What is the Year 2000 bug (or, Y2K as we call it in Geek Land) and how does it affect the real estate industry? Is the sky really falling, or is Chicken Little simply pumping up the hype? Should you delay your flight home or take all of your money out of the bank? Will everything come to a stop - or worse - on January 1, 2000?

The answer depends upon how prepared you, or more accurately, your computers are for the changeover to the new millennium. If you are not sure that either of you are prepared, then read on and discover what you need to do today to outsmart this long-dormant computing bug.

What exactly is the Y2K bug? In a nutshell, it is a 30-year old time-bomb that we thought we would have defused ten years ago but haven't and only have two years before it goes off! It goes something like this: In the early days of computing, when computers had less memory than most of today's wristwatches, software programmers had to cut corners to conserve memory for really important tasks. So they decided to leave the first two digits of the year off when recording the date. So "1970" was recorded in the computer as simply "70" and two digits worth of space was conserved. Now that might not seem like a lot of space, but consider that a date can appear again and again in millions of lines of code - say, in a program which tracks credit card transactions or weekly social security contributions. Conserving two digits each time - for trillions of transactions - really added up!

As computing power expanded over the last 30 years, more features and calculations were added to the programs but nobody changed the convention of storing years in two-digit formats. In fact, because programming was so "personal," each programmer could make unique little changes as well, so large software files often became entangled with various methods of calculation - kind of like 20 different people working on the same quilt over 20 years - and the mess grew.

However, nobody was concerned about the problem because everybody thought that somebody would come up with a silver bullet long before the end of the century. The flaw in this thinking, though, was that nobody did! In fact, there is no such "single solution" to the problem because there are thousands of different programs - with different programming styles inside - and there is not simply a "search and replace" feature that can update them in one single command!

To further complicate the problem, the 50-something-year-olds who were programming these products thirty years ago are, well, thirty years older. Even those that are still around do not remember how they did it - or have any idea how to fix what has become a patch-work of coding since then! So the problem has become something like an archaeologist trying to decipher an ancient riddle in time to prevent a nuclear disaster in less than two years (well, not quite so dramatic, but something like that)!

Okay, so there's the problem - or part of it. Actually, the problem is not only with computers. As it turns out, computers are the easiest things to fix in this mess, if anything is going to be easy at all. Most laptops and desktops can be updated somewhat easily with software fixes downloaded from the Internet. Most word processors and spreadsheet programs are already Year 2000 "compliant." And when Windows 98 comes out, the millions of Windows 95 users will become Year 2000 compliant simply by upgrading. Yet the problem is not just inside your computer.

It's inside everything! Think about this: Almost every electronic product in our lives has "embedded chips" (sometimes thousands of chips) that control how it operates. Many of these chips are programmed to do only one thing: If this happens, then do this. For example, a simple chip in your home's thermostat works on a simple logic that says "If the temperature drops below 65, then turn on the heating unit to raise it to 70." Sounds simple, right? Well, what if your thermostat has a chip that says "If the date is Thursday, (or Thursday, the 20th of March), at 3:30 p.m., and the temperature is below 65, then turn on the heater and raise the temperature to 70 degrees." If this is the case, your thermostat has an embedded chip that works not only conditions of the temperature but of the date and time as well! And it's not just your thermostat that works this way. It's your coffee pot, VCR, home alarm system, even your alarm clock that does what it does as a function of the date and time!

What devices might be affected? Well, everything from your office's sprinkler system to your car's airbag to your heart's pacemaker can be affected by the change to a "00" date. It's almost impossible to list everything that might malfunction or stop altogether when the clock ticks double-zero on that fateful day. And to make matters worse - yes, they can be worse - it all might happen before the end of 1999!

Not only might the millions of computers and embedded chip products go crazy on the new year, they actually might start practicing their mayhem three months ahead of schedule. How might this happen? Well, consider this little-known function of many embedded chips: If you set their date to September 9, 1999 - or 9/9/99 - they enter their "diagnostic mode" which is usually how they are tested when they are installed or during yearly checkups. Hotels set their alarm, elevator and sprinkler systems to 9/9/99 each year to make sure they work and stay in compliance with the fire code. Auto makers set air bags to 9/9/99 to test their deployment in laboratories. Even some appliance manufacturers use that date to test their systems like washing machine timers and microwave magnetrons just before they are shipped to the consumer. So come September 9, 1999, things may go up, on, and in but may never come down, off or out! And they'll simply think it’s all a test!

Keep in mind that products with embedded chips usually cannot be "upgraded" easily because their chips are programmed once and soldered into the other components. This means that many of your systems may have to be replaced and you need to plan a budget for the new items, service and down-time now! Companies are already feeling the pressure of thousands of advance orders on replacement products and parts. Some companies have already estimated that they cannot manufacture enough chips to replace their current customers' products before the year 2000 - so you may have to find an alternative product or vendor to keep your systems running.

How can you find out what might happen to you and your electronics? How can you fix or upgrade them in time? And how much is all of this going to cost? There are some steps you can take away to outsmart this problem ahead of time:

Published: September 14, 1998

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.