Greetings!

The Year 2000 issue, or Y2K as it is commonly referred to, means many different things to many different people. For some it is Chicken Little - or the sky is falling!! For others it is an inconvience that keeps interrupting their favorite TV program.... 

While there is probably no one, single, good answer to the question - What is Y2K? a short answer is that Y2K is the concern with the ability of our time keeping (read that computer and data systems) equipment to keep and record accurate time past the year 2000. Why the fuss? Well, again in short, many computer and time keeping systems today keep the year in two digits - much as we do when writing a check or date - 23 Feb 99 - vice writing out the whole 23 February 1999. The big fuss comes into play when you consider that the year 2000 that would be 23 Feb 00. Ok, no big deal - unless your bank is charging you interest on your loan since your last payment - which in this case the computer would consider was 100 years late!!! Oops!! That is just one, off the hat, example of the sort of issues that people are considering as part of what we call Y2K. There are many others such as will traffic lights work - and if so correctlly?? Will heart monitors and hospital communication systems function so they can dispatch the ambulance? Will the police radios function correctly so they can call in incidents? While the answer to most of these questions is yes life will go on, the crux of the Y2K issue is to make sure they do - and do so correctly without significant disruption to our daily life... 

These few pages are designed to help people work through some of the various Y2K issues. While not containing detail about every possible instance (impossible to do), we hope that over a period of time we will grow to have some specific problem areas covered here - and more importantly - some of the issues and ways to prepare before Year 2000. 

Some of the starting points we have placed on-line are: