Dads stories

1^st January 2000 – letter to Harald:

 

The new year is quite nice, so far (2:09am). The big computer bug is, as expected, a great to do about nothing. Oh well, Inge won’t agree! She and Dennis and our Peter are continously on call. Peter works for a large powerworks, also as team lead of a Programming Team. I wish my german was better then I could express myself better.

 

1^st  January 2000 – letter from Inge.

 

Happy New Year/Century/Millenium to you all!

And what a wonderful peaceful start to the new Millenium! Dennis and I (or mainly I) have been watching the ABC TV extravaganza from beginning to end - with only a short "sleep" break in the middle.

Several thoughts come to mind:

1. The hard slog over the last 2.5 years seems to have paid off at XXXX - no y2k bugs discovered so far. I received a couple of phone calls this morning to give me the all-clear. However - don't want to tempt fate by celebrating too early - our main weekly/monthly/yearend processing cycle starts on Tuesday Night. Also - seeing this is a public holiday - the rest of the systems will start getting hammered only from Tuesday Morning. Also - there are quite a number of dates which caused y2k problems and for which we had to test. The most problems were caused by dates around the 29th of February. A century should normally not be a leap year. However - if it is divisible by 400 then it is. Most of our Programs couldn't cope with the year 2000 being a leap year. This little problem also causes trouble for 31/12/2000 - some programs calculate number of days in a year and if they don't recognize the leap year then this also causes problems. I know from personal experience how many y2k bugs we had to fix. Hence it is irritating to hear people now say that the y2k thing was a huge IT hoax. This has always been a project where it is hard to win. If there are no problems - people begin to question the amount of money spent. If there were problems - then people would complain that we hadn't done our job. Hence I think the whole world owes a great Thank You to the very many people who have been working around the clock to remove the bugs so that we could all enjoy this wonderful beginning to the New Year.

2. It was great to see the entire world celebrating and being united. The commentator on Channel 2 also made a remark that this was the longest programme ever delivered and - it was the first time that a TV channel had nothing but GOOD NEWS to report in an entire 24 hour period. To cap it all off - there was a short news break to announce the freeing of the hostages! The Program was brilliant. I was glued to the set. I wish you all a very happy Year 2000 and hope that we continue to enjoy a y2k-bug-free environment! Love, Inge.

 

2^nd January 2000 – letter from Dad to Harald.

 

Lieber Harald, vielleicht interessiert dich das. Peter. (Dear Harald, maybe you are interested in this)

 

Dear Inge,

 

Thanks for the nice letter you sent everybody. Mum and I agree wiht you. All the disappointing new Years Eves bevore have been forgotten! I thought some of that stuff was outright stunning, the things they did at the Opera House and the Legs on the Wall. Hans Michaels, a friend from the Opera House in Düsseldorf rang me and said he never has seen Fireworks like the one in Sydney. Well neither have I.

 

But apart from the stunning performances and the fireworks, I really liked Melbourne better, not so much for what they did here in Melbourne, but the city itself. What a wonderful, majestic city we have got here. I have always claimed it is the most beautyful city in the world, an I believe I was right.

 

As to the Big Bug, you and the people working with you have to be praised and congratulated. I know, I have been a bit synical about it all, and I just didn't believe that the world would go under, as even some of the media poeople must have done. In that sense, I agreed with Maxime whatshername on the Telly, she reckoned that the whole thing was a bit of a hype. I never thought that the work done to fix this unbelievable situation was for nothing, not a minute. If it wouldn't have been taken as serious as it had than the world would not have quite gone under, but almost.

 

The painful thing for you will be that now, as everything went as smoothly as it did, some people will be critical and think it all unnecessary. I don't know what advice I could give you for that. You will have to be prepared and find a way to cope. Prayer will help in a situation like that, never forget that. From case to case you will find advice within you as to how to deal with the situation.

 

As to the leap years, I can't quite understand that there now are still problems with the years 1600, 2000, 2400 and so forth. Ther Gregorian Callendar is quite clear about this. I am getting a bit disappointed with the programming professinon. Windows 98 have a situation in which it deals with two digits years in that it decides to put anything before 1931 into the year 2000, that is the year 30 (my birth year) is the year 2030. I just am flabberghastet by that. How can there, after all that, still be two digits years. As a result, of course, in the program I am working on, Mum and I are borne in 2030, never mind what I do! Even so my instructions and whatever are four digits.

 

Another thing is, that Microsoft states that the callendar on which their dating is based, is the Gregorian Callendar, which started towards the end of the 16th century. Up until then we had the Julian Callendar (named after Julius Ceasar, who, himself a mathematician among other things, got the callendar started at the year naught). Well, that's OK. BUT, Borland now, in Delphy, and no doubt in other programs, continued their callendar right back to the year zero, which of course is wrong. The Julian callendar does not have the correction factor of not calling centuries leap years (which Ceasar actually invented). It has a leap year every forth year, never mind what. Which caused the callendar to be out by quite a bit in 1500, hence the Gregorian Callendar which replaced the old one towards the end of the 16th century.

 

Are those clever computer programming people actually stupid?

 

Well, all the best to you and Dennis. I have corrected the addresses of both Michael and Peter and send them a test mail.

 

Mum and Dad.

 

6^th January 2000 Email to Harald.

 

Also doch! Im momentanen Klima der Miseprime die nun auf die "Verschwendung" hinweisen vielleicht eine kleine Erleichterung.

 

Ich hab Sophie's World angefangen zu lesen

werd mich melden

 

Peter

 

Translation( so..after all! In the current negative climate which is pointing to waste of money maybe a bit of release.

I have started reading Sophie’s world. Will soon be in touch.

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Inge

To: Dad

Sent: Thursday, 6 January 2000 01:57

Subject: the bug is biting

 

Good Morning,Well ... the bug started biting here last night and has continued to sting us during the day and tonight. Nothing very damaging but ratherm irritating.I am still at work waiting for the results of another patch. I'll try and call you on the way home. Have a nice night/morning/day. Love, Inge.

 

17^th January 2002 Email to Harald.

 

Eine Stimme aus der Wüste   Peter

 

Translation: a voice out of the desert. Peter

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Inge

To: Dad

Sent: Monday, 17 January 2000 08:17

Subject: FW: The heroes of Y2k

 

Hi Dad, here is someone else tyring to tell the world why things went so smoothly! Love, Inge.

 

--Y2k News 11 January 2000  COMPUTERWEEK

The heroes of Y2k By Judy Backhouse

 

The truly crazy headed for the hills with fortified bunkers and ammunition.The more cautious bought water and tinned food. Even the most optimistic drew some extra cash the week before. Everyone speculated about the outcome. But in the IT world, we worked. We checked code. We corrected code. We tested code. We rolled dates forward and backward and forward and backward until our nerves were paper-thin. We upgraded hardware. We upgraded operating systems (to cope with the new hardware). We upgraded compilers (to cope with the new operating systems).  We modified more code (to cope with the new compilers). And then we began the cycle again of testing and rolling forward and testing and rolling backward.

We initiated great, complex Y2k projects. We compiled project plans. We filled in endless forms about the state of our Y2k projects. We  wrote monthly reports about the progress of the Y2k projects. We went to meetings where we were told how the future of the company depended on the Y2k project being completed in time.  We dealt with panicked business people. We soothed troubled nerves at dinner parties. We were asked to predict the outcome by distant cousins who knew we were "in IT". We became overnight experts in the working of diesel generators, photocopiers, motor vehicles and washing machines. And, collectively, we averted the disaster. Like superman of old, the IT professionals of today managed to intercept nothing less than the end of the world. In an industry where projects run notoriously over the most pessimistic time estimates, we met the deadline. The clocks ticked over to the year 2000 with nothing more than minor hitches.  And were they grateful?

Did the world thank us and laud us as the heroes we quite clearly were?

No!

They turned around and called it "all hype". They questioned the money spent. We did our jobs so damned well that the only question remaining was whether there had been any need to do the job at all.

So, to all those IT people out there who slaved away at the Y2k problems over the past few years, who endured the pressure of fearful but helpless managers; who lost endless sleep testing things at night because there wasn't a separate test machine; who cancelled their December leave; who couldn't be in exotic places to welcome the start of the new millennium; who stayed sober on New Year's eve because they were on standby; who went to work on the 1st and the 2nd to boot up the machines - I say put your feet up, pat yourselves and each other on the back and go and get some much needed sleep with a smug smile on your face. We did it.

The IT people across the planet are heroes - even if unsung ones. Like housework, what we do is not appreciated unless we don't do it. But

like the housewives of old we go on doing it, knowing that it is good,honest, necessary work - and that it gives us inordinate power. So, my fellow programmers, system administrators, database administrators, operators, analysts and support staff - congratulations on a job well done. Ours may be the youngest profession on the planet, but this 21st century belongs to us.