I admit it. I must carry some of the blame for the Y2K situation.

My first professional experience found me working on a mainframe the size of a walk-in closet with monster memory (an enviable 32K). Ours was a public utility, which billed 100,000 customers on a monthly basis. Being new on the block, and blond to boot, I felt free to ask the dumb question "Why do we store the due date as YYMMDD? Won't there be a problem come the turn of the century?" My mentor responded, "With each bill comes a due date. With each due date comes a due year. With each due year comes a 2 character century. That's 100,000 19s that would have to be pushed through a machine meant to handle only 32,000 characers. It's the 70's! How much of a difference do you think all those 19s will make this year? Or next year? Or even the next decade? Never forget that all systems become obsolete within 5 years. There's plenty of time to deal with the century during any number of rewrites between now and the time I retire."

Being a man of his word, he retired.....I'm still here.

Our staff has completed the 18 months of work on time and on budget. We have gone through every line of code in every program in every system. We have analyzed all databases, all data files, includeing backups and historic archives, and modified all data to reflect the change.

We are proud to report that we have completed the "Y-to-K" date change mission, and have now implemented all changes to all programs and all data to reflect your new standards:

Januark, Februark, March, April, Mak, June, Julk, August, September, October, November, December

As well as:
Sundak, Mondak, Tuesdak, Wednesdak, Thursdak, Fridak, Saturdak

We trust that this is satisfactory, because to be honest, none of this Y-to-K problem has made any sense to us. But we understand it is a global problem, and our team is glad to help in any way possible. And what does the year 2000 have to do with it?

Speaking of which, what do you think we ought to do next year when the two digit year rolls over from 99 to 00?

We'll await your direction.

Sincerely, Your Tech Support Team

I'm not worried...