I don't know how many editors Chris has written for. The oldest Sacra Blue I can find on hand is October 1995, and he had a column then called Surf's Up, about surfing the Internet, and was also Entertainment Editor. I was fairly new as Book Review Editor back then, but Chris had been around for quite a while at that point.

I don't know what possessed him to find a life, but apparently he has, and no longer has the time to do a proper job on his column.

He will be sorely missed, at least by me, and he deserves lots of thanks for a very long volunteer stint.

Job Opening
This of course means we now have an opening for someone to write a column reviewing games.

How would you like to look forward to a column lavishing praise on your efforts and thanking you for your years of contributions?

The only requirement is that you put in the years of contributions first. But if that seems a bit too demanding, we'll be happy to arrange a lot of praise and thanks up front.

And of course, you get to keep the games you review. That can be a pretty valuable reward— games, like all software, are getting more and more expensive as they become more complex.

While I'm thanking Chris, I have to mention the names of two other volunteers who have performed at a superior level lately: Dennis Solheim, Twila Carver and Crystal Friedrichs.

Dennis and Twila have been our principal transcriptionists for several months. Their job has been to take the tape recordings we make of our general meeting presentations, then transcribe the entire tape so someone else can write up a meeting report from the transcripts.

Lately this has been a really stressful job, and Dennis has done most of it. Twila, a new member of SPCUG, began helping out a couple months ago, and this month, with Dennis sidelined by family concerns, Twila has outdone herself.

Crystal has, month after month, transcribed the business portion of our meetings— the early portion containing reports from officers. She's been doing this for a long time— again, longer than I can recall.

Expanding Her Job
Some time back she asked if I'd like her to also write up the business part of the meeting as an article, and I gratefully accepted. She's brought the same dedication and quality of work to that task, and lightened my work load by a considerable amount.

Kathy Anderson has also been contributing to Sacra Blue for a long time. Her job has been to take the questions and answers from our general meeting, add in the better questions at our pre-meeting help table, and mix in some more answers from the Answer Guys on our Web site. She massages all of these and puts together a Q&A for Sacra Blue which, I feel certain, provides a lot of help for people who haven't been able to ask their specific question.

The Role of Volunteers
Volunteers really are what makes any group like this work. There are always a handful of talented, charismatic leaders like Tony Barcellos and Milt Hull, but the real work of any organization is done by "the little people," who are little only in terms of the recognition they get. Sacra Blue would not exist, at least in anything like its current form, without a host of volunteers who provide material for it.

Ken Hopkins is another crucial link in the chain. You know he's the Meeting Coordinator, and you may know he's also Layout Editor for Sacra Blue. But you may not realize he is also on the editorial board of the Association of PC Users Groups, and plays a role in getting usable material to newsletters around the country, not just our own.

He also has found all the humor for the newsletter, from the Altair Ego cartoons to the Geeks and Little Man series we've been running. He's written an occasional column, Ken's Kompendium. And he's written many other articles for the newsletter, including all the Palm software reviews we've had so far, and a series of articles on CD technology.

He also found all the illustrations for the History of Computing we ran a while back.

What's It All About?
I mention these people for a particular reason: volunteers burn out. We're at a point in the history of SPCUG that will likely be crucial for our future. We have a pretty small group of volunteers doing everything the group needs, and it not only puts a heavy burden on that small group, but makes for critical problems if even one person is sick or otherwise unable to perform.

If the SPCUG is to continue, we need to recruit more volunteers. If you can help, we can certainly put your labor to use. If you can contribute a few hours a month, we'll find useful tasks to fill the time.

If you can't find a few hours, how about finding a few more members? Ask your co-workers and your neighbors if they know about the SPCUG. If not, invite them to a meeting. It's free, even if they're not members, and they may become useful volunteers.