Williamsport Area Computer Club Meeting Minutes / Newsletter -- January 1998

Dan Yoas, President, called the meeting to order at 7 PM, January 13 1998, with 16 persons in attendance. He introduced the topic, Beginner's Night, and noted that Kathy Kolb would like suggestions of topics to cover in her February program, Introduction to HTML.

Treasurer's Report:

Our treasury stands at $353.32. Members are reminded that 1998 dues are due now.

Committees:

Advertising / Awareness / Public Relations / Home Page:

The Club business cards designed by Wayne Palmer are going to be printed.

The Club home page counter was reset at the beginning of the year.

We received a request from "Sawtooth P.R." to present a program, but they did not state their company's area of interest.

A request was submitted by Gina McSurdy, rgrlc@idt.net, for e-mail from people who remember Davison's Furniture in downtown Williamsport. Another request was received for information on computer clubs in Snowhill, MD.

Bylaws:

No action.

Computer Swap Meet:

We are going ahead with plans to hold a computer swap meet this year. We still need suggestions as to a feasible hall location. We would like to have plans in place by April to give us a 5-6 month preparation time. Kathy and Dan stressed the need for advertising, including radio ads. There appears to be interest from local ISPs.

Kathy suggested that another public-relations / fund-raising avenue for the Club could be a computer gaming tournament. Some stores are now renting computers for parties, and Sunlink has Kali and Quake servers online.

Computer Recycling (finding charitable uses for old computers):

A request was received from Nathan Mitchell and the Study Buddy program at Kennedy/King House for donations of computers. They currently have an IBM PCjr and would like software for it. Kathy announced that the club recycling program has some old software that we could donate.

We have one complete computer system which is promised to the Center For Independent Living.

Horizon House in Lock Haven is looking for a monitor and a mouse. A motion by Lou Kolb was passed to give them one repaired monitor and one borderline monitor from the Club collection.

Willis Beaver announced that he will have a number of 386 and 486 motherboards available for donation soon.

North Central PA computer networking / ISP news:

Dan reported on the January 12 meeting of the Community Square program, an effort of the JVB Library and volunteers to provide web sites for nonprofit organizations. The United Way attended. Steve Simcox, David Bailey, and Jim Ingram expressed an interest in assisting the program. Meetings are held every 6 weeks, with the next one on February 22.

CSR UpLink now provides local, regional, national, and world news on their home page.

Kathy announced that Neal Winters will be presenting a program on digital cameras at the March meeting of the West Branch Amateur Radio Association. A brief discussion on the pros and cons of low-end cameras, some of which have plastic lenses, ensued.

Jim Shaffer announced that news of a proposal to add a surcharge to ISP telephone lines is again circulating on the Internet. He would like to stress that this news is false and appears to be a verbatim copy of a real issue from last year that was defeated. For more information, consult the FCC directly at http://www.fcc.gov, but please disregard advice to e-mail them with complaints.

Local BBS news:

The Club received notice that a new BBS, The Black Paladin, is in operation at 717-321-7546. Scheduled hours are 2:30 PM to 11 PM weekdays and 11 AM to 5:30 PM Sundays. The sysop is Richard Rauch. The board features online games and a variety of message areas.

Program:

The topic for the evening's meeting was Beginner's Night, a time when the program portion of our meeting is set aside entirely for our members and guests to raise discussion on any topic they need help with. We had a variety of questions, concerning subjects such as Internet service from Bell Atlantic (not yet available in this area), limits on attached file sizes in email, determining the size of a file in Windows 95 (click the right mouse button and select Properties from the menu, or select View Detailed from the menu in Explorer), cable Internet access in Lock Haven (none at this time), and installing a handheld scanner.

Kathy is having problems with a bus mouse suddenly failing to work until the system is rebooted. Willis suggested moving the loading of the driver to a different location in the autoexec.bat or config.sys file.

David had a question concerning the MIDI player within Netscape, and Kathy noted that Netscape and Internet Explorer handle MIDI differently.

We also explained our used-computer distribution policy at the request of a recent member.

The next meeting is Tuesday, February 10, at 7 PM, in the Lycoming College Academic Center room B309.

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