The April meeting was one of the more interesting meetings in my two years as Vice President. Alps, the vendor who was supposed to come to do a presentation called to cancel at the last minute. I tried calling in some standby vendors I had in my Rolodex, but nobody was available. I decided that we could let the Questions and Answers run over as I had been asked to do several times. It seems that we never have enough time to devote to everybody's questions.
Lorin Evans, the WAP President, then offered to do a "fireside chat" about what was going on at the Pi. A little bit more information and we would easily use up the time.
Little did I know that both Lawrence Charters (illness) and Tom Witte, who normally hold forth for the Q & A, would not be there. Just my luck. Tom did arrive, a bit late, but fortunately I only got one question neither I nor anyone else could answer.
Following the Question & Answers there were a few announcements and then, it being election time, all candidates were invited to come up on stage and make a two-minute statement. A horde of candidates rushed the stage, every one demanding to be first. I had to force them to go in alphabetical order to maintain control. (Actually, nobody volunteered.)
Lorin Evans then began his fireside chat. He went over a bit of ancient and current history, detailing what the Pi is, and what it does. He described the services and benefits of being a Pi member and even had a few slides to spice up his chat.
Lorin then explained about the problems we've had lately on Explorer Service. It seems we've been attacked by those gremlins on the Internet who reflect their spam and other things off of other people's sites. This caused Explorer to become very slow and overloaded and even shut down at times. We invested a few bucks in a firewall, and are hopefully now protected.
A few questions and answers followed Lorin's talk and then I tried to give a brief overview of the value of being a Pi member. Fortunately, my presentation froze at 11:30 and it was time to give out the door prizes. Not bad pickings without a vendor. We had 3 software packages, a book and some T-shirts:
|
Color Expert |
Bill Wydro |
|
Diskguard |
Charlie Stancil |
|
Tommy - The CD |
Tom Berens |
|
Apple T-Shirts |
Dick Cross, George Copley and Arthur Hyland |
|
Word 6, the Book |
Ralph B. Lingeman |
Next month the Apple User Group Tour's inaugural stop. We don't know what it is, but they promise it will be exciting. June 6 is the Garage Sale.