The January meeting of the TI-Chips was opened by yours truly. Fred Ialacci call me and said he had slipped on ice and, according to Les Kee, had jarred his back. The Chips hope Fred's injury isn't too serious and that he will have a rapid and full recovery. Actually, Fred was able to contact me via e-mail. Yes, Fred's on line! His e-mail address is FIALACCI@aol.com. I know Fred would like to hear from us while he's recovering.
Since the minutes from the December meeting were published in the newsletter, it was moved and passed to waive the reading of the December minutes. Lin Shaw gave the treasury report. Lin stated that the TI-Chips' treasury has demonstrated a positive cash flow in spite of the purchase of TView Micro.
John Parken reported that our membership has stabilized at 18 members. (It must be noted that 11 of those members were able to attend this month's meeting.) I reported that I had phoned Les Israel, an old time member of the Chips. I said I was pleasantly surprised to find Les and his wife, Marion, doing rather well. Les informed me that not only had he recently celebrated his 92nd birthday, but he has also purchased a new and faster computer. Les stated that he enjoys reading our newsletter because it keeps him in touch with his old friends. He also said he was on line at W2AAR@aol.com. Les told me he will answer all e-mail sent to him. Everyone expressed surprise and admiration at what Les is still doing. A motion was made, seconded and unanimously passed to award Les Israel TI-Chips' first Honorary Lifetime Membership. Congratulations, Les.
John Parken also reported that he had a phone conversation with our former Vice President and Software Librarian, Mark McCauley. John said Mark was surprised and happy to hear that the TI-Chips was still in business. Mark said he had GramKracker cartridges available to any one who wants them.
Les Kee reported that he just received two DSSD disks of Bill Gaskill's files from Harry Hoffman. Harry said more reformatted disks will be coming.
I reported that TIMUG '99 is on schedule and that we are getting down to where we should be planning equipment procurement for the conference. A public address system and tables were discussed. I said that we wouldn't know how many tables we will have to rent at $5.75 each until our guests make it known that they will be attending and how many tables they will need. I stated that the 8-seat, round table could serve user groups nicely, but vendors would most likely require the oblong table. This is why our guest must make their intentions known as soon as possible. There will be NO tables available for last minute, late comers. John Parken and Ron Markus discussed possible door or raffle prizes for the conference. They will report their recommendations to the Chips at the February meeting.
I reported that voting for the 1999 Jim Peterson Achievement Awards has been suspended until February 16th. This allows the TI community to nominate additional candidates and to request corrections in the nominee list. The final nominee list will be posted on February 16th. Elections for these awards will be conducted between February 16th and April 15th. Presentation of the 1999 Jim Peterson Achievement Awards will be made at the TIMUG '99 conference in Brookpark, Ohio on May 15th.
John Parken reported that he was unable to get our TView Micro to respond to his system at home. I took the TView Micro home and will check it out on both my old Compaq Contura and the new Presario laptop computers. I'll report my findings at the February meeting.
Harry Hoffman announced that he is now publishing the Cleveland Area TI-99/4A Newsletter on his own World Wide Web home page. It can be found at: http://members.core.com/~haryhofy/tichips/newsletter/. This is a start of electronically publishing our newsletter. However, paper copies will still be distributed to TI-Chips members. It was noted that the membership expiration labels on the newsletter were a year behind. John and Harry said this will be corrected. Harry stated that many user groups have resorted to electronically distributing their newsletters. I passed around a printout of the January issue of the Milwaukee UG newsletter I had subscribed to and received by e-mail.
John Parken asked if it was possible to schedule a tutorial session on Microsoft Word. John said he was frustrated at times because Word wouldn't let him do what he wanted to do. All we need is some one who understands Word enough to provide this tutorial. Any takers? John then put on a very impressive demonstration on speech recognition with the PC system. John had 'taught' the speech recognition software in his computer to recognize his way of speaking by reciting 256 `training phrases.' It worked so well that John was able to recite the Gettysburg Address into the computer and have his spoken word appear on the screen and through the speakers. The voice produced through the speakers sounded very much like what is produced through the TI-99/4A Speech Synthesizer.
The TI-Chips raffle director, Jack Koryta, was unable to attend this month's meeting. Therefore, there was no raffle.