November 1999
Employee profile: Roland Barefoot
Furman Forum
What is your opinion of the proposed retirement center?
United Way campaign
Furman set giving record.
Innovision awards
Furman honored with local technology award.
Around campus:
News from university departments
Milestones:
New employess, promotions, anniversaries
InsideFurman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
Y2K: Biggest fear is fear itself
By Richard Nelson, director of Computing and Information Services
Friends and acquaintances that know that I "work with computers at Furman" have been asking me what I am doing to prepare my home computers for the "Millennium Bug." I respond to them that we’ll have to wait another year to see what the new millennium brings, but I suspect that they really want to know how the Nelson family is preparing for Y2K. If you are wondering how much money we’ll be withdrawing and where we’ll be hiding it, don’t bother to read on. You won’t find the answer here!
I did an inventory of all the things under my control that could be affected by the fact that some computers and computer programs (1) do not recognize that January 1, 2000, comes after December 31, 1999, and (2) mistakenly assume that the year 2000 is not a leap year. The obvious first thing to check is the home computer. I have two. One is a Packard Bell (75mhz Pentium, vintage 1995) and the other is an HP Vectra 500 series (120mhz Pentium, more than two years old, therefore, obsolete.) I’d love to have an excuse to replace these but, sadly, Y2K is not good enough and won’t pass muster with my wife!
I tested both of these computers by setting the date and time to December 31, 1999, 11:59 p.m., and watched to see if they rolled over correctly. The HP system did. The Packard Bell looped back to midday! I then set the Packard Bell, manually, to January 1, 2000, and everything worked fine. Both computers were able to roll over from February 28 to February 29. The moral of the story is, find something better to do than play with your computer at midnight on December 31. The first time you use your computer in the New Year, check the date and time and reset it, if necessary.
I have also checked to make sure that Lotus Notes will allow me to set up an appointment for February 29, 2000. Perhaps we should make it an official university holiday, just in case. Quicken and my various Excel applications seem to work. I have not bothered to check my VCR, since it synchronizes with the signal from SCETV. Nothing else in my home is date/time sensitive (except my wife, on birthdays and anniversaries).
As far as all the other scary stuff is concerned, my biggest fear is that too many people believe it and will strip the stores of food and empty all of the ATMs. Should that happen, I might just bring my family out to Furman. They seem to be adequately prepared!