SPCUG Prospering; Sacra Blue Growing
President Milt Hull opened the 219th meeting by noting that when audience members ask questions of our speakers, many don't use microphone. Without the microphone, questions do not get recorded on tape and are thus unavailable for the Sacra Blue report. In the future, he asked, please go to the microphone for questions so they are recorded and can be transcribed. Anyone has a problem with standing can use the cordless microphone. Another problem was with raffle tickets given out at the beginning of the meeting. The ticket distribution stops about 15 minutes after the meeting starts, as set by the Steering Committee. That cut-off time will be enforced.
Sacra Blue Content Editor Tom Anderson announced that he printed out some copies of the current issue for those who haven't seen it. "This month we have 52 pages," he added, "with a lot of very good original material. Ken Hopkins did a piece on buying a new computer and what the terms in the ads mean. We have our first report from a foreign country, which I did from England when I was on vacation. We also have cartoons. One is a cartoonist we would like to carry regularly, but he wants to charge for his work. If we can get The Sacramento Bee to carry his cartoons, he'll give us computing cartoons every month. Details on how you can help are in Sacra Blue."
Tom also said he is beginning a column on interesting Web sites, and asked for member contributions. "If you find something interesting on the Web, go up to File on your browser menu, click Send Page, and send the address to editor@sacpcug.org and we can add it. I plan a regular monthly column.
Layout Editor Ken Hopkins noted that the group had 1100 hits in the past month on current and past issues of Sacra Blue. Also, he said, "We are working on the early stages of a member's guide, which will have the Mentor's List, among other things. It would be nice to have in a little notebook you could download and keep."
Milt Hull: "I want to express my thanks to our members. We were losing money every month printing the newsletter. By you doing the printing (or reading on-screen, your choice), we are working our way out of the hole.
"This whole group is a non-profit organization and we couldn't do it without our volunteers. If you wish to volunteer, come to our Steering Committee meeting, or contact Stan Morris, who always has jobs to divvy out. Our Steering Committee meetings are the second Wednesday of each month at the Sizzler's on Fulton Avenue.
"We are getting everyone's email to send the newsletter out. Some people say it overloads their email account and prefer to read it online. That's fine."
Future Meetings
Ken Hopkins: "Next month is our MP3 presentation. We have lots of different software to show. In November, we have a shareware presentation; about 10 programs have been selected. If you have a piece of shareware you like but don't feel comfortable standing up in front of everyone, let us know. We have worked something out.
December is Parallax showing us their little tiny controllers. They have some that program in assembly language and BASIC. January is RoboHelp which lets you build help files and Web pages and our second speaker will discuss genealogy. We don't have a speaker lined up yet for February. March is Quicken. We'll have more prospects when we come back from Comdex."
