Point of View

My three buddies and I cogitate on Y2K

BY CARL HEINTZE

Realizing that this is 1999 and the millennium is now only 10 months away, I've been staring at my computer screens and wondering what Y2K is going to do to me.

Yes, I have three computers and yes, I know I need only one, but that's a whole other subject. Today I'm not concerned with techno-overkill, but with techno-survival.

All the experts keep telling us that Y2K, the inability of computers to recognize that we've entered a new century, is a major techno-disaster.

Computers programmed not to change from 19-whatever to 20-whatever are going to (1) crash; (2) cause whatever they control to crash; or (3) send us back to the year 1904 or whenever computers started logging dates.

So I have been looking my computers squarely in the screen, as it were, and asking them how they are going to behave come Dec. 31. I must say, for devices that are supposed to communicate, they are remarkably uncommunicative. They just stare back blankly giving me neither reassurance or discouragement.

But I think at least one of them is going to make it. That's because it has the much advertised Pentium II inside, a chip that's supposed to be able to handle the seemingly simple task of getting me into the next century.

I'm not so sure about the other two. One is an Apple and Apple insists its computers all know their way around the millennium bug. I hope so, even though I sort of gave up on Apple before Steve Jobs came riding out of the sunset to save the Cupertino kids.

My third computer (no, I insist I'm not boasting, just being honest) is a venerable 486 assembled from components. It chugs along like an old motor boat, clicking and grinding away, still producing data, but at a rate far slower than its Pentium cousin, which does its work mostly in silence.

I have to confess, however, that I'm taking it on blind faith that one or all will get into the year 2000. Like most computer users, I have only the foggiest idea what's going on behind the screen.

My "expertise" with computing ended with my first, an Apple II Plus, the last computer I ever owned that I could program on my own. I use the word "program" loosely because I only programmed the old II Plus once. It was a program written in Basic, and it took me two months to get it to work. After that I let the programmers take over. I just stared at the screen, cursed when things didn't work and came to rely on repairmen when something went wrong.

So as to what dire effects may come to me personally if Y2K strikes any one of my machines, I have not a clue. I sort of maintain my checkbook on one of my companions, but it never balances anyway. Perhaps Y2K would give me a fresh start.

As for word processing, my other big computer task, I can't see how the millennium bug is going to bring me any grief unless it is inserting dates in letters.

I write so few letters these days--having few correspondents who don't use email--that dating missives seems unimportant.

Still, I know Y2K is a big problem, especially to old large systems, like that run by the Internal Revenue Service. Maybe we should all be so lucky as to have our tax returns revert to the year 1904, a date presumably before most of us were born.

And banks and brokers and stock markets and other large financial institutions all are fearful of Y2K because it might disrupt the normal flow of commerce. Airlines fear flight data of all kinds might be compromised by the problem. Frequent flyer miles might, for instance, not be recorded--but then, airlines hate frequent flyer miles anyway,

So I suppose Y2K, no matter how it affects us, is something to worry about--along with a lot of other things the beginning of a new millennium represents. Whether it is a really big worry or one of a number of the year 2000 worries is hard to say. But I will keep staring at my three computer screens nonetheless asking for some reassurance from my three mechanical friends.

I will keep telling them I'm trying to take good care of them. I'm trying not to overwork their circuits, not to overload their memories and, above all, I'm trying to keep them cool.

So guys give me a clue. We're going to get through all this all right, aren't we?

I mean, come on, guys, we are friends, aren't we?

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