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| Precedent Does Not Console |
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| The Y2K Bug Looms |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, February 24, 1999. The only actual looming horror for the second Millennia celebration is the Year 2000 computer bug. Supposedly, the entire nation will collapse on midnight, December 31, of this year as two decades of crappy computers refuse to acknowledge the new century and propel themselves, ourselves, and our bank accounts and power grids back to the beginning of this one. That would be weird. At the beginning of this century, things were so different. Europe was terrified that a series of wars in the Balkans would drag them all in and wondering how to effect peace in the region. The world's most powerful countries were racked by internal scandals, generally involving sex and reactionary religious elements in palpitations at the thought. So different. Fortunately, we have had a half decade of excessive coverage of this, and our computer nerds - the very ones who created the problem - have been hard at work to correct it, generally at consultant rates far higher than the hourly rates under which they worked to install a two digit dating system. With the warning, surely there has been plenty of time to prepare for Armageddon. Surely. And yet. In Nederland, in Boulder, and one assumes all over the nation, we have all been treated to the sight of favorite local gas stations closed while their gasoline storage tanks have been dug up, replaced or repaired, and set back down under new Macadam surfaces and, often, new pumps. Noticed? A lot of gas stations, all at once, closed and in construction mode. Why is this? We won't like the answer, and we don't like the analogy. Over, what?, seven years ago, law decreed that changes needed to be made in older gas stations to prevent underground leakage of petroleum products into the surrounding ground and groundwater. Responsible, obvious law for the safety of both public and staff at these operations. Every once in a while, we have thrilled to the sight of a service station ablaze from some interaction between a smoker and long dormant fumes under the pumps. And sometimes such excitement happened blocks away as somebody's furnace ignited gasoline in the surrounding ground from the gas station up the street. This was an obviously needed law, uncontested. The gas station owners and we were given seven years to make the changes. The seven years were up in December of 1998. Per statute, the gas stations had to close and not reopen until the tanks were replaced, all the changes made. And what happened. Just a very few scofflaws, chronic malingerers were closed? Not hardly. It sometimes has seemed that half of an area's gas stations were closed while their fuel delivery systems were ripped out and new ones installed. All at the last minute, often past the last minute, and undoubtedly at great overtime expense by the companies who provide the service. No doubt, with time and money considerations, much quality work was lovingly applied to these projects, and we have no need to be concerned that bad pressure connections, or sloppily installed piping, or just shoddy work have cheerfully defeated the ecological and safety concerns that forced the expense and changes in the first place. No need to worry at all. It would be nice to blame this all on a bunch of stupid blue collar gas jockeys who couldn't be trusted to remember their own birthday, but we all know better than that. We know better because we have highly paid computer geeks who cheerfully installed two digit date systems into our computers up to a very few years ago. Did we know that the year 2000 was coming? Did we know that these programs could not adapt to temporal reality? Turns out we did. Turns out that this problem was absently chatted about for decades, and we ignored it. The story is, the cover story, is that these programmers never thought that their machines or software or formulas would still be running thirty years down the pipe, and had assumed that the new programs would take care of it all. This is too self congratulatory, because the other end of that scenario says ' but of course, none of the new people were as smart as we were and they screwed it up!' It doesn't wash. It doesn't wash that a Packard Bell, bought in 1994, was offered for use only for six years. It doesn't wash that newer computers had the same problem. It doesn't wash that none of us thought about it, or demanded that something be done. It doesn't wash that government - the entity most likely to be negatively affected - did nothing until the last minute. And it isn't pleasant to think that even our best minds, the computer programmers operating in a time space continuum that remains to most of us incomprehensible, have the same mental lard butt gene that the Quickie Mart station owner/attendant had. Don't fix it until you have to, till the government makes you, and do it under such money and time pressure that safety and quality remain just as questionable as they were before. |
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