What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

Calendar’s rollover prompts plans and parties among HP 3000 community for night to be remembered

December 1999

Whether you believe the millennium is at hand or not, the weekend at this end of this month calls for special preparation from the HP 3000 community. A random survey of NewsWire readers shows most companies have been working hard to make this New Year a non-event and business as usual. But that’s only because many HP 3000 managers will be on duty or on call across the holiday weekend.
One issue that a few of our respondents raised concerned the idea that a new decade, century or millennium is beginning at month’s end. Technically it isn’t, but that won’t stop celebrations from having greater meaning. And thanks to work already done, it will mean computer systems will be behaving just like this was any other year’s end.

Stan Sieler of Allegro Consultants, makers of the Hourglass 2000 utility, said “I have no trouble celebrating the start of 2000… but I do it because it’s a nice round number, not because it’s the end of the decade (it isn’t), century (it isn’t), millennium (it isn’t) or life as we know it (it isn’t).
“Rather than having every knowledgeable person nod agreement and then continue referring to 2000-01-01 as the start of the century/whatever, I’d prefer those knowledgeable people to actually act on their knowledge! Not doing so simply disparages the value of education.”

Representatives of all three of the popular Y2K checking tools educated us with their plans to be on call over the weekend (Solution-Soft’s Time Machine and OMNISolution’s Time Warp also checked in). Vendors in the 3000 community, nearly unanimously, will be online that evening with extra precautions for downed services.

HP’s Y2K “Goddess” will be working, as will the Indian CSY engineers. The engineers in Bangalore will be among the first to watch the century digits change, along with customers in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. The Y2K Goddess in California will get plenty of reports from the rest of the world, since the digits change almost last in the Western US.

Winston Prather, General Manager
HP 3000 Division
I’m not the big party type. I’ll have close friends and family over to the house for New Year’s Eve. I’d much rather stay home quiet and avoid the crowds. I’m sure somewhere in there we’ll have a toast to the HP 3000 as we move into the next millennium — although most of my close friends are not HP employees, so they’ll wonder why I’m toasting a computer. I’m sure I’ll have a Y2K pager on, but don’t expect any incident with that.

Mariann Tymn, HP 3000 Y2K Manager
HP Commercial Systems Division
I’ll be working from home that night. We want to be there in case anyone needs us. I even have a sign on my desk that says “I’m the [Y2K] Goddess.”

Victor Lu, Systems Manager
Sees Candies
We’re going to get to go home that night and have fun.The 31st falls on a Friday, and the company usually gives that day off. But we’re getting Monday off instead of Friday. Our luxury was that we had a separate HP 3000 for testing, so we were able to do a many different things with dates as we wished to. We’re looking at possibly working on that Monday. I’m doing a little last-minute testing, because we still have the test box.

Birket Foster, Founder
M.B. Foster Associates
We have people on duty, so I’m inviting the tech support staff to come over to my house, and we’ll be monitoring the tech support phones from the pool at a New Year’s Eve party. For those people who think Canada is the Great White North, that pool will not be a skating rink. I’m not sure to what extent alcoholic beverages will be served, just in case. Our largest fear is that some customer somewhere will not have installed the tape we sent them in June of ’98, and ignored the notices we’ve sent them about being on this version for new date formats and functions.

Phillip J. Rupp, Information Technology
City of Santa Cruz, Calif.
My plans are to attend the “First Night” celebration in downtown Santa Cruz on Dec. 31st. In the past we had up to 20,000 people at this event, but this year I’ve heard they are expecting double that number because of the millennium. Since Santa Cruz’s population is only 55,000, that will be a packed house!
Then around 11:30 PM I will walk three blocks to City Hall and wait there until after midnight to see if any problems arise on the HP 3000 or our Novell/NT network. I don’t expect any, but management will feel better knowing that I’m here to be sure things are working as usual on Monday. All of our applications have gone through full-date expansion and off-site testing, so we are confident that this year-end rollover will be just like past years. Good luck to all 3000 sites.

Steven Waters, Systems Manager
CANNEX Financial Exchanges Ltd.
My company is shutting down (all power off) at 9 PM on Friday night so that everything is off for the rollover to the year 2000. Then on Saturday at 7 AM all systems will be powered back up.

Steve Wiemeler
3Com, Mgr. HP 3000 Technical Services
I’ll be working New Year’s Day, 6 AM till whenever. Hopefully I’ll be home for a nice dinner with my family.

Paul Meszaros, President
ORBiT Software
We’re all on call, hanging around. I don’t plan on going to any parties. I plan on being available, and so do our technical people. Our European brothers are also standing by. People have been calling in to ask “Are you guys going to be available?” Of course, we’ll be here. And we’ll even be sober.

Ray Myers, Computer Services Dept.
Vera Water & Power, Spokane, Wash.
I am the Manager for the Computer Services Department. (Hell, I am the department!) We’ll be arriving around 8 PM on December 31st: the general manager, the director for operations, the district engineer, myself and two journeyman linemen. (We want to catch the excitement first from the East coast.) We’ll leave after the New Year rings in, as long as no glitches crop up. We don’t expect any Y2K-related problems.

Paul Vaske, Founder, Vaske Computer Solutions
Myself and four engineers are on call the entire weekend. We anticipate several of our customers to be “baby-sitting” their systems and have offered to provide them with a food tray at their data center.

Mike Hurdle, MPE Systems Specialist, Nortel
We support all the MPE boxes for all the business units of Nortel, about 30 systems. From an MPE perspective, we’ve got three people in three different time zones who will be working a regular eight-hour shift. We’ve got it spread out so we have 24-hour coverage. My big thing I’ve been dealing with, because I’m the patch-master for Nortel, is ensuring we’ve got a quick way of getting the patches down from the Web site with the Patchman tool. I can guarantee you HP is going to come up with patches at the last minute. We’ve got to be ready on our end just like they need to be ready on their end.
I think Nortel is treating the Saturday like a regular day of work. There’s actually going to be production running on that idea, the idea being that if there are problems, they can identify them on Saturday instead of Monday.

Jeff Straw, VP Research and Development
interBiz Supply Chain Group (MANMAN)
I’m sure that people who feel they’ve been singled out by having to work will now discover that they won’t be the only ones in an office. Here at CA, our commitment to providing customer support during this period is very simple. Our support centers will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from December 27 through January 7. MANMAN/HP clients can rest easy and enjoy the holidays as CA’s MANMAN support team will be on the job and available if needed.

T. Keith Robertson, MIS Administrator, ComSonics, Inc.
I am a one-man MIS shop (you’ve heard that before) and of course will be processing end of month on 12/31. I plan to leave by 7 or 8 PM. I’ll dial in around 12:15 AM to make sure everything switched over properly, but that’s about it. Our critical software is all provided by third parties and is all (supposed to be) Y2K compliant. We’re currently on MPE 5.5 PowerPatch 2. We will be on MPE 5.5 Patch 7, or MPE 6.0 Patch 1 no later than the middle of December.

Chuck Nickerson, Founder, Hillary Software
I’ll be watching the fireplace, and my pager. Everyone will be on call, and no one’s flying anywhere. I think we have it covered, but you never know. People sometimes don’t load their updates. We’ve been sending out Y2K updates and following up on the telephone, and some people are telling us they haven’t loaded it yet.

John Burke, Systems Manager, Pacific Coast Building Products
We’re not expecting anything unusual. Assuming agencies responsible for power and communications have done their homework, we’re not anticipating any problems. We’re in the process of upgrading a number of PCs, but even those problems are relatively minor. We may just be at a friend’s house, for something quiet — with pages and cell phones in hand just in case.
Everybody is supposed to be available the next day, and we will do some testing from home, and call anybody in as necessary. Of course, if we can’t test from home, we will definitely be calling people in. As the day wears on during Friday, we’ll be monitoring reports from Asia as far as what’s happening there.

Chuck Townsend, Founder, Legacy/J Software
I was going to go up to Lake Tahoe and go skiing that weekend, and I still may do it. I’m going to do what I did last year and the year before. Nothing new.

Chris Bartram, Consultant, US Mint
At the government, almost all the CIO staff will be in (myself included) over the New Year’s holiday. Final plans are still being ironed out — some machines will be physically powered down overnight, others will be monitored personally. In the Treasury Dept., we have to make a report to Treasury several times (mandated) on Jan. 1 — starting at something like 2 AM — on the progress and any Y2K-related problems encountered.
As an aside, several of the big New Year’s party organizers in the area are holding separate New Year’s parties on Saturday and Sunday nights to assuage the large percentage of the local population (remember the DC area is mostly government or government-related businesses) that will not be able to participate in the Friday night celebration.

Richard R. Egli, VP Operations, The State Bank of La Junta
The plan is to run processing as normal for Dec. 31 (HP 3000 937LX, takes about an hour) and then after processing we are printing a batch of reports that are normally just archived to optical disk. This is just part of our contingency plan in case there are problems. Then it’s off to the various New Year’s Eve parties! We aren’t open on Saturday, since it’s a holiday, but all the officers of the bank are to report to the bank that morning to review reports and the status of utilities and the computer system. We are hoping to be in and out in a couple of hours.

Rebecca Rankin, Founder, ROC Software
ROC Software is welcoming in the new millennium with an End of the Year Celebration! Being extremely confident in our “ROC Solid” products we do not anticipate any Y2K problems; however we will have our superior technical staff available along with additional team members in the event that something unexpected should arise. Customers should find comfort in knowing that we are just a phone call away as we go into the Year 2000.
We are pleased to state that our support team willingly volunteered to be on call and are looking forward to bringing their families together for a night of movies and games! Our contingency plan for emergency backup includes a generator that will supply the power for telephones, e-mail and Web-based information, along with laptop batteries fully charged. We will go into the New Year adequately prepared, beginning New Year’s Eve at 7 AM through New Year’s Day at noon.

Terry Simpkins, Director IS/IT, Lucas Control Systems
We will have many people working on Jan. 1, 2000. Our plan is to come in about 10 AM local time, and hopefully be gone by noon. We will restart any and all machines that were shut down. Run some tests on the operating system and application software to make sure all is well. (This is required by corporate audit, even though we have already tested the shit out of things.)
We also have to “test” the video conference equipment, fax machines, production test equipment, phones, A/C, heating, paging, LAN — you get the idea.

Stan Sieler, Founder, Allegro Consultants, Inc.
Dec. 31 is a normal workday, probably getting off a little early. (Note: tech support will be available via pager/cell phone). On Jan. 1 the entire office will be working (company will provide food/refreshments). We’ve defined a customer priority hierarchy, on the chance that we’ll actually get some support calls. Customers on support have highest priority, followed by prior customers not on support, followed by new customers.

David D. Cruger, Mgr., Technical Operations, JETNET LLC
My New Year’s Eve plans are simple. I’ll be home with my family sipping a cold one. If the world goes down I’m sure not going to be at work. All our mission-critical systems are Y2K compliant, as best we can tell.

Allan Chalmers, IS Manager, Genlyte Thomas Group
Our plan is to close our books for the year on Thursday and Friday, then breathe a little easier. I plan on coming in Saturday, Jan. 1 to check things over. It could be we will have some users in to massage the system too. We are a MANMAN site with Y2K fixes by The Support Group. We have no other HP 3000 software running.

Simon Tsalyuk, President , OMNI Solutions
By virtue of supplying a Year 2000 testing tool, our customers are inquiring about the coverage we’ll provide. It basically precludes me from making a joyous New Year. We’ll be on call during that weekend, and we’ll make additional sites available for people to download a version of Time Warp. Although we don’t promise 24x7 support, given the nature of the beast, we’ll provide emergency level support.

Dean Worden, Operations Manager, Scott & White Health Plan
Although we have tested all of our software on an HP 3000 with its system dates set to various dates in the year 2000 and 2001, we will party hardy New Year’s Eve while watching our systems. We have complete confidence in our testing, but, just in case, we will have a backup complete prior to bringing our systems down at 10 PM. I’m not sure this is necessary but due to the intended refreshments, its probably a good idea. As you probably know, booting a system takes on a whole new meaning after a six pack.

Wayne Holt, Founder, Software Research Northwest
The week of the Dec. 27 (leading to New Year’s) will be staffed at about three-quarters normal. New Year’s Eve will be observed as a holiday. SRN will have special staffing on Jan. 1 and Jan. 2. Several staff members will be on duty each of those days to deal with unexpected Y2K issues which may arise due to testing clients undertake before the work week starts.

Ed Kruczek, Sr. MPE Systems Administrator, Rodale Press
From a company standpoint all we’re doing is letting the system sit that night. We’re not doing any production; we don’t have any to do anyway. We’ll be sitting here online. We should wrap up our processing in the early evening of the 31st, and then pick up again. It’s a holiday, so there will be some light stuff happening on the 1st. It’s a 7x24 shop, but there’s really no plans for anybody being in here on Saturday. There might be some people coming in here to test the software, but we’re pretty confident our applications are ready to go. It’s software from Smith-Gardner, so we’ll be making sure the system and the various utilities and products will roll over properly. We’ve gotten all those on the latest versions of software. Hopefully it will be a non-event.

Paul Wang, President, Solution-Soft
From a vendor’s point of view, we want to make sure we can service our customers during the roll-over. In addition to 24x7 shifts to cover the roll over period, Solution-Soft’s contingency plan calls for two separate T1 lines to the facility with different ISP’s, who share no common access points. We also ordered additional analog phone lines, just in case power outage disables the digital lines. We even arranged with our foreign distributors to host our FTP sites in foreign countries, so users can download our software from other countries if something happens in the USA!
Of course, we will celebrate in the office, too, assuming we are not flooded with customer requests!

Paul Edwards, HP 3000 Certified Consultant
Paul Edwards and Associates
I’m going to party, watch football, consume lots of snacks and beer, and rest up for the pent-up demands for new development to roll in. I’ll check my HP 3000 and PCs here at home, but I don’t expect any problems.

Danny Kitzmiller, Senior Systems Engineer
Virginia Dept. of Mental Health, Mental Retardation,
and Substance Abuse Services
We have nine HP 3000s scattered over the Commonwealth of Virginia. I’m required to be in town on Dec. 31 and come in to work the morning of January 1. I’m already on call 7x24. No partying allowed.

Jean-Yves Raymond, I.T. Manager
Canadian Commercial Corporation
We are not a 7x24 shop, and we will shut everything down Friday afternoon and re-open Sunday morning.

Raymond Legault, System Administrator
We have to check out a few applications on the 1st as well as whether the clock rolled over and the system did not die.

Nancy Lloyd, Manager of Information Systems
Cox Broadcasting, Inc.
I (and members of my Y2K team) will be manning a “command center” at Cox on Friday, Dec. 31 and Saturday, Jan. 1 to monitor events as they unfold.

Mike Tilford, Account Support Engineer
Hewlett-Packard Company
I will be sitting in the HP Falls Church, Va. office when the New Year rolls in. I’m covering the 5 PM to 2 AM shift for the 31st, 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I hope all of you have updated your 3000 systems so the phones will be quiet! <grin>.

Kevin Shepherdson, Mgr., Technical Services
CCK Treasury Systems Pty Ltd.
We are in Perth, Western Australia and I am in charge of Technical Support for the Australia/Asia Pacific region. Our company develops Treasury Management Software for banks and corporates. Our software, called Infinity, runs on the HP 3000. We run a 24 x 7 x 365 Help Desk and we do not expect any Y2K problems. I will be on standby but will only be in the office on 1/1/2000 to check on the hardware.

David Piekarski, MIS Tech Systems, Daimer/Chrysler Corp.
I will be here for DaimlerChrysler, probably Saturday and Sunday the 1st and 2nd. Only planning to be here a couple of hours each day just in case, and will be on call. I was asked not to make any vacation plans during this period.

Donna Garverick, Sr. System Programmer, Long’s Drug Stores
In theory, we don’t have to work Friday night or Saturday. The key MIS folk have been asked to be within one hour of the “general office” (our headquarters, where all the servers are). I am spending the start of the next century quietly, and probably praying —that I don’t have a Y2K emergency to deal with.

Doug Greenup, Founder, MiniSoft
All of the MiniSoft corporate officers are working that weekend. Our employees are off, but we needed technical support for that weekend to cover any Y2K issues that might arise. So myself, Joe Grimm, Mike Sweeney and Steve Chappell will be here at Minisoft, just in case.

Jeffrey D. Elmer, Information Systems Project Manager,
Dairylea Cooperative Inc.
The Vice President of Finance and Administration has decided he doesn’t trust the power company, so we are shutting everything (everything!) down on the last afternoon before the holiday weekend, turning it off, and pulling the plug. After the weekend, we will turn everything back on. We anticipate a quiet Monday of business as usual.

George Willis, Systems Administrator, Fayez Sarofim & Co.
Our company is planning a power shutdown of all of our computing devices, hubs, routers, etc. on New Year’s Eve until sometime on the first day of the year. Then deferred processing will begin.

David Greer, President, Robelle Consulting
I’m going to be here at the house with my family. If it’s a nice evening, the plan is to walk to the beach, eight blocks straight downhill, and go sit on a log and listen to all the boats sound off their foghorns and see the new millennium come in — with the mountains in the background over the water. Part of why I’m in the house, and not up at Whistler skiing, is to be a little closer to home base. Philosophically, when I look back and think where was I when the Year 2000 happened, I felt like I wanted to be in Vancouver. I wanted to be able to tell the grandkids, “Your mom and I went down to the beach and saw the millennium in.”
Business-wise, nobody’s allowed holidays for a 10-day period, and we’ll have people on call 24 hours a day for a five-day period. We’ll make sure our people on call have a backup. We’re not anticipating any problems with our products, but the problems will be because other things are not working — “and good old Robelle’s so friendly we decided to call you.” We’ll be staffed, so it will be easy to get fixes out quickly if need be.

Michael Blackstone, MIS Manager, Casco Products Corp.
Our plans are to have the system shut down, and we’ll come in the next day and start it back up. On Saturday, it’s a holiday for the company, but from an IS point of view we’ll be in for at least part of the day to get ready. We’ll check the system, do backups and do a shutdown.

George Roth, Dir. Computer Services
Umpqua Community College
We will perform our standard full nightly backup on Dec. 29th (the last standard working day of the year for our college) and wait and see. We completed Y2K changes last spring after four years of programming and database changes. We converted to a full MMDDCCYY format everywhere and testing indicates all is okay. We will leave power on through an APC Matrix 3000 (3000VA) UPS. Security staff will page/call/cell phone of any power issues. We will check the system on Saturday. Our biggest worries are with lots of other equipment/systems, not the HP 3000. All network and HP 3000 staff are to be in town and available during this weekend.

Glenn Corbin, Manager Information Systems
Portion Pac (H.J. Heinz)
We have to work on Friday and we get Monday off as a holiday. We have to be in (IT) on Saturday and give management an update by 11 AM. Management believes we can work on Monday, too, and fix problems.

Glenn Cole, Chief Technical Officer, Software al dente, Inc.
I made it a condition of my current contracts that I would not be working during that time. As it happens, I’ll be either on or just returning from a quick (two weeks!) around-the-country road trip. Of course, as soon as I return, no doubt I’ll check in just to be sure that the sky hasn’t fallen (or, being in California, that the ground hasn’t fallen)!

Gene Calai, VP of Information Systems, Quadax, Inc.
Business as usual. We will have two operators here. And a New Year’s Eve party at my house.

Gopi (M Gopalakrishnan)
Project Manager, Operating System
HP India Software Operation
My current plan (as well as for most of us here in Bangalore lab) is to be available for any Year 2000 customers’ escalations; most of us will probably will be at home hoping that HP 3000 customers will not face any Year 2000 problem, and waiting for the beeper and mobile phone messages from our CSY escalation manager.

Matt Henson, NW Medical Information Services
I’m going to buy a six pack of good beer, drive up to the top of one of the local hills and watch the lights go out at midnight! Wish me luck.

Jason Goertz, Developer, ORBiT Software
I’ll be around this New Year’s. We have to be available, although we don’t have to be in the office working, necessarily, until after Jan. 2. [R&D Manager] Mark Klein canceled a trip to Florida, but our QA guy is taking a cruise, I think. His plans were made ages ago, and are non-refundable.

John Bawden, Solutions Specialist, HP IT
I am working for HP (IT customer support for internal applications) and will be working 12-hour shifts on Dec. 31, Jan. 1 and Jan. 2. Damned glad I won’t be around for the Y3K problem.

Cory Black, First Penn-Pacific Life
There will be three or four of us working New Year’s Eve. We plan to watch the clock roll over, restart our NT and HP 3000 systems, run a few tests and go home. The user community will be testing on Saturday, and we have Sunday to fix any problems. Given the amount of testing we’ve done, I don’t see any problems with things under our control.

Alfredo Rego, Founder, Adager
I have worked at home for more than two decades and I tend to lose track of the days of the week (my wife and my children remind me, of course). So, I don’t have to work on Friday night (or on any other night, in fact), although I try to work as much as I can, at any hour I can, on any day I can — including Friday, Dec. 31 and Saturday Jan. 1.
Given the fact that this is a pretty special transition period, I believe that the whole Rego family will stay up (at least) until midnight between Dec.31 and Jan. 1. (In the past, we have tended to sleep through the whole New Year circus.)
At Adager, we have created a reasonably relaxed corporate culture and people tend to go to the office at whichever times are most convenient for them (I rarely go to the office, being more of a hermit or lone wolf). Somehow, the whole thing works remarkably smoothly and everything that needs to be done gets done — quite well, in fact. So, I have no clue regarding how the other Adager folks plan to spend the time around New Year. We will not have a big staff meeting to discuss the subject because I don’t believe we should use the year rollover as an excuse to introduce bureaucracy into our culture.

Cecile Chi, Independent Consultant
I’ll be spending the New Year’s weekend at home, next to the phone and PC-with-modem. None of my current clients are hospitals or airlines or any kind of operation that would endanger anyone by shutting down for a day or two, so phone or power failures won’t cause panic. As for Y2K bugs we missed, well, we have a three-day weekend to fix the problems.

Frank Alden Smith, President, Alden Research, Inc.
I am deserting my post for the Y2K debacle. I will be on holiday in England with friends and family for three weeks when we slip quietly, I expect and hope, into the New Year. How did I get so lucky? Well, for the last six years I have been an MPE/iX instructor for HP. It seems, for some inexplicable reason, very few students have signed up for classes during this time, giving me the chance to sneak off for a much-needed vacation. See you all safe and sound in the New Year.

Toh Tiau Hong, System Manager
Singapore Computer Systems Ltd.
We will be working in full force with engineers stationed 24 hours (rotating) from Dec. 31 at 11 PM to Jan. 3 at 8 AM. We will be providing support in the HP 3000 and HP 9000 operating system, third-party software running on our HP 3000, HP 9000, AS/400, AIX and firewalls, together with CRM products on Applix’s Helpdesk to our existing customers, and those customers not under maintenance support but needing our services (of course with a fee). Another group of engineers will be on stand-by ready to be dispatched to a customer site if needed.
Singapore being a multiracial country, we celebrate various festivals like Christmas, Chinese New Year, Malay New Year, Indian New Year and other festivals (all-in-all we have 11 holidays.) Christmas is the most fun in Singapore, all full of shopping and the whole streets (Orchard Road is our major shopping belt) are full of decorations. As usual, hotels hold New Year’s parties and most Singaporeans will join (not free: it costs about $50 to $80 Singapore per head) starting from dinner and all the way to count down then go “wild” with plenty of music and dancing till 3 AM.
Of course, some will spend their time at home partying all the way till midnight. But this year we know most of the key personnel will be in the office doing the countdown with computers.

Lawrence Sacco, Sr. Programmer Analyst
The Gunlocke Company
I’ll be in touch, online from home. I’m not a huge party-er anyway, but I’ll have a beer or two. We’re probably rescheduling our year-end to get everything out of the way before then. We’ve pretty well tested everything out. It’s MANMAN that we’ve modified. Corporate-wide, we’ll have people manning the command center. We have a limited number of individuals in our facility that will be on-site, mainly the facilities manager and the IT manager. Actually, we’re planning on powering off before midnight.

Glendon Rowe, Programmer Analyst
Humboldt Co. Office of Education
We’ll be coming in on Saturday to see if everything is working okay. I’ll be just staying in town in Eureka here. It’s not a time of year I care to travel.

Steven Escodedo, IT Planner, County of Yolo, Calif.
On that Friday night we’re on call but we’re not going to be staged here. On Saturday morning we’ll be in to check all the system clocks and run some of the system utilities to make sure all the clocks on our four HP 3000s went over the date horizon correctly. We’re pretty secure on the 3000 side.

Brent Jaffe, MIS Manager, Merit Abrasive Products
I’m definitely going to be close by my HP 3000, but still having a good time on the actual evening of the millennium. I’m planning on being at a concert at the Cerritos Performing Arts center, which is just minutes from my house. On my HP 3000 I’m on 6.0, and I’ve got most of the system level stuff taken care of. It’s just my ASK MANMAN software I might have issues and tasks with, but for the most part, things are ready to go. It’s always a busy weekend for me anyway, because it’s the last weekend of the year, and we’re closing out the year. I’ve got two boxes, so I’m able to take one off line and change the dates and horse around. We’ve got two HP 3000s supporting three different locations.

Glen Koster, Sr., Partner, Managed Business Solutions
I’m the fourth tier of backup for HP at Greeley and Sonoma, so they’ll have to go through three levels of employees before they hit me. I was told to kick back, stay home and relax. In the town I’m in [St. John, Kansas] if all else fails, we may only be 1,250 people, but we have our own electrical generator here that’s a completely Y2K-compliant system, because it’s a manual system. Coal supplies are on hand, so we’ll have lights and heat. If my wife goes to bed about 10 like she says she will, I might go sit on the Internet just to see what’s gonna happen.

Gayle Wilson, 3000 System Administrator, Weyerhaeuser
We’re supposed to stick around and not go anywhere, and have whoever’s on call on call. The only person in our group who has a pager is the one that’s on call. Saturday’s not a work day, and they added an extra day off, so we get Monday off as well — just in case there are problems so we can try to resolve them without the whole business being open. I never do anything on New Year’s Eve anyway. Too many crazy people; I stay home, or go to a friend’s house. As far as work goes, on our development box we went from September through March datewise, and ran through everything.

Harry Sterling, Retired GM
HP 3000 Division
I’ll be in Jackson Square in New Orleans, watching the fireworks over the Mississippi River. You can walk around in New Orleans with liquor in what they call “go cups.” I’ll probably have a go cup with champagne, and be with my partner Denny, and friends, watching the fireworks.