The November meeting of the TI-Chips was opened, and the minutes from the October meeting were read and accepted. Lin Shaw gave the Treasurer's report and John Parken reported on our membership standing. John promised that he would try to have an updated membership list for our next meeting. Les Kee said he had no library report at this time.
The attendance at this month's meeting was surprisingly good despite the very foggy conditions on the roads in northeast Ohio this morning. Even Norb Sitter braved the fog in his drive from Erie, PA to attend.
The important piece business we had to discuss was the status of our Web site. Harry Hoffman reported that he had made the site activation/authorization phone call to CoreComm. Craig Getty said he was now able to log on to our new site, and is in the process of rebuilding the on line newsletter. Craig also mentioned that, although we now have 10 meg of free memory space from Corecomm, the site seems slow to accept uploaded files.
The new URL for Harry's newsletter site is: http://members.core.com/~haryhofy/tichips/newsletter
Craig suggested that a floppy disk backup of our site be made and stored in the club's library. Les Kee agreed to have the disks kept in the software library.
I passed around the list of nominees for the 2002 Jim Peterson Achievement Awards. I explained that the list will be published for "editing only" during the month of December. Voting for the Jim Peterson Achievement Awards will commence January 01, 2002, and that votes were not being accepted at this time.
I also reported that Jim Krych recently informed me that the terrorist attacks on September 11th had a possible negative effect on the CCAG (Classic Computers And Games) 2002 show scheduled for next year. As was expected, military sites (e.g., National Guard armories) might not be available to civilian organizations or activities. This leaves the site for CCAG 2002 up in the air for the time being. If anyone knows of a place that could house the CCAG for a reasonable price (Free or nominal price), please contact Jim Krych at jwkrych@n2net.net. The CCAG has become a recognized event for classic computer and game enthusiasts. It will be tragic for this show to be cancelled for a lack of place to hold it.
Les Kee has been experiencing difficulty in downloading/reading the minutes I've been sending each month. Therefore, I have opted to send the monthly minutes via a generic ASCII text e-mail attachment. Other than printing out the minutes and mailing them via snail mail, I don't know of any other options. Craig offered several suggestions to Les on downloading attachments. At least I can say I've gotten rid of the strange characters that had replaced the apostrophes and quotes in my earlier minutes.
Les Kee handed out copies of an article on LINUX. It seems this operating system is being more widely accepted. (It is nice to know that there is a viable alternative to Bill Gates' Microsoft Windows OS.)
No one from the TI-Chips attended this year's Chicago Faire. However, Harry reported he heard the overall attendance at the Faire was down again from previous years. Harry also said he understands that some new cards and software from the European user groups were introduced at the Faire.
John Parken expressed interest in getting the URLs for the OLUG (Yahoo! Group's TI-99/4A On Line User Group) and the WHT archive site.
The URL for the OLUG is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ti99-4a
The URL for WHT TI-99/4A archive site is: ftp://ftp.whtech.com/
Craig Getty won the 50:50 raffle. Congratulations, Craig.
The December 15th meeting of the TI-Chips will be the annual Christmas party meeting in the Large Meeting Room of the North Royalton branch library from 10:00 to noon. Everyone is welcome to bring goodies and/or beverages. Please try to attend. We will also have our TI-99/4A system up and running for those who would like to run some of the oldie but goodie routines such as the famous "Woodstock's Christmas". Harry said he hopes to be able to bring Nina Mae to the party. This will be a very special Christmas gift for us all!