It's January 1999. Do you know where your millennium computer bugs are? UC Davis technical wizards have been working the past 2 1/2 years to scour campuswide systems for the software glitch that could crash computers worldwide come Jan. 1, 2000. Over the next six months, they will conduct a series of tests to ensure everything from payroll to the 911 emergency-communications center and student-record keeping to the water-treatment plant keep running smoothly into the 21st century. Similarly, computer sleuths at the medical center and medical school have been searching for date-sensitive computer chips that could potentially wreak havoc with life-support and other medical equipment. Some prognosticators fear that the so-called Y2K bug may cause global chaos, disrupting financial markets, banking, food and water distribution, electrical power, transportation and telecommunications. Campus experts are skeptical of such doomsday predictions, saying both private companies and public agencies have too much at stake to ignore the problem and are working aggressively to fix it. Kent Kuo, assistant director of information resources at UC Davis, who is coordinating efforts to eradicate the bug from campus, said payroll, the financial-information system and the student-information system are in good shape. "I'm feeling really good about the way things stand on campus, as far as the major things we can predict," Kuo said. Likewise, state auditors last month were pleased with UC Davis health-system efforts to check thousands of medical devices for the computer glitch. However, Kuo and others recommended that campus and medical center departments do their own inventories, checking personal computers, software and electronic equipment for potential bugs and getting guarantees from vendors that critical supplies will continue without interruptions. "I think what you need to do is fireproof your own house," Kuo said. "Take a look and make sure the year-2000 bug isn't going to bite you," he said. He said university employees should practice due diligence and stay calm. "I don't want people to panic that Y2K is going to be a disaster," he said. "There's something to be concerned about but nothing to be afraid of." A Web page--http://y2k.ucdavis.edu/--has been established to help faculty and staff members make sure their software is year-2000 compliant. The year-2000 bug originates from the early days of computing when programmers tried to save computer memory by using two digits instead of four to record the year. When the calendar flips from 1999 to 2000, computers and microchips with the millennium bug will interpret the date as 1900. The problem extends far beyond computers. Date-sensitive computer chips are embedded in many electrical devices. The glitch has already struck at least one office on campus. Since the fall, an automated information system in University Relations' Advancement Services has misinterpreted dates for hundreds of alumni-association membership renewals and gifts. Advancement Services Associate Director Joseph Calger said the number of alumni memberships and gifts that staff employees will have to process by hand could grow to the thousands before installation of a new system, free of Y2K bugs, is completed in July. Conversion to the new system had already been planned to better keep track of alumni, donors and other campus supporters. But Calger said that with more than 20,000 alumni association members, the millennium bug is adding greater impetus to finish the job. "If we don't fix it, we would have 10,000 cards to process manually and thousands of gifts," he said. Kuo said campus computer specialists had spent 18,750 hours by the end of December working on the alumni information system. They had logged another 9,397 hours working on other campuswide systems, including 2,000 hours on the BANNER student-information system that handles admissions, registration, financial aid and billing. Kuo predicted that tests in February and March to ensure that BANNER is bug-free will consumer another 1,000 employee hours. Other systems that are being examined include alarms, heating and air conditioning units, sprinklers, photocopying services, elevators, telecommunication, police and fire vehicles, traffic lights, and emergency-communication equipment. "It really is a good opportunity to do contingency planning," said Evelyn Profita, the campus emergency planner. "By June 1999, we plan completion of testing of all potentially vulnerable campus emergency response resources," Profita said. Profita said she expects few surprises, but that the campus needs to practice due diligence in searching for the bug in all facets of emergency management. "Our business is such that literally we can't afford to not check everything out thoroughly," Profita said. "Everybody's taking it seriously. It's one of those just-in-case kind of things." Many of the university systems are not date-sensitive. Automatic sprinkler systems, for instance, use a 24-hour clock without reference to the year. Other systems are new or were already scheduled to be replaced and should be free of millennium bugs. They include DaFIS, a water-treatment plant under construction, a new 911 emergency-communications system being installed this month, and an automated telephone billing system being installed this year. They will be tested nonetheless. Kuo said the tests-which will involve rolling the dates to 2000, back to 1999 and to 2000 again-should be completed by July. "If there are any problems, that gives us about six months to deal with those," he said. "I'm pretty pleased with that. I don't anticipate anything major." Similarly, the medical center and medical school expect to complete tests of medical equipment within six months. A steering committee has been meeting monthly since last July to set priorities for testing medical devices depending on their importance to the health system's mission and potential risk to patients. Of the health system's approximately 18,000 medical devices, more than three-quarters have no clock and 18 percent have clocks that are free of the bug, said Ted Cohen, clinical engineering manager for the medical center. About 100 devices will need to be upgraded and another 30 will need to be replaced, Cohen said.