The December Christmas party/meeting of the TI-Chips was called to order at which time a minute of silence was set aside for individual prayers and well wishes for our president Nina Mae Hoffman to have a rapid and complete recovery. Nina was undergoing back surgery at the time of our meeting, and the TI-Chips and our guests wanted to give this moment to Nina and her husband, our newsletter editor, Harrison (Harry) Hoffman. (I had read the update E-mail from Harry, on Nina's condition, to the group.)
The minutes from the November meeting were read and Lin Shaw gave the Treasurer's report saying, "We are solvent."
John Parken said our membership is standing at a solid 18 members and that he felt those who have stayed with us this far would probably be with us for the duration. Les Kee reported, once again, that there was no activity in the club's library this month.
There was some discussion about how each officer felt about his job. After each had his say, a motion was made and passed to keep the 2000 TI-Chips officers in place for the 2001 year. Therefore, the TI-Chips' officers for 2001 will be:
President - Nina Mae Hoffman (I stated that I would be happy to continue to organize and run the TI-Chips meetings in Nina's place while she is recovering.)
Secretary - Glenn Bernasek
Treasurer - Lin Shaw
John Parken said he would stay on as Membership Chairman and Les Kee said he would remain as the Software Librarian.
At this point we were happy to welcome Marty Smoley and Ken Gladyszewski, from the now disbanded North Coast 99ers, to the party. The Chips' TI-99/4A system was set up and running for the Christmas party. I showed some of the routines I had written. A message board called TI-Board, a Bingo calling program called TI Bingo and a silly random screen character displaying routine called Bonkers. John Parken cranked up a classic Christmas favorite called Woodstock's Christmas. The only problem we experienced was that there was no audio with the demonstrations. I also ran several routines from the TI-Chips' Decade Disk we handed out at the 1993 MUG in Lima. It was all a wonderful time for nostalgia.
Marty talked about the times when he had to put printer coding commands in his text files to use his laser jet printer, and how he and his wife worked hours on end to produce the TI Base tutorials he had published in the Cleveland Area TI-99/4A User Groups newsletters. Marty used the "Columbus method" of typing while his wife patiently tried to teach him grammar and spelling. (The Smoley team must have worked well because what Marty had published was pretty good stuff.)
Everyone enjoyed the goodies brought to the party by myself and Ada Markus, and a tray of Christmas goodies was made and given to the North Royalton library staff to enjoy in their lunch room.