I was reminded this weekend of how fast time flies. Saturday afternoon I attended -- as an alum -- a Bay Area welcome party for soon-to-be Vassar freshmen who live in the area. Talking to these nervous and excited kids on the brink of their adventure into college and adulthood, I experienced a mix of emotions -- from happy to sad to "Did I REALLY graduate two months ago?"

Remembering my time at Vassar -- which began with a flight to a small upstate New York town with a funny name (Poughkeepsie), and ended on a rainy day four years later with James Earl Jones saying to my class, "May the force be with you" -- I'm sentimental that my college years are gone, but simultaneously look to the future with excitement and enthusiasm. Looking back, there were some things I might have done differently and some decisions I probably should have thought twice about, but all in all, I have no regrets about college. It was the greatest time of my life and the worst time of my life. For better or for worse, Vassar prepared me for what's to come.

And I'm thrilled with the results thus far.

-Gabe

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Nowhere has the threat of a potential meltdown been more pervasive than in California, a highly wired state and the home of Silicon Valley. But that threat has not been viewed as a profound danger by the experienced professionals who develop computers and their related products. Rather, it has been identified as Armageddon by an army of consultants who have created the myth of disaster and then offer their solutions -- for a price.

The Y2K glitch has two elements, and both are easily described.

First, is the notion that computers will be unable to recognize the time shift to the year 2000 because their clocks only recognize two-digit numbers, snarling their internal logic and ruining time-sensitive functions and programs. In California government, that means everything from DMV licensing to prison management will be tangled, or so goes the myth.

Second, is the notion that the time-shift problem will cripple computers across the state from "talking" to each other to trade information. A police officer running a check on a suspect, 911 emergency telephone systems, a welfare worker seeking background on a client, a road engineer seeking information on a structure -- all would face electronic chaos because of Y2K, according to some.

But there are problems with such a bleak analysis.

Since the mid-1980s, when computers began being used in abundance and started an American cultural revolution, systems have developed that improved upon their predecessors. Those improvements included better and faster processing, more efficient logic, vastly improved software, compatibility and integration. In home computing alone, the IBM "clones" led to the pervasive use of the 8086 processor, which begot the 286, which begot the 386, which led to the 486, which the led to the Pentium, then to the Pentium II and Pentium III. All were more powerful and efficient than the one preceding, all attacking the perceived bugs in the earlier models, called "legend systems" in the vernacular. Clockspeeds have risen astronomically: Four years ago, an eternity in computer development, a 66mhz-clockspeed was state-of-the-art. Now, clockspeeds of 450mhz and 500mhz are common, and 600mhz is looming for the retail market. In demonstrations of specialized equipment, 700mhz already has been unveiled.

The same is true with compatibility. Where computers before only recognized programs for their own specialized systems, they now recognize and speedily process a myriad of disparate programs, including complex spreadsheets and intricate relational databases that only a short while ago posed incalculable difficulties.

Even a moderately powerful home desktop can assimilate and analyze enormous amounts of data, such as the entire output for a year of the bills, analyses and histories of the California Legislature.

All this power and compatibility will be in place at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, and it will remain in place when the New Year dawns.

Worried about Y2K? Forget it.

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