 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Eddies in the Ether Dave Mitchell |
 |
Ugh! Christmas! Am I glad that's over for another year. What with everyone in a jolly mood and the kidlets running rampage I was forced to lock myself in the bunker for three days with only a half-a-dozen cans of spaghetti bolognese and eight slabs of the amber liquid. I nearly died of thirst! To make matters worse, some fat bloke in a red suit was raiding the fridge one night but the boys in blue took him away and the RSPCA came and got the reindeer off the roof, so some semblance of normality has returned. Dunno why the kids won't talk to me anymore.
All Work and No Play
Here's a couple of messages that most of you can't see because they occur in an area reserved for communication between the committee or sysops and the office. Mind you I'll never be able to go into the office again after this, but I think it's something that the public should know.
CL> Xxxxx, I see that several of your messages to Dave or me have somehow also been uploaded to the General area. No harm done, although I did get a humorous response from Dave Johnson about "Claude Balls having had his Balls Clawed" as a result of your message regarding my condescending message to Xxxxx. :-)
PO> Don't know how the msg got posted to general area.... Perhaps something has been changed in the setup, or perhaps, as those of us in the know are aware, it is the green men from distant planets who have infested the office and are hanging around and playing with the Melb PC BBS, moving things around to make me think that I'm going mad. Maybe they want other people to think that I'm mad when they impregnate me (which I know is their plan) with one of their offspring. Everybody will cry "She's a Loon-Tune" and no-one will believe me until I give birth to an abomination.
PS: I hope this one doesn't go general or our members will wonder what kind of employees their membership fees are being squandered on.
You'll note that 1 Xed out the guilty name here but wait, there's more!
DM> True BUT we have a responsibility to members to illustrate Xxxxx's infatuation with aliens and the best vehicle would be my column in the mag. Don't you agree? B-)
CL> Indubitably! I look forward to reading it. Chief Bossy Person
DM> Never noticed m'self but then again I rarely take notice of you anyway. B-)
CL> This is an epithet I use occasionally when I am messaging to the ladies in the office. It helps to ease the drudgery from what would otherwise be a dull existence, interspersed only with extraterrestrial visitations and sexual daydreams.
PO> The sexual daydreams aren't mine-they've been planted into my head by the leader of the aliens, The Great Boowsheeta, and believe me, they're like nothing a mortal being could envisage. Got to go now, I can feel another one coming on .............
For the uninitiated the lines with CL> preceding them are from our beloved, if somewhat sordid, President Colin
Lovitt. The lines with DM> are your faithful correspondent's and the ones with
PO> are from the office. We expect a full transcript of the daydreams to be uploaded to the BBS any day now.
Increasing Traffic
It seems the election of a couple of the new committee has had a profound effect on one of the more established members who, when he came back from a three-day break somewhere suddenly discovered 53 new messages in the committee area. Just as a bit of background this is an area in which the committee can discuss various bits and pieces of ongoing business or new ideas all month long on the BBS rather than waiting for a formal meeting to bring things up. Prior to the election of the new committee we could expect from three to seven messages a day in there, unless there was a cat fight going on, but recently there has been upwards of 20 a day.
Mind you the signal to noise ratio is pretty high at the moment as the new members of the committee settle into their new jobs and realise that it's not all beer and skittles, but it seems to me that this is a classic example of how the technology of our hobby can be used to the maximum for the benefit of the club as a whole.
As another example of this it has been decided that Colin is going to post a brief overview of what went on at committee to the BBS after every meeting as well as in PC Update. It keeps all you guys more informed about what we are up to and let's the BBS users have some input into the direction we are heading. Of course, those of you without modems can do the same. Nothing wrong with a letter now and again. We'd rather like you to get involved.
Dialing the Helpless
I've been on Dial Help now for about twelve months and I don't know whether it's just me or whether all of us performing that service have these problem but sometimes it's a right nuisance. It may well be that comms is a popular subject but I have often had up to 20 calls a day and, while I don't really mind most of the time, occasionally you get some right pains in the neck.
Could you all please, please read the conditions of use of Dial Help? Read the manuals first, be near your computer, ring at a reasonable time and, for my wife's information if nothing else, say who you are? I had a phone call at 2 am once! That person learnt some new combinations of words but not necessarily the one's he was looking for.
Lastly sometimes I am tired and just don't want to help right now, Friday nights being a classic example, please understand if I ask you if I can ring back later. Otherwise I enjoy talking to members about their
problems - I've often found that I learn as much as they do.
Here's the tag.
... WOMAN.EXE - Great program. No documentation.
Reprinted from the Jan / Feb 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
