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GPS to stop working on April 6th 2019 ?

I was a Interconnect technician for a small telecom/computer sales company. I tested all of our systems for Y2K and all were compliant. When a customer called, I would tell them that, unofficially, everything was fine. If you want me to do a test on your system after hours, it was $100 plus labour. You wouldn't believe that number of companies that still wanted the test. Some of the older Key systems didn't even have a clock! Still wanted the test even when I pointed out that their system didn't know what time it was. Was a money maker for my boss.
 
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Y2K was a joke. I was forced to go out and purchase a generator in mid December. It was not even needed.
I had to pay an licensed electrician to install an automatic transfer switch and worked just fine when we had power failures. The power would drop out and the generator would start and run for two minutes before and then the transfer switch would connect to the generator.
 
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During Y2K, we lived on an acreage with a small house heated with a wood stove. All of our friends came over to visit on New Years Eve. About 1 AM when the lights were still on, they went home. Better safe than sorry I guess. Power doesn't matter with a wood stove. I still miss the warm dry heat it gave off. ?
 
Oh man.....the Y2K bug......that was a serious pain for a lot of nothing. Lots of long nights leading up to it.
I certainly do NOT mean to be offensive, particularly to Fred, since I'm pointing this out on your post.

I worked in the IT industry nearly 40 years, Y2K was a Non-Issue because so many IT professionals spent long months reviewing (modifying & testing) computer program logic, long before that night arrived. In our Hospital Environment, we averted major problems by following this course of action. I was aware of Many other industries, all doing the same thing.
Hence the Appearance of "a lot of nothing" (and that was our goal to make it that way!!!).

Many folks who make these comments have little or no understanding of the problem. Many of these systems were coded in the COBOL or PL-I programming languages. Because most programmers, particularly in the 70's, 80's and yes, even the 90's did NOT account for the Century... it was always assumed "19". Dates were typically stored and compared as a six digit number (YYMMDD, YY=Year, MM=Month & DD=Day). So, when the machine looked at a date all it would see is [19]991231 (the "19" was 'invisible'). On the night of Y2K, the machine then thinks the date is 000101. The problem arises when the machine compares dates. The year 991231 is Greater than 000101, however, if you put this compare in proper context using the Century, 19991231 is Less than 20000101. As mentioned above, many applications (including the OS and COBOL/PL-I compilers) didn't accommodate Eight digit (CCYYMMDD) dates. All these date compares and file structures had to be changed to handle Eight digit dates.
We had Billing systems, Registration and Scheduling systems, Lab-Radiology-Pharmacy systems that were all loaded with six digit date logic. If left unchanged, these would have posed very serious issues.

BTW - New to the forum and I apologize if this seems confrontational or petty... but this issue is a pet peeve of mine and I mean for this to be educational.
 
I certainly don't take any offense. As I stated, I tested every one of our Key Systems to ensure that they would be OK on Jan. 1 2000. The people who wrote the code obviously took this into account, which is why none of our systems that accounted for date were affected. The older systems (Panther...) really didn't even understand what a date was, so they couldn't have a problem. Even the Smart-talk systems worked!
 
Nah, no offense. I just meant it was aiot of work fixing such a seemingly small item that ended up being a non-issue BECAUSE of all the work. We saw it coming years in advance, and as I said in another post we started working on it a year in advance. The frame guys had it tougher....our systems were all midrange. Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, SGI Irix, SunOS, Auspex, and a few old Linotype **** running raw AT&T Sys5. In most cases it was vendor supplied patching, testing, more patching, testing....setting up an NTP server and doing rollover testing.....but even our frames weren’t that bad, being all SystemZ so we had IBM doing the heavy lifting on that one.

I appreciate the explanation but it was unnecessary if directed toward me. I fully understood the issue.
 
On the lead up to Y2K I worked for a very large mail order company at their head offices in Manchester, England, as a statistician. Some weeks before Y2K the company decided to have a test Y2K event to check how all the back-up generators would function and any impact that the event would have on systems including the mainframe and all departmental servers. My job as a statistician was to compile the results of the test to report to the company directors and advise on any actions (from a statistical point of view) that they may need to consider come the actual Y2K event. There I was in the statistics department doing my thing. I got so bored that I went out for a smoke and a chat while all the computer personnel were sweating and having panic moments. There was absolutely nothing to report...it was a non event just the same as the actual Y2K event. Easiest bit of overtime I've ever had.

Incidentally, and not linked to Y2K, a month or so later I had to report to the directors on another issue that ultimately led to mass redundancy (me included) and the eventual demise of the business. It wasn't Y2K that killed the business...market forces saw to that.
 
I certainly do NOT mean to be offensive, particularly to Fred, since I'm pointing this out on your post.

I worked in the IT industry nearly 40 years, Y2K was a Non-Issue because so many IT professionals spent long months reviewing (modifying & testing) computer program logic, long before that night arrived. In our Hospital Environment, we averted major problems by following this course of action. I was aware of Many other industries, all doing the same thing.
Hence the Appearance of "a lot of nothing" (and that was our goal to make it that way!!!).

Many folks who make these comments have little or no understanding of the problem. Many of these systems were coded in the COBOL or PL-I programming languages. Because most programmers, particularly in the 70's, 80's and yes, even the 90's did NOT account for the Century... it was always assumed "19". Dates were typically stored and compared as a six digit number (YYMMDD, YY=Year, MM=Month & DD=Day). So, when the machine looked at a date all it would see is [19]991231 (the "19" was 'invisible'). On the night of Y2K, the machine then thinks the date is 000101. The problem arises when the machine compares dates. The year 991231 is Greater than 000101, however, if you put this compare in proper context using the Century, 19991231 is Less than 20000101. As mentioned above, many applications (including the OS and COBOL/PL-I compilers) didn't accommodate Eight digit (CCYYMMDD) dates. All these date compares and file structures had to be changed to handle Eight digit dates.
We had Billing systems, Registration and Scheduling systems, Lab-Radiology-Pharmacy systems that were all loaded with six digit date logic. If left unchanged, these would have posed very serious issues.

BTW - New to the forum and I apologize if this seems confrontational or petty... but this issue is a pet peeve of mine and I mean for this to be educational.
I'd agree, it presented many money making opportunities; several Finance and Mortgage companies ramped up on IT staff a few years prior to Y2K. The outcome overall wasn't a major ordeal... wasn't difficult to write ft end modules (Cobol, etc) processing logic for Century based on 2 digit year and pass values of 8 digit. The DOB, Loan date, mature date... simple logic to process. Federal Govt systems continue to still have core data in 6 digit years being converted to 8 digit for newer system files. For many Govt systems not yet converted, it was more of a challenge beginning after 2000, such as 2005 for DOB or Historical records; record could be 1905 or 2005. This never got much post-2000 media attention because the "feared stroke of midnight" ticking into 2000 didn't result with any major issues, it basically faded away while the IT conversions continued. The lead up to Y2K fed the media and many service industries for years & $$.

On years... began your IT career at a young age of 9. Emoticon indicates 49.
 
There was a lot of fear generated by the Y2K Crisis. My mother in law was on an oxygen concentrator machine and she was the reason all of the money was spent on the transfer switch and generator. I have been involved with computers back when the Heath Z80 was the only game in town. I have never seen a program that would not operate unless the date was set. The local utilities had pretested this situation and found it to be a non-issue. None the less my Mother-in-law was set just to ease her mind. Nothing worse than a panic attack in the elderly. She wanted me to stand guard for her while the problems were supposed to happen.
 
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Great to see your verification, now relax til the 3rd one in 1024 weeks, or 19.7 years! Maybe all new hardware by #3 that can go 2048 weeks!

I won't be too co concerned for #3, in my 80's probably little more concerned for old man sh-arts!
 
Flew yesterday after 13 days of idle, within one minute my H had 17 sats and within 2 minutes my ST had 11.
Flew around look at alligators.
I am reviewing where I may have caught on video one of the albino alligators.? ?
My wife pointed it out. I'll see what the wildlife folks first say here at Lake Apopka?
My wife and I are involved with minor research for Lake Apopka in conjunction with the University of Florida.:cool:
 
......I may have caught on video one of the albino alligators.? ?......

If that pans out, post it......I’d like to see that! ?
 
Just updated my phone, and noticed that 5G is now live. Apple has been the biggest loser in this race, but I guess apple now supports it.
 
No, nothing uses it yet. It’s a marketing thing....just “enhanced LTE”.....not really 5g.
 

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