At the Network Operations Center in Rhodes Hall on the evening of Dec. 31, 1999, Juan Salomon, right, CIT team leader for the first shift, discusses shutdown procedures for Y2K with Larry Thorpe, team leader for the second shift and area manager. Robert Barker/University Photography
Suppose you gave a disaster, everybody came, and the climax fizzled out. Well, hopefully, you had a good time while you were waiting. That's what happened on campus over New Year's Eve.
"The fact that it went that smoothly is a reflection of all the work people in the colleges and units put into preparation," said Cecilia Cowles, Cornell communications manager for the Year 2000 project office. "That effort was started by Tom Dyckman while he was acting vice president for Information Technologies, and he deserves credit for pushing us to be diligent."
Credit also goes to John McKeown, who has for about a year held the unsung post of director of the Year 2000 Office in Cornell Information Technologies (CIT). McKeown spent many hours persuading colleges and departments outside of CIT to take Y2K concerns seriously.
Cornell President Hunter Rawlings expressed heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make the smooth transition possible.
"This evening was the culmination of many hours of work over many months and even years, not only by the computer and facilities workers who spent their holiday on campus but by many other units throughout the university," Rawlings said. "Once again, Cornell staff members demonstrated their initiative, expertise and leadership, and I am sure that their work will pay dividends in improved operations and greater cooperation in the future."
There's no exact count, but a few hundred Cornell employees spent the eve of the millennium on campus watching for possible Y2K glitches. Fortunately, the only incidents reported that night were a couple of heating and cooling systems that needed repair, none of which had anything to do with computer bugs. Some bugs did show up eventually in university computer systems, but all were minor.
"We have 24-hour service anyway, but some of these things got caught earlier because we were out checking," explained Sue Bennett, manager of the Facilities Management customer service center.
Ordinarily on a weekend or holiday, Bennett said, Facilities Management has about 25 people on duty overnight, but an additional 30 to 40 were called in on New Year's Eve to be prepared for any problems associated with Y2K. Those included extra Campus Police officers on duty, she added. And Campus Life, which maintains services in dormitories, had about 25 maintenance and custodial workers on duty when, ordinarily, they would have none, Bennett said.
"We did not go the extra mile and spend excessive money; we had enough people to deal with an emergency, but if anything big had happened, we would have had to call in more," said Henry Doney, director of utilities and energy management in the Division of Facilities and Campus Services. "No one here really believed anything important was going to happen, but there was always a chance that something beyond our control might occur, such as a major power outage. It just seemed prudent for the somewhat modest investment to have people on site. And it was probably not bad just to think about those contingency plans and be a little better prepared for a real emergency."
Early in the evening of Dec. 31, Facilities Management technicians fanned out across the campus and to several off-campus buildings, including some fraternities for which the division is responsible, checking boilers, backup generators, ventilation systems and fire alarms and noting which ones had electronic controls. After midnight, all the likely suspects were checked again. The checks turned up a malfunctioning boiler at a fraternity house, unoccupied over the holiday, and it was promptly repaired by technician Scott Albrecht. The problem turned out to be a dead thermocouple, definitely not something affected by the date. Later Albrecht was called to the Liddell Laboratory where a boiler had run out of fuel.
"And there was an overflowing toilet in Bradfield," Bennett added.
Because so many people were called in to work on a major celebratory night, the division of Facilities and Campus Services decided to provide a catered buffet for its workers at the Humphreys Service Building. Many brought spouses and children; others also gathered at the Robert Purcell Community Center on North Campus to play Yahtzee and video games. At midnight, nearly everyone came back to the division's headquarters at Humphreys for a small celebration.
The real center of Y2K worries, of course, was the Network Operations Center (NOC) in Rhodes Hall, where CIT manages the campus computer network and the "server farm," a collection of computers that provide such services as e-mail and library access along with web servers for many campus departments.
Starting on the afternoon of Dec. 31, all except a few very essential computers were shut down on a staggered schedule. On a typical night, there would be one or two people in the NOC, monitoring displays that would warn them if any part of the system was down. On New Year's Eve about 15 extra workers were on hand, along with some administrators, including Polley Ann McClure, vice president for information technologies.
"Our job is to provide aid and comfort," explained Steve Worona, assistant to McClure, who was among those on duty.
Like facilities employees, many NOC workers brought their spouses and children, and snacks and favors were provided. As midnight approached, most retired briefly to rooms with a view of South Hill, where the Ithaca College dormitory lights haltingly shifted from displaying "99" to "20" and finally "00," accompanied by a small fireworks display.
The main Y2K worry on campus, according to Andrea Beesing, manager of the NOC, was a possible power outage. If a computer loses power while it's doing something, files can be corrupted, and simply turning the computer back on may not solve the problem. After a power outage last June, Beesing said, CIT personnel spent many hours getting systems back up and functioning properly.
However on New Year's Eve, she said, New York State Electric and Gas Corp. had no outage problems, and starting at 2 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, NOC technicians began restarting the campus servers. As of noon that day, all essential services were back up and running, according to Jenny Signor, technical lead on the Saturday first shift at the NOC. A few services, such as time clocks, were not brought up until as late as the morning of Jan. 2.
Kevin Unrue, the university's security coordinator, was on hand to deal with possible hacker attacks timed to coincide with the New Year -- but none materialized, Signer said.
And Cornell Police had a slow night, as well. "We assisted Ithaca city police when an open door was found at a fraternity, and we responded to a report of a suspicious person, which turned out to be some youths out on Forest Home Drive who we took home to their parents," said David Honan, Saturday shift sergeant. "It was very slow night for us, even for a holiday."
Elsewhere on campus, many departments had workers on duty monitoring laboratory equipment and animal-care facilities, and there have been no reports of any problems with those facilities.
A few minor Y2K-related computer problems have turned up, mostly in displays. Among those:
After polling university departments about Y2K concerns, Cowles said, "The more cautious in the group said they'd give it six months before they'd say everything is OK."
And Cowles agreed that caution is still needed. "We haven't experienced all the things that happen in a year yet," she said. "We have to register students and issue grades. We haven't gotten to a fiscal year end. There are all sorts of things that get exercised only once a term, or once a year."
CIT's report on the transition, with links to background information, is on the web at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/news/newsflash.html#y2kok.
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