February, 1999 

I'm still recovering from my second bout with the flu this year. Even my wife noticed this anomaly in my usually illness free lifestyle (in the ten years we've been married, I've been sick, maybe, NEVER!). Of course, the difference now is that we have two kids – and one of them is in school.

When we only had Danny, I was able to fend off the germs without problem. But now, Danny brings home a cold from school (apparently from associating with YOUR germy little kids) and passes it off on Sarah. Sarah then runs about the house, sticking everything she can into her little petri dish of a mouth. What won't fit she coughs or sneezes on. (I know, don't end a sentence with a preposition.) It's just impossible to defend yourself against this kind of double assault, so I got sick twice in three months.

On the plus side, I've found that, while I was sick, I completely lost my appetite. Not that it would have made any difference since anything I tried to eat didn't 'take', if you get my drift. Not surprisingly, after this past week I noticed that I have lost 10 pounds.

So I've decided to capitalize on my recent illness by marketing the 'Sarah' diet plan. It's by far the easiest diet to stick to since it requires no self-control whatsoever, you can eat as much of anything you want, and the results are guaranteed. All I do is send Sarah over to your place for an hour. She then runs around and plays with your phone, car keys, remote controls, computer mouse, and all of your pens and pencils. For best results, I suggest letting her have a little tea party with your dishes and silverware (we'll put it all back when we leave, I promise).

Then you just go about life as normal – make phone calls, browse the Internet. Oooh! You must be thirsty. How about a nice glass of iced tea? (Never mind the lip mark on the glass.)  In a few days you won't feel like eating anything. (You won't feel like living, either!) After just one week you'll have lost weight! It's like Jazzercise only you don't have Brenda Knight running around in a leotard (OK, the plan's not perfect).

So that's my new diet plan.  If you're interested, call my toll-free number at 1-800-GET-SICK.

Meanwhile, we have an actual computer-related item to address:

Q: What is the City of Miami Springs doing to make sure it doesn't have any year-2000 problems?

A: Good question. Since I didn't have the foggiest idea, I contacted the city's Finance Director, Mark Malatak. Mark told me, and I quote, "None of your business! Go away!" No, not really! He actually stopped directing the city's finances long enough to give me the low-down on what steps have been taken to ensure that, come January 2000, you don't get a water bill saying you owe $49.00 plus $1,873,267.83 in interest on your now 100 year past-due account.

According to Mark, the city's main system, an IBM AS-400, has been certified by IBM as being Year 2000 (Y2K) compliant. That means that it's supposed to keep running after New Year's Day, 2000 no matter how much it has to drink. (If you can't trust IBM, who can you trust?) In addition, there are a few other PC's around town that run Windows 95 and all of those have been kept up-to-date with all applicable updates from Microsoft. (You can usually trust Microsoft, but if you're skeptical, these 'other' systems are not used for running any 'mission critical' programs that the city uses for its day-to-day operations.)

The software that the city uses for its billing and other record keeping has been checked and has been blessed with a 98% compliance rating. As Mark explained it, all of the dates in the system use a four-digit year, which means that it can tell what century it is. The other 2% is rarely used and is expected to be brought into compliance later this year by an update from the software's vendor. (They're actually receiving an entirely new version of the affected 'modules'.)

Of course, all of this so far only means that we've got somebody's word that "Yeah, it's Y2K compliant" (and 'somebody's word' means diddly when it comes to computers). So they've actually gone as far as to TEST the system to make sure that it will continue to run when the year 2000 arrives. Among other things, they've set the system date ahead and then deleted and restored all of the data without a problem.

To sum it up, Mark is confident that he will still be able to direct the city's finances well past January 1, 2000. In the worst case, Patty Mann won't be able to play Solitaire at work come January.

Speaking of worst case… now the dog has decided to get in on the "See-how-sick-we-can-get-Chuck" act. In an obvious attempt to re-infect me with the flu virus, she took the time to come clear across the house (all easy-to-clean hardwood floors) and yak, dead center, in the one carpeted room in the house. You know, dog, you'd make a lovely step-platform for Brenda to use during her Jazzercise workouts.