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Year 2000 Status
Rollover status
Status of our conversion effort
Lessons Learned
Newsletter Articles
Status of our Year
2000 rollover (as of Jan. 25, 2000):
- No problems with any computers, fax, phone or software
- Our website host service had a problem with the server where our website resides, but that has now been fixed. If that is the worst problem we ever have, we are grateful.
Thanks to all the many thousands of folks around the world who participated in the entire Y2k effort. It was an amazing feat of teamwork as we note in our January 2000 newsletter topic.
Status of our Year
2000 effort:
- All of our computers are Year 2000 compliant.
- We have upgraded all our software to Year 2000 compliant versions.
- We have converted all our databases to 4-digit years.
- We have set our Windows 95 to display 4-digit years and are comfortable with that now.
- We believe that we have done everything we can to make sure our computers are compliant as of October 1999.
- We have inventoried our other electronic equipment (fax, voice mail, etc.) and they appear to be Year 2000 compliant.
What we learned
from our Year 2000 efforts:
- Everything took much longer than originally expected (from double to 10 times as long).
- Once we did a pilot test on our databases, we found that we had far more work than we initially expected. We had many more databases and files to be converted than we originally expected.
- Because of inter-linking databases (i.e., zip code and other cross referenced files/tables), our changes were more complicated than we initially expected.
- As we got into looking at programs, data and reports, we saw little things that we wanted to change as well - adding even more time to the project.
- We found that we had to go into each data file, each program and each report and really look at each field and how it was used. Fortunately, every database we use that has a date field has the word "date" in the field's name.
- Once, we improperly changed a non-date data field to a date format, which caused lost data when we restructured the database. Good thing we did those backups before we started!
- Our primary database software was upgraded to a new version that was Year 2000 compliant. Some of our older databases had not been used for a while. Opening those older databases with the newer software caused the program to abort. Fixing those problems added more time and effort.
- An older custom database reporting system (dBase III+) that we have not used in several years has not been upgraded.
- Since we did our original tests in July 1997, we have upgraded our computers.
- We have yet to determine the total impact on fax machines, phones, voice mail, pagers and other electronic devices.
- We experienced a "jolt" when we realized how different our effort was compared to our original expectations. Now that we've gotten past the shock and taken care of the computer issues, we feel much better knowing where we are and can work toward resolving the rest of the unknowns.
- Our experience seems to be "typical" according to the research we've done.
Newsletter articles
September, 1998 - Update: The Year 2000 Challenge
- Update to the Year 2000 challenge � addressing small business and home computer owners
- Some DOs and DON'Ts
- Risks for small businesses and home computer users
- Rewards of starting early
- Resources - Links to Internet resources on the Y2k issue
July 1997 - The Year 2000 Challenge
- Humor - Fatal Flaw: a little story to set the tone
- The 3 Rs of Year 2000 - Risk, Reward and Resources
- Managing a Year 2000 Project - Tips for Success, Formulas for Failure
- Case Studies - Case Studies of Year 2000 efforts
- Questions and Answers - Frequently asked questions
- Try it for yourself - A few minutes and you'll know about one desktop computer - yours
- Resources - Links to Internet resources on the Y2k issue
- Dave Barry - Comments on the Millennium Bug
This page is http://www.itstime.com/year2000.htm
Page updated: May 11, 2023
