Y2k

The computer screens are blank, and the glass-walled strategy room is empty. The cavernous amphitheater is cold and silent.But in a few days, the tan masonry building on a country road in Reisterstown will hum to life as the year 2000 dawns, providing the first real test of the new Maryland Emergency Operations Center.Opened last month to replace a 50-year-old underground bunker in Pikesville, the $4.5 million facility features all the tools government officials need to handle a disaster: an array of computers tied to fiber-optic lines, backup power and enough food, water and fuel to maintain workers for two weeks.

Small-business owners are reasonably optimistic about their own companies despite uncertainties that could rattle the economy this year, experts say.Among the unknowns are the impact of economic woes in Asia and South America, President Clinton's political viability and the year 2000 computer problem."

WASHINGTON -- As far back as 1996, still something of the Dark Ages for Y2K awareness, Congress had a scold when it came to "the millennium bug": Maryland Rep. Constance A. Morella.An "impending crisis," the Montgomery County Republican said in 1996. "The deadline we face is unforgiving, and time is running out," Morella said in 1997. "The mother of all computer glitches," she proclaimed in a 1998 radio address.More than three years and $106 billion later, things are looking rosy enough that public fears of terrorist strikes appear to outweigh doomsday scenarios of crippling computer failures.

MOSCOW -- Russia started late, hasn't done enough, and won't get it done before New Year's Day, so it seems that the world's largest country is going to discover how serious a problem Y2K can be.Russia is so immense -- it has 11 time zones -- that the first anxiously awaited moments of 2000 will take almost a half-day to roll across the country.It probably won't mean planes falling out of the sky or trains running backward, and almost no one expects a glitch to cause the launching of nuclear missiles.

An agreement to allow Baltimore Public Works Director George G. Balog to remain on the job through Jan. 3 will allow him to receive an estimated $1,800 a year in additional city pension benefits, city records show.Noting his campaign pledge to "change and reform" city government, Mayor Martin O'Malley had said that Balog would not be retained past his Dec. 7 inauguration. But O'Malley said yesterday that he was forced to reconsider his stance in the absence of a new public works director and potential Y2K computer problems.

What will happen when the clock strikes midnight and it's the year 2000? Will my computer still work? Will all the power go out? What about terrorist attacks?In seven months as chief information technology officer for Baltimore City, Elliot H. Schlanger has heard these questions many times.In fact, even though dealing with Y2K is just part of his job, Schlanger has been working feverishly to calm concerns and prevent foreseeable problems surrounding the Y2K phenomenon.As a result, city officials say, Baltimore has become much more ready for Y2K. Earlier this week, Mayor Martin O'Malley said that Y2K would not disrupt municipal services.

THE PROBLEM with various assurances about the so-called Y2K problem is that they all include caveats. Jack Gribben, spokesman for President Clinton's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, recently said, "There's no evidence at this point that people should be disrupting their lives in any significant way." But what does he mean by "at this point"?Similarly, Connecticut technology firm GartnerGroup may have excited nerves when it sought to reassure American consumers that Y2K won't seriously disrupt their lives.

There is one sure bet about Y2K -- it is costing a fortune.Exterminating the Y2K bug from the nation's private and government computers between 1995 and 2001 is expected to cost $100 billion, according to a Commerce Department estimate.Costs to the federal government are expected to reach $8.4 billion, and state budget analysts put Maryland's tab at $150 million.The cost might translate into higher taxes, electric bills, hospital rates and phone bills and increased fees for the services of bankers, investment brokers and other computer-oriented businesses.

A hot tub, some soft music and perhaps a bottle of champagne. That's how Sherry Myers imagined New Year's Eve with her husband, a merchant marine engineer home for the holidays after 70 long days at sea.Instead, Myers will ring in 2000 in the antiseptic corridors of the Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital.One of several hospital administrators called in to watch over ventilators, dialysis machines and other electronic medical devices susceptible to the Y2K computer glitch, she knows that the closest she'll get to a bottle of bubbly is the complimentary Coke supplied to Y2K draftees.

Given the intermittent problems he has had trading stocks through his online broker's system, Bob Schreier does not want to take any chances when the clock turns to Jan. 1, so he's selling all his stocks.Despite assurances from Charles Schwab & Co that it is ready for any computer troubles that might arise when the new year arrives, the 50-year-old accountant from Orland Park, Ill., doubts it can deal with the very remote chance that its system will crash at the stroke of midnight."I don't trust Schwab's system," he said, explaining how it has sometimes been slow to execute his buy and sell orders and has lost some when it crashed.