Williamsport
Area Computer Club
Newsletter
& Meeting Minutes
April 2001
(late)
Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, May
8, at 7 PM, in the Winters
Room of the James V. Brown Library, 19 East Fourth
Street, Williamsport.
Our last meeting was opened on April 10, 2001
by Vice-President Kathy Kolb.
Old Business:
- Our ad ran in the Sun-Gazette classified column
this month. Unfortunately, it only led to one phone call
and one walk-in guest. Worse, the price was much higher
than Jim expected. Apparently the columns aren't as wide
as he imagined them. He will try to cut the ad down
somewhat for next month.
- We will also try putting a notice about our meetings on
the Library's bulletin board.
New Business:
- Jim had not updated the Club's web page as of meeting
time due to a strange problem with Front Page Express.
Since getting his DSL line and cancelling his dial-up
account, FPE still tries to dial his old ISP rather than
utilizing the Ethernet connection to the DSL router, even
though he has removed all traces of Dial-Up Networking
-related files from his system! The only suggestion
anyone could offer was to re-install FPE. (Since the
meeting, he has discovered that the problem was not with
FPE, but with the Web Publishing Wizard. Starting that
program by itself allowed him to reconfigure its default
settings. He is still perplexed as to where Windows is
hiding the dialup drivers, however!)
- The main item of business this month was discussion of
whether to hold meetings during the summer months. It was
felt by some that attendance, already poor, would dwindle
further as people engage in outdoor activities in the
long evenings and warm weather. However, we were
concerned that if we did nothing during the summer, it
would be too hard to hold members' interest to resume
scheduled activities in the fall. It was suggested by
Kathy that we hold social meetings only, i.e. conduct no
official business and have no guest speakers. We will,
however, continue to advertise, and brainstorm for new
program and advertising ideas.
- We also decided that we need a Membership Chairman to
focus on the problem. The current officers are often too
busy with work outside the club. If you are interested in
the position, please contact us.
Discussion & News:
- Microsoft is holding quarterly Technet
briefings for information technology professionals in
Williamsport. The first one, to be held May 16th,
concerns the Windows 2000 Active Directory system. There
need to be at least 100 attendees in order to keep the
program in this area.
- Information about the Central Pennsylvania Technology
Achievement Awards is now available at www.cpaccit.org.
- Alltel's ADSL service in Muncy, Montgomery, and
Watsontown is online and running at its advertised speed.
- Jim has discovered more disturbing things about
Earthlink's customer service department. Upon calling to
cancel his ex-Uplink account, he was first put on hold
for the better part of half an hour, then told that
Uplink's accounts were being handled by Mindspring rather
than Earthlink! Total time on the line: 35 minutes. He
has concluded that national ISPs are simply too big to
run efficiently. The only positive thing he has to say
about the experience is that they did not waste
any time trying to talk him out of cancelling; in fact,
they didn't even ask why.