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> Marling McReynolds wrote:
>
> I have a question for the better computer literate out there.
> On another listserv I get someone mentioned a problem which might
> occur before 1Jan2000.
> April 9, 1999 will be the 99th day of that year. Some old computers
> used the number of the day of the year instead of the month/day#,
> thus April 9, 1999 would be 9999. Also, some of these computers
> use 9999 as "end of line" or "end of trans". Could some computers
> which have never been updated crash on April 9, 1999, before the
> Y2K hits?
>
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No! Your reasoning is incorrect. On my computer, the number for
April 9, 1999 is "36259". Day "1" is January 1, 1900 (long before
computers existed). This is how most of our machines perform
calculations involving dates, such as the number of days between dates,
etc. The numbers do not start over at the beginning of a year, there is
some first day number established way back there where it doesn't make
any difference. Easy to determine the start date and number for any date
on your computer. Use most any spreadsheet application such as Excel,
enter the date in a cell and change the format to "number" or enter the
number and change the format to "date". This might be a good way to
check to see if your machine is Y2K compatible. Enter December 31, 1999
and determine the equivalent number, then enter January 1, 2000 and, if
compatible, the number should be one more that the 12/31/99 number. On
my machine I get 36525 and 36526 respectively. The 36526 is regardless
of whether I enter the date as 1/1/00 or 1/1/2000 or Jan 1, 00. I agree
with a previous comment that most of the hoopla has been to generate
business. Seems to me that the individual PC owner can in most cases
easily overcome the problem. Bring all dependent files up to date as of
12/31/99 and save the file. Start the next day with the baseline from
the previous day (i.e., as if you made an investment for example on that
day). You can then just input the dates as if you were still in the 20th
century. You computer nerds out there, am I correct?
Just an interesting tidbit. Did you know that the year 2000 is
not a leapyear? Our calendar correction of an extra day every 4 years is
not quite accurate. The error accumulates so that every 200 years we do
not have a February 29th. I'm not sure, but I think there are
additionally corrections required at other large time intervals. I
guess the Feb 29th leap year babies will have to go 8 years without a
party!
