International Murphy's Day [was: Discussion point: Telco quality?]

Tue Oct 13 01:51:13 UTC 1998

At 07:53 PM 10/12/98 -0400, cache22 wrote:
>> Subject: Re: Discussion point: Telco quality?
>> Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 23:02:02 -0700
>> From: "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer at mhsc.com>
>> To: David Lesher <wb8foz at nrk.com>
>> CC: nanog at merit.edu (nanog list)
>> References: <199810110142.SAA17274 at condor.lvrmr.mhsc.com>
>> 
>> At 10:24 PM 10/10/98 -0400, David Lesher wrote:
>> >Unnamed Administration sources reported that Roeland M.J. Meyer said:
>> >> >Are there things that can happen to both which will really ruin your
day?
>> >> Yes.
>> >>
>
><snip>
>
>> >But such will never happen, so we can all rest easy....right?
>> 
>> Cascaded failures will do it. aka Murphy having a party.
>> 
>
>-----------------------------------------------
>
>Big Party!  International Murphy's Observance Day!
>
>January 1, 2000
>
>Everyone's Invited -- Location to be Announced!
>
>-----------------------------------------------
>
>or will it be International Murphy's Observance Year?
>
>
>recent y2k news:

Murphy Day observations will occur at your local Federal office and State
government agency locations.

>amazing performance from sbc! (sw bell & pacbell)
>
>http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/2506

I can't speak about the others, but I do know something about PacBell's
efforts. Not all the efforts were written directly to the Y2K effort. Many
changes and improvements were written against the HFC broadband project.
There are  a *ton* of programmers working on this. They also re-assesed
their PC deployment and started the Standard Desktop effort. This is
actually written off as normal capital upgrades. It's just that they are
also Y2K compliant. This has been happening since before Aug95. Most of the
servers are HP-UX and basic Unix is known not to have the Y2K problem.
ELMOS and other databses are a problem that they've been working on for a
long time now. Bill* is a complete re-write of the billing system by
Andersen Consulting. Ergo, Gary North's tongue-in-cheek comments abourt
PacBell are not really called for. They have been working on the problem
diligently and are an example of how this type of problem should be
handled, IMHO. The USG should be in as good a shape, but they're not.

___________________________________________________ 
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) 
e-mail: <mailto:rmeyer at mhsc.com>rmeyer at mhsc.com
Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com
Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site: <http://www.mhsc.com/>www.mhsc.com/
___________________________________________ 
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
                -- Marvin Minsky