn, only 27 rounds of 5.56 left... make each shot
count. Do you feel lucky today? Well... do you?
--------- What's going to
happen? ----------
Here's my guess. I'm writing it at 1:30 AM, the house is quiet and the night
outside is dark. The systems will begin to fail within 150 days, not the trivial
predictive systems that have been exhibiting problems for the last year, the
critical systems that drive electronic commerce, the complex sets of code that
move the information that causes food, fuel, materials, goods to be scheduled,
allocated, placed where they're needed, when needed.
Most of these failures will not be life critical, DKNY delivers an excess of
size 16 outfits, a shortage of Fruit Loops develops, a VTAM outage causes a 45
day delay in the release of the new Puff Daddy CD. Doesn't matter... or does it?
Does it cause DKNY to bid up the rates for DB2 programmers and hire SQLealers
who would have been completing the Y2K remediation at the Federal Reserve? Does
Kellogs engage Mobil Oil in an open war for geeks?
I'm guessing that it will start in January 1999, the failures and crisis will
become more and more evident throughout the year. The grit will be tossed into
the machinery and it will become worse and worse through 1999. 2000 will be a
mess and just as the systems seem to settle down, 1Q2001 will produce a new wave
of problems as the systems that look back and report on the previous year, are
run for the first time with zero-zero data.
But you know that. What does it mean to you? Well, it depends. I'm guessing that
most people will be able to ride this out in suburbia or a medium sized city...
but know that this is a guess. Know that I am an optimist. There is no reason to
believe that we won't see a complete collapse of civilization. Anyone who says
that things will be fine hasn't got a good sense of history or current events.
History - In the 1970's, I went to Guatemala... it's been in the news lately,
tourists and students killed, robbed, and raped. There's some kind of civil war
going on. Here's the real story, Guatemala is a beautiful land, the people I met
were honest, hardworking. The country is rich in natural resources, the climate
is pleasant, it reminded me of Hawaii. But something's wrong there and it's not
the first time.
I visited Tikal, you've seen it. The jungle planet at the end of Star Wars, the
target of the Death Star, was filmed at Tikal. Tikal was an ancient city state,
the focus of a flourishing Central American civilization; I've seen the
carvings, climbed to the top of the Temple of the Giant Jaguar, put my hand on
the stellae, the lentals, seen the glyphs. One day, something went wrong, and
the civilization at Tikal ended.
On that trip to Guatemala, I toured the capital, took my early morning walks,
bought my trinkets and enjoyed a land that had the best that nature has to
offer. But for the last 20 years, most of the news has been about bandits,
rebels, murder. For 20 years, something has been wrong in Guatemala.
Current Events - Last week a bomb exploded in Northern Ireland. Protestants and
Catholics... this is especially confusing for Americans; to us, those
Protestants are indistinguishable from from Catholics. What do they think of our
AME, Evangelical, Charismatic, Spirit filled, Southern Baptist churches... not
to mention the cross over to Voudoun that sometimes happens ... but maybe we'd
better not get into that. Last week, something went wrong in Northern Ireland.
What will it be like? A collapse and depopulation as in Tikal? 20 years of low
intensity conflict as in Guatemala? Northern Ireland? I don't know... but you
might want to research SO/LIC, Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict. This
could be part of our new world order.
----------- What can you do?
------------
The first thing is, don't be part of the problem. Prepare to go off-grid for
three months, food, heat, light, water. Last week we spoke with people who live
in Florida. After a hurricane came through, they were without power and other
services for 6 months. There was one phone in their community and people were
assigned a date and time when they could make their 10 minute phone call. They
never want to experience anything like that again. They now have months of food,
water, and fuel for their generators (plural) stockpiled. Oh... and remember,
that hurricane did not go though Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Yokohama,
Melbourne or Athens. It just went though a part of Florida and it took 6 months
to restore services.
Once you solve the three month problem. Increase your inventory.
Do you have a plan to work within your community? Do you know who will need your
help most, who has a heart problem, who needs special care, what would you like
to be able to do, when it happens? While making those preparations... keep
telling yourself that it may not be necessary, that you're just doing your duty
for civil emergency and you really expect the problem to last for a few days, a
couple weeks, at most... While you are doing all this, make some plans for
serious problems.
If you have to abandon ship, if you have to run for it, where will you run to?
Do you have a family farm, hunting cabin, or vacation home? Are there supplies
pre-staged there? Supplies sealed in 6 gallon gasketted plastic bins. Do you
have 500 rounds of .22LR and an AR7 in plastic drain pipe and buried in the back
yard? What about medicine, fuel, matches, knives, tools, clothing, batteries.
The list is endless, cover the essentials first.
What can you do to help rebuild? Not because someone said you should... but
because you'd like to live in a functional world. If you're going to be part of
the solution, the first thing is, don't be part of the problem. Don't be one of
those standing in line for the scarce Federal handouts, swiping the Solar panels
that the highway department puts alongside the road to power their emergency
call phones; buying your supplies too late, if you do it now, they have time to
produce more. And don't give up because the job seems too big, because no one
seems to believe you, because you're afraid, because your brother-in-law, the
know-it-all who runs his mouth at family gatherings, points at his ear and makes
circular motions. He's wrong, he'll find out. This is not a matter of faith.
Start with your Bug Out Bag. It's just a spare set of clothes, some money, food,
a flashlight, maybe a sewing kit, a pocket knife, a P38, important addresses, a
pen and paper, what you might need in a sudden emergency. You should be able to
stock it without spending a penny.
Similarly with your house and 3-6 months store of supplies. You should have
those items anyway. If you are buying non-perishables on sale, building an
inventory will save money in the long run. If you make spaghetti once a week,
purchase caselots at a warehouse, it's cheaper that way.
But the most important part of this is to work with others; you can be a lone
eccentric, hiding in the woods, jumping at every sound or you can work within
your community, support your city's civil emergency program, help with
neighborhood watch, help identify potential problems and work for solutions.
-----Team starting up out west
------
Last week, I received a series of emails from a worried guy. Later I received an
email from his pal and I realized that they are in pretty good shape. They're
not in a major Northeastern city. With two of them, they have a much better
chance. They have time to put plans into motion. They have the nucleus of a
team.
This is not about spending big bucks, this is about intelligent preparations,
and working with others. You need someone you trust at your back, someone to
keep watch while you rest... this will not be like anything we've ever seen
before.
This is a discontinuity in time, a peak event, a shift in reality and all of a
sudden, at a minute after December 31, 1999 23:59PM, the rules change. Even if
Y2K didn't take down the computers, there will be unexpected and disturbing
events. The wine and champagne producers are expecting to be sold out months
before Y2K... stock up now, they say. If a significantly larger than normal
percentage of the population will be drunk, what happens. . . .
This Day 500 special WRP has lots of clueless comments from Cory. About all I
can add is an apology to the newsgroup and my readers... What for? I don't know
but I'm sure I've offended someone... well, actually, the point of these
writings is to offend and cause people to question their assumptions, to jar
them out of their comfort zone and stand up for themselves.
Unfortunately, sometimes I get carried away and lean on people too much, so if
I've offended anyone, I apologize... Of course, if I haven't offended you, well,
I'll try harder to needle you next time. With 500 days left, we don't have time
to snooze...
Cory Hamasaki 500 days, 12,000 hours, 135 days until the Jo Anne Effect.
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