Re: y2k reflections -- MIDRANGE-L

I wouldn't quite agree with "no big deal".  We have a Nortel
Meridian I phone system that has voice mail.  While checking
on Y2K compliancy on everything, I found out that the phone
system, bought in 1992, was NOT Y2K compliant.  I told my
boss that we needed to upgrade, and that it was going to cost
him $10,000.  He wasn't too happy about this, since when he
bought it he asked them if it was Y2K compliant, and they
said yes. The phone system is Y2K compliant, it's just the
Meridian Mail that isn't.

He went off to talk to his lawyer, and never got back to me.
I kept telling him he needed to upgrade, he kept putting it off.
Finally, I pick a date and put the date on the phone system to
January 1st, 2000.  Disaster strikes.  Everything going to voice
mail gets routed to the receptionist.  Everyone dialing a number
with no answer, everyone checking their voice mail, etc.. gets
routed to the receptionist.  I tried to log back into the system to
set the date back, but it refused to let me back in.

At this point the receptionist starts answering the phone, "The
voice mail doesn't work."

Finally, after half an hour or so the phone system decides to let
me log back in, and I set the date back to the real date.  Another
10 minutes goes by before it starts accepting voice mail again.  I
decided to try setting the date back to 1972 to see what would
happen, same thing.  This time I was smart enough to not log out
of the phone system, so set the date back quickly.

I go to my boss, "we need to upgrade our phone system, 2 months
ago".  He finally decides to approve it, but now it's too late to get it
upgraded in time before the roll over hits, so I waited 'til the last
week of December, then set the date back a month.  Everything was
perfectly fine, 'til 2 days ago.  Then the voice mail system thinks it's
memory is full, and no one can leave a message to anyone.

I called the people upgrading our system, and then have a technician
dial in, she sets the date to December 31st at 11:00 and has everyone
delete all their voice mail.  Then sets the date back a month again. Now
everything is fine again.

Still waiting on the upgrade, but, what if I hadn't showed my boss it
would not work?  What if we thought there would be no problems at
all?  January 3rd would of hit and no one would of gotten voice mail
at all. The receptionist would of been induated with voice mail phone
calls and become next to worthless to us for actually answering incoming
calls.

By no means was Y2K all hype.  There were definite problems that
had to be addressed.  Most businesses were smarter than my boss,
however, and actually paid to get them fixed.

Regards,

Jim Langston

Carl Galgano wrote:

> Nina:
> I usually don't pile on with "me toos", but you are so right.  Lots of hype,
> some application problems, but for the most part no big deal.  I have some
> older PCs at my office and they did fine.  I also had to use the old DATE
> DOS command, but after than things are fine.  I feel sorry for John Rocker
> of the Atlanta Braves.  Since the media doesn't have Y2K to report on ad
> nauseaum, they are beating him to death.  Idiots and ignorant people say
> stupid things, end of story.... time to get on with life.
> CJG

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