WinFIRST (now known as SureWest Broadband), a company building a fiber optic-based infrastructure to provide TV, phone, and Internet access services at bandwidths previously unheard of for the consumer market, will detail their plans for service rollout and review their package plans.

Milt and Ken Hopkins will conduct a short tutorial on eBay, and Brian Smither will demonstrate HyperScore, an alternate method of music notation claimed to be intuitive for children.

Before the meeting started, an ad hoc assembly of the Board of Directors voted to purchase a special, significant-value door prize. Several suggestions were made: a wireless kit, a laser printer, a color printer, video card, whatever. Nobody could decide. So the officers decided to go with a $150 gift certificate at CompUSA. In addition, there are several smaller door prizes that will be given away.

Mike Zellmer, SPCUG's Membership Director, reported he very much appreciated the membership's patience during the conversion to password protecting Sacra Blue on the Web site. For a few individuals glitches occurred, but the process generally went very well considering the amount of information that was involved.

Which brings up the point that it is very important that we have current e-mail addresses. If you are receiving the monthly meeting notice sent by e-mail, then everything is fine. If not, then please see any officer of the group to update your records.

The group has gone through a lot of changes over the years. It started meeting at the Sylvan Oaks Library. By the time Milt Hull showed up, the group had been going for at least a year and was still passing around the coffee can for donations. Bob Mix was writing a short newsletter that was hand-assembled, folded, and stamped.

The group got bigger and bigger, to the point where we needed a treasurer and other officials. The group grew quite a bit in size and influence. But, for whatever reason, a decline in membership began taxing our revenue streams. The newsletter got huge, eventually costing more than the declining membership could support.

We decided to save money by publishing Sacra Blue electronically. The escalating costs of printing and mailing had become prohibitive. A lot of other groups across the country were finding themselves in the same situation. They put their monthly publications on the Internet as well. Many members didn't appreciate this turn of events. They were insistent on wanting to read Sacra Blue in the comfort of their living room. We were distressed when those members chose not to renew, but the bigger picture gave us no choice.

Even so, we also decided at that time to place Sacra Blue within a password-protected area of our Web site. The question then was how best to deliver the passwords to our membership. Several issues later, we decided to open Sacra Blue for public access. Just recently, we obtained a solution for reliable delivery of passwords to our membership and have now returned Sacra Blue to a "members only" status.

Brian Smither, SPCUG's Webmaster, had developed a solution that would automatically generate a username and password, and then e-mail that information to the member. The password would expire shortly after the membership expiration or be reactivated when the member renewed. If the automatically-generated password is not wanted, then the member need only inform the Webmaster or Membership Director of his/her desired password.

Brian also mentioned that an explanatory note on the site mentions an ongoing problem with password authentication. If at first the password is rejected, please try again. And again. And, if necessary, once again. This is, of course, assuming you have the correct password and that the password is active in the group's database.

Tom Anderson, Sacra Blue Content Editor, mentioned that his and Ken Hopkins' careers have taken a leap forward and that they find themselves with very little time to edit Sacra Blue. Tom said that this issue will probably be published near the end of July, and will cover both July and August time frames. Ken has also been gathering huge amounts of data that will chronicle SPCUG's history.

Tom also announced that he and Ken Hopkins (the Sacra Blue Layout Editor) have decided that their 30^th issue, a November-December dual issue, will be their last. Even though editing Sacra Blue is a rewarding job, come December, SPCUG will need to have found its next volunteer to hold the editorship.

Milt mentioned that there have been some inquiries about these positions. He says that Ken has his layout duties streamlined to the point where the complete issue can be built within about eight hours. Tom's efforts are substantially greater, requiring considerable more time. Please consult with either of these gentlemen if you have an interest in editing Sacra Blue, SPCUG's award-winning monthly newsmagazine. Keep in mind that whatever the editors need, the editors get—hardware and software (within reason).

Stan Morris, SPCUG's Volunteer Coordinator, reviewed the current positions that need filling. We have short-term tasks and projects and we have established positions that would require longer-term commitments. These positions range from "no experience required" to " we will provide all the necessary training." The positions are regularly announced in Stan's column in Sacra Blue, posted on the display board at the entrance to the Meeting Hall, and e-mailed to the SPCUG General Membership listserve.

Our current immediate needs include: Training Media Librarian—the SPCUG makes available books, videos and software to its members, and a newsmagazine editor(s).

Milt continued introducing volunteers who are active in the group: Don Frieze, Treasurer, who gave his blessing for the significant door prize expenditure; Ron Lambert, who meets and greets attendees (and passes out the door prize tickets); Mark Nabor, who has been the group's photographer for a number of years; and Roy Korb, who gets the door prizes (and who sold the Shareware Library disks at one time).

Ken Hopkins gave his report on upcoming speakers. Due to the popularity of the digital photography presentation last month, we were able to arrange for speakers to discuss additional aspects of the overall acquisition, management, editing, and printing of digital photography.

The rest of the year is rather sketchy. We've had presenters on the schedule but due to market forces, staff downsizing, and mergers and acquisitions, we find ourselves at a loss. On the other hand, "home-grown" presentations are always well received because, in more cases than not, the industry representatives that come to our meetings are more salesmen than technical demonstrators. Making the presentations ourselves, we can focus more on what we perceive the audience wants to see and learn.

For example, Milt suggested a demonstration and tutorial on how to set up two machines and administrate a secure wireless network. Just about any topic can be arranged that will assist and instruct computer users. If anyone has any ideas, please let Milt or Ken know.

Milt also reminded the audience of the Steering Committee meeting, currently held at Sizzler's on Fulton at 6:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday of every month. At Steering Committee, the elected officials, other officers, members and the general public can voice their concerns and interests. It is at this meeting where the month-to-month activities are planned and reviewed.

Ken Hopkins is in the middle of researching past SPCUG documents and publications to develop a retrospective article on major events and significant happenings in our past 20 years. He summarized the membership trends by displaying a graph and pointing out the major milestones of our history. Our membership reached its greatest levels (3,000+) just when Microsoft demonstrated "Chicago." Membership has been on a steady decline ever since.

Ken went over the graph, pointing out interesting events and how they influenced the membership roles: major industry speakers such as Bill Gates and Alan Ashton, certain presentations such as Milt's Internet demonstration, major changes to policy and operations such as Sacra Blue going online, and the tenures of certain officers.

Milt invited Tony Barcellos to regale the audience with tales of his tenure. Milt recalled how he, Tony, Rick Hellewell, and George Lefler went to the San Francisco PC Users Group, the largest group at the time, to listen to Microsoft discuss this new operating system called Windows (it wasn't ready for viewing, not even slides, just talk). They also wanted to get some pointers on how to run a users group. It wasn't too long after that meeting that our membership shot way beyond San Francisco's to become the largest users group on the west coast and fifth largest in the nation. Tony recalls being President at about that time.

Tony recalls how it was really cool being President and Sacra Blue editor. He said that meetings such as this one tonight are the reason why it's still fun to do this sort of thing, because it's nice to meet people instead of just exchanging e-mail (however beautifully formatted they may be). He thinks a group like the SPCUG still has a role to play.

Tony's major contact with the organization, for the last couple of years while in graduate school, has been simply a matter of going to the Davis Chapter meetings, which are small little groups of people (the same people, over and over again) getting together just to share tips and ideas and observations and some of the same complaints over and over again.

But it's a social group and it's the social aspect he has thought to be more important than people have realized. The opportunity to get out and meet with people, even in a group that no longer has major subsidized support, is what draws him.

Tony said it was really cool because he and Milt remember these big events, and some of the audience was there, perhaps even joined the night Bill Gates was subsidizing memberships. Many of us remember what then-President Rick Hellewell said when Bill showed up for the first time: "The audience just went on back over the horizon." We had well over a thousand people at that night's meeting.

Bill Gates, commenting on this, said that he had been harassed by a number of friends at other user group meetings. At Houston's HAL-PC he was asked, "When are you going to Sacramento?" Some of us from Sacramento went to the San Francisco group and asked him, "When are you going to Sacramento?" And then he came to Sacramento and said this is the biggest group he's ever attended on the west coast. And he came back a couple more times. Tony thinks he's still working for Microsoft, last he's heard.

Milt recalls when Bill Juhl was editor of the group's newsletter when it had no name. The publication merely proclaimed itself "The Sacramento PC Users Group's Newsletter." At a meeting at Bill's house, efforts were made to come up with a name. Each officer came up with a candidate for a name (some were really stupid): PC Tales, I/O Channel, Sacra Blue, and others. One person was going to break the tie vote – and PC Tales it was.

While the arguments were flying for this and against that, another issue of the newsletter came due. That issue's title was The No-Name Newsletter of the Sacramento PC Users Group. The next two issues of PC Tales had been published when Bill took matters into his own hands. He renamed the publication, on his own and without the Steering Committee's knowledge, to Sacra Blue.

Tony recalls how Bill made his decision to rename the newsletter to Sacra Blue. Bill wanted a professional-sounding name because he had arranged for a professional graphics designer to develop the front cover art and was planning for a magazine layout, not loose pages simply stapled in the upper-left corner. The name PC Tales had to go.

The name Sacra Blue had originally been suggested to us by an officer of the San Francisco PC Users Group. It caught on.

Soon thereafter we had a visit from Borland, Philip Kahn, who said, "Ah! That is a joke in France!" No kidding, Sherlock—we understood that and we've used that name ever since.

There came a time when Bill Juhl was scheduled for a family vacation and someone was needed to step in to publish just the one issue coming due while he was away. Tony volunteered for that one issue. Tony did such a good job, he ended up publishing 65 issues. Milt's only complaint was when Tony started changing the colors of the cover stock—yellow, pink, fuchsia, desert rose, etc.

Tony's major nemesis during his term as editor was Kurt Dees. Kurt wrote articles that contained links to explanatory material. But these weren't hyperlinks or pop-up balloon tips. These links were handwritten notes, some in the margins and some in-line with the text. Keywords were circled or underlined and a "call-out" line connected the word to its note. Kurt insisted his articles be reproduced exactly as they had been submitted—camera-ready. Kurt had to resort to purchasing full-page ads in order to get his articles published.

Larry Clark then assumed the role of editor for 30 issues, followed by Dan Kehew and Julia McCullough (who are now married to each other), then Margo Schulter for several issues. Margo had a unique publishing style and wrote a regular column on the technical aspects of PostScript. Many of her examples were hand-coded.

Ken Hopkins placed a cell-phone call to Larry, who took a few minutes congratulating the group on its 20^th anniversary. Larry's last official duties before leaving for San Diego was as the official scapegoat.

Sacra Blue was then led by Eric Butow, whose tenure saw some rather heart-stopping events. His first issue was late because the printers we were using at the time simply closed up shop without notifying us. Eric, Ken Hopkins, and Larry Clark scrambled madly for a printer who could handle what was, in effect, a rush job. Commerce Printing came through for us.

Eric's second crisis was when the postal center in West Sacramento declared the publication did not meet the guidelines for the postage rate we were paying. Our Treasurer at the time, Shorter Rankin, faxed certain documents to the Postmaster, who eventually released the issues.

It was during Eric's tenure that Sacra Blue started on the path to an online version. In order to keep printing costs down, we cut the number of pages by printing only the first few paragraphs of each article. To read any article in its entirety, members had to access our Web site.

After Eric Chris Graillat published several issues, then was followed by Tom Anderson and Ken Hopkins, the current editors.

Milt brought up the history of the Group's pre-Internet means of computer communications, the SPCUG electronic bulletin board system (BBS). When the decision was made to install our own BBS for members, Frank Leonard took the job as System Operator (SysOp). Some of Frank's fondest memories involved his work with the BBS. From its start, ongoing maintenance and routine operations were a constant learning experience.

The BBS actually became part of Frank's family for the four or five years it was in operation. First thing in the morning was clearing out the e-mail, before dinner it was taking care of the system, before bed it was taking care of the system, and occasionally at three or four in the morning it was taking care of the system when it crashed. Then the Internet came along and rendered the BBS obsolete.

The BBS grew as time went on. Starting with DOS 3.3 and finishing with DOS 5, the BBS, written by Mustang Software, was running under DesqView, a memory management utility permitting up to four virtual DOS machines to operate simultaneously. The BBS provided e-mail, newsgroups, and shareware. Frank offered classes on weekends and evenings on how to get your computer and modem to connect to the BBS, the proper usage of it, and what was available through it.

Frank's greatest nemesis on the BBS was Howard Fegarsky. Howard would argue with anyone about anything for no real reason whatsoever, or so it seemed to Frank. He was one of the original "flamers." After being kicked off the BBS (several times), Howard ran for Vice President with the promise that, if elected, he would make available lemonade as a refreshment.

The BBS was put down, with many a mixed feeling, at 9 am, Sept. 9, 1999 (9-9-99). What with Frank's sudden increase in free time, he was soon elected President.

Frank introduced his wife, Marsha, SPCUG's Membership Director during his term of office.

Milt introduced Tom Anderson, an officer who has worn many hats for many years. He first joined in 1985 at the Auburn Chapter. He volunteered to be the Shareware Librarian, then Book Review Editor for Sacra Blue. (He really liked that job. As editor, you get first dibs at the dozens of books SPCUG is given for review.) He eventually teamed up with Ken Hopkins as general editors.

Tom introduced his wife, Diana DeMuth, herself holding various appointed positions within the group. Tom and Diana met each other and were cyberdating on the Chat City BBS. Tom convinced her to come to a meeting of the SPCUG and she's been a hard worker for the group ever since.

Milt then introduced Roy Korb, formerly the Assistant Shareware Librarian who managed disk duplication and sales. Around the time of 14.4 KB modems, it was far more efficient to get your shareware programs on disk. Roy handcrafted an enormous case, almost as big as a steamer trunk, to store and dispense the nearly one thousand 5.25" disks. At that time, even on a bad night, revenues from shareware disk sales would net nearly $1,000.

As modems got faster, and when the Internet was born, SPCUG's endeavors to maintain a disk library dwindled, and it was finally phased out completely in 2000.

The SPCUG's biggest black eye came when it was discovered that our past treasurer had embezzled almost $12,000. We are slowly being repaid.

The current trend for companies making presentations at SPCUG meetings is to hire a promotions company: Gene Barlow of User Group Relations, for example. With companies merging and dissolving on a weekly basis, the person who was a confirmed speaker in March is submitting resumes in May.

Milt introduced Bob Mix, the group's founder, who passed on the bad news that Dave Berhans, SPCUG's first president, has passed away. Milt was wondering why his phone was disconnected.

Bob Mix's involvement with computers goes a long way back. He developed the dream to own his own computer at around 1969 when working for Aerojet. He was a rocket scientist there when they asked him to program a nuclear rocket simulator. He had to first learn how to program but the simulator did get built.

Every month, Bob and his co-workers would read Datamation magazine, and in one particular issue, he saw an ad for a DEC mini-computer at the low, low price of $5,000. He thought, "Wow, they're really cheap now! They're costing as much as a Porsche!" In discussing this computer fascination with his wife, whose eyes quickly gazed over—just what would you do with a computer?—he never let the dream die.

A few years later, in 1973, he was reading an electronics magazine and came across an article about Intel, a company nobody had ever heard of. They had just developed a new chip that would, in turn, allow a little company in Texas called Datapoint to create a cheap terminal that could talk to other computers. Bob was enthusiastic because he thought someone could take that thing and build a small, cheap computer.

Bob called Intel and asked for their catalog. The catalog listed numerous chips of all kinds and included a write-up about the 4004 controller chip. It was so named because it could handle four bits at a time. But that was enough! You could do anything with four bits! Bob was excited. He saw it coming and it was really close.

By the next year, the 8008 processor was out. It had an instruction set that Bob was familiar with, based on his work with mainframes. It was just a matter of time. And sure enough, on the cover of the January issue of Popular Electronics, was a computer you could buy mail-order for $439.

It took Bob most of a year to convince his wife they really needed one, but eventually, a box of hundreds of parts was delivered to his door. He soldered it all together and began to program it. That computer, the MITS Altair, didn't have an operating system. It didn't have any kind of software. It had toggle switches, one for each bit, that you used to enter your program one byte at a time. It took a little while.

It was MITS who hired a college dropout named Bill Gates to write a version of BASIC for programming the MITS Altair. Bob saw that these computers were real computers that could do real things. It was just a matter of how to store the programs, how to interface to the outside world, and so on. The computer may have cost $439, but then you had to buy memory (a 256-byte board was ready but Bob waited a few months to get a 4K memory board), an I/O terminal, etc.

Bob managed to adapt to his computer an old teletype machine he bought as salvage from an old Navy destroyer for $50. Bob had to create his own interface hardware and write his own software routines, but eventually he had a "computer." You could buy BASIC from MITS that Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote, available on paper tape that would feed into the teletype machine.

Things moved pretty quickly after that and in 1981, the IBM PC came out. By then, there were floppy disks, much better operating systems, and significant progress at publishing comprehensive program applications. There's a long history and Bob thought the IBM PC was going to make "the big difference."

Geeks of a feather flock together and there were hundreds of us around the country. We wanted to get it into the thousands. With IBM's marketing power, they figured the PC would be legitimized, there would really be a market, and people would begin to see the potential of these computers.

Bob went down to Computerland and talked to the manager, asking for a list of everyone who'd bought one of these things. He came home with a list of fifteen people, whom he invited for a get-together. Owners of these new machines should get to know one another, share experiences, knowledge and resources, he told them.

Thus was the SPCUG born. The first meetings were humble—not enough information, no magazines or books, no classes—it was all first-hand personal experience, kind of like an encounter group. Bob taught classes on his discoveries, others gave demonstrations of new products, and everyone had a fun time sharing. Many SPCUG members started with a small computer and have turned it into a career.