Membership Director Diana DeMuth welcomed new members and discussed a new project approved by the Steering Committee, a committee to purchase door prizes for the general meetings. These are in addition to the prizes traditionally furnished by speakers.

Milt credited Diana with initiating and proposing the idea for additional prizes, and thanked her for her contribution. "I think it's great to have some prizes that aren't just computer stuff," he said.

Milt also showed off a strange, heavy device and asked if anyone recognized it. It turned out to be one of the earliest Ethernet adapters. Milt reminisced about laying the cable for it—"heavy yellow cable"—and said he enjoyed collecting old items from the early days of computers.

Content Editor Tom Anderson and Layout Editor Ken Hopkins discussed the new issue of Sacra Blue, available on the Web site that morning. Tom noted the issue has a new feature, the Membership Page, which is similar to what many other groups do—listing new members, renewing members, and those whose memberships have expired.

Milt announced the Microsoft eXtreme event coming up the next Saturday, and asked for volunteers to help staff the group's tables at the event.

"It's a cool event," Milt said; "they talk about upcoming products, and this time they'll be talking about Windows XP. They do it twice a year and show off their new items, either just released or about to be released."

Milt then introduced Volunteer Coordinator Stan Morris, who noted that he posts volunteer openings on a board at the entrance to each meeting, and invited those interested to contact him about filling the openings.

Milt and Ken Hopkins discussed upcoming speakers. Ken noted that a company named Verstrada was scheduled for a presentation on e-mail viruses, but because the company was sold, the speaker cancelled. Ken said he would instead make a presentation on PGP, Pretty Good Privacy, which is somewhat related to e-mail.

Ken noted that November is usually a problem for attracting speakers, because our meeting normally falls during Comdex week, and all the speakers are in Las Vegas. This year, however, for the first time in 14 years, the meeting night is the night before Thanksgiving, which is even more difficult.

For this year, WebRoot Software is sscheduled to show their Window Washer program, designed to clean up the files that Internet browsing deposits on your hard disk; Apple Computer wants to show off their new operating system, OS X; and StorActive wants to discuss backup and protection of data, in connection with their program of backing up data to the Web. "Two of them at least should show up," Ken said.

In December, Microsoft will show Windows XP. No speakers are scheduled for January yet.

Corel is booked for February, after having to cancel their September appearance because of the World Trade Center attacks. They will show WordPerfect and possibly CorelDRAW.

Ken also noted that October marked the 30th anniversary of e-mail.