CCP/M Weekly Update for the Week ending 03/18/89 by Brian Nalewajek Secretary's note: This material was sent by President Brian Nalewajek to our BBS. As my meeting notes are late and duplicate in several ways the content here, and as Brian's contribution appears much more interesting than what I'd prepared, I have simply run my Spelling Proofreader and editorial hand over what Brian has submitted and offer it up as the Extended Meeting Notes and Online Newsletter for April! Brian has been very active since taking the top post in our organization and has inspired me personally in many ways. Now if I could only keep up with his Action Plans ... I wholeheartedly support one of the often repeated points that he makes, which I might paraphrase by quoting The Computer Journal's logo: "If You Don't Contribute Anything.... .... Then Don't Expect Anything [CCP/M] is User Supported Yet another CCP/M project underway! This little text file could be the start of an online weekly newsletter for CCP/M. Rather than wait for the next edition of P.O.E., here's a quick way to get caught up on the plans, trials and tribulations of the Connecticut CP/M Users Group; or is it "User's Group". I notice that Lee uses an apostrophe, which says the group belongs to the users. I've been spelling it "Users", believing we were a group of computer users. Obviously, for CCP/M it works both ways. Is it "Users", "User's" or should it really be "Users'": a group owned by its members, the Users. Any one seen the Bylaws? (Secretary's note: It is March 28, I'm about a week overdue on my Meeting Notes for the month and I'm more and more leaning toward sending editor Taylor this online newsletter. I am running a Royal, using its Spelling Proofreader and as I fix some of the marked words, I am now intrigued by the discussion of the proper spelling of this word "users". I have given Bob Persons the Public Domain Software Library (Bob is our new Librarian) and the current version of our Bylaws is in it. I don't have a copy of this version on any personal disk. Best I can do is use an earlier version which doesn't differ as I recall in any major way from the official and current version. Both the hardcopy of the current version (which I do have) and the machine readable earlier version open with Article I - Name The name of this organization shall be the Connecticut CP/M Users' Group, hereinafter referred to as CCP/M. Spelling this word "users" is always a problem. My personal feeling is the the official spelling, "Users'" is correct. The trailing apostrophe implies what grammarians call "plural possessive". For those of you who enjoy such details, here's what my "English Grammar" card says: The Apostrophe To indicate possession. GENERAL RULE: Add apostrophe and s to words not ending in s or z sound. lady's men's John's cat's Add only apostrophe to words ending in s or z sound. ladies' Joneses' beaux' Steinmetz' OPTIONAL: Apostrophe and s may be added to singular nouns ending in s or z sound. Jones' or Jones's Dickens' or Dickens's To indicate missing letters in a contraction. I don't know. It's a long trip. To form plurals of letters, figures, signs, etc. four 7's six &'s five m's ten *'s Since I think the members of CCP/M own their Group and since we have more than one member (!), "Users' Group" fits. Now that we've gotten that critical issue resolved, shall we get on with it? ... ! End of Secretary's note.) Speaking of the Bylaws, we are planning to bring the Bylaws up to date. Over the past year or so we've voted a few amendment that haven't yet appeared in a new edition. In fact, I'm not sure we even recorded the changes we made. Not until this year did we have a group Secretary. We are still ironing out the particulars of this office. (BTW another amendment we should add is to bring the position of Secretary up to the elected officer status.) I submitted a list of proposed amendment that we will bring before the group for a vote. If anyone has any more suggestions for needed changes please leave them in a message on CCP/M's BBS ((203) 665-1100); we'll add them to the list of proposals. In any event we should see a new edition of the Bylaws in the next few months. If you haven't noticed already, this weekly newsletter is not a polished, professional work of literary art. I hope you find it interesting and informative; you may even find it entertaining (try playing "Count the Typos" and you'll see what I mean.) While I hope our newsletter editor will find useful info' here, this is a very different animal. Nothing here is official. The odds that some important remark will be misquoted or misspelled are great. What is sacrificed in precision, I hope it makes up for in timely, useful information necessary to achieve the kind of dynamic nature CCP/M should have. The regular monthly meeting of CCP/M was well attended Tuesday night; especially by CP/M computers. There were at least five computers set up in our meeting room at the Farmington Public Library. Also on hand was Lee Bradley's copy of the CCP/M PD Software Library. While not the feature attraction of this meeting, it was good to see that all those floppies were together and safe. Now's a good time to mention that we have a new PD Software Librarian. Robert Person volunteered to step in to a position that had been left unattended for a while. I don't know why our former PDSWL couldn't stay with it. Perhaps it was just a question of not having enough spare time. I believe Robert will do an excellent job. He has a secret weapon. Owning a Commodore 128 computer with a 1571 drive he can read/write/format several different CP/M disk formats. Now Rob tells me that he purchased a utility that will allow his 128 to R/W/F over 130 different formats! Back to the meeting. There was a period of informal discussion before the principle part of the meeting took place. I checked off a number of the news items that had developed, largely from the executive planning meeting last month. I also had a chance to welcome back a friend and vital CCP/M office holder, Tom Veile, our group's treasurer. He had been quite ill for a time and we're glad he's feeling better. He passed on the current estimate of our treasury, around $1400-$1500. That's quite a bit, even with the money we need to have to operate for the rest of our year taken into account. Part of the surplus will be spent in some planned projects and part left for future projects. Al Hathway outdid himself in announcing the meeting topics for several months in advance. Among the upcoming topics are CP/M games, a tour of the CCP/M PDSWL, and a demonstration of the FATCAT disk cataloging program. Glen Gross did the feature presentation for the meeting. His talk on the "Checks & Balances" software package was very well done. He provided printed versions of typical screens generated by the program. It was apparent that Glen spent quite a bit of time in setting up a fictitious checking account file to demonstrate the program. Even given that we were a little late getting started, I think everyone there got an idea of what this program could do for the average user. As I had to leave before the meeting ended, I don't know if there was time to demonstrate a PD program called "Checks". This program, while less comprehensive than "Checks & Balances", provides some of the same features. (Editorial aside: One of the things Glen did which future presenters are encouraged to try follows: Prepare your handouts and talk so you avoid the "Let's all gather 'round the computer" syndrome. Glen did have his computer and the software he was discussing there but at no time during his main presentation did we need to see his software running. After the main talk was over, those people that wanted to see "Checks and Balances" in action could do so. Finally, Glen's fictitious checking account was also both funny and at the same time inspirational, for it provided a good working model of the chart of accounts CCP/M could very well adapt. To order this software, you may call (206) 937-8927. The company's name and address is C.D.E. Software, 4017 - 39th Ave. S.W., Seattle, Washington 98116-3848.) I was not able to attend the traditional aftermeeting meeting. I will take a wild guess that they stopped somewhere for beer & pizza. I'll also guess that there were some resolutions passed by unanimous consent, along the lines of approving CCP/M funding for a charter trip to somewhere in the South Seas. The survey I put together this week, to help us attain needed information on our members' computer systems, is itself part of a larger experiment. We have several projects underway and nearly all of them require that we find enough CCP/M members willing to pitch in some time and effort to make them work. For example: If you've been reading the messages posted on this BBS the last couple of weeks, you'll know we're planning to mail out a disk-based edition of our group's newsletter. Unless we wanted to dump a LOT of work on a few people, we have to find a way to get the tasks of copying and mailing disks distributed over a larger group of volunteers. I decided to try to accomplish two tasks at once. First, we need to get info from our members on what formats their systems can read. It makes sense to gather other useful information at the same time, so I extended the scope of the survey. The second task is to test the willingness of the membership to help out with CCP/M projects. To this end I set up the survey so that a number of members can each print out and mail a fixed number of survey forms. We only need between 5 and 10 volunteers. I know that if we can't get that many, not only the survey, but the DBNL and several other planned projects will go down the tubes. Next week should show us if the experiment is a success or not. BTW. If you would like to volunteer to help with either the survey or the DBNL, leave a message to me on this system or leave a note for Lee Bradley. The other coals in the fire this week included Lee's effort to get the AMPRO Little Board hardware ready for a new version of the CCP/M BBS/RAS. I'm trying to show Lee that we as the group are all behind his efforts to maintain and improve this vital communications link for CCP/M. Lee and the rest of the group are glad that such technically gifted people as Rick Swenton and Al Hathway are contributing their expertise to the project. I think, as the new system becomes a reality, there will be several new avenues for other CCP/M members to participate. From writing news and information bulletins, to remote SYSOPs, the possibilities are just starting to develop. On a related note, I heard that Lee is considering applying for recognition as an official Z-NODE. This would be a definite boon for our group and Z-System users throughout the area. Two other projects under way are a "Best of" selection of disk files from the CCP/M PDSW library, and free introductory disk we'll have on hand for potential CCP/M members. The "Best of" project is a possible way to get some of the most useful and requested files from our library onto a number of disk formats. I don't know yet if we will charge a fee for these disks or how much. The free intro' disk will be called the CCP/M sampler. On the disk there will be several utilities and other programs and text files that will give potential CCP/M members a taste of what we have to offer. The disk will also contain some information on our group's purpose and application forms. We'd like to have these ready for the next regular meeting. Some other projects are still in the blue sky state. I hope the info' gained from the survey will help bring these projects into focus. To mention a few: A second CCP/M BBS/RAS located in another location, outside of the Hartford area. I know having our current BBS a local call is great. It would be great to see other CCP/M members enjoy the same situation. We'll also look at holding meetings in areas closer to some of our CCP/M members in other parts of the state. I think another Z-FEST is likely some time this year. While it seems to be on the back burner, the idea of setting up a tutorial meeting for new computer users is still a possibility. This project, along with a few others, remain good candidates for a multi-user group operation. That's about it for now. There's lots of work to be done. I doubt if any of us can be sure we'll have as much time to devote to the group's activities and projects as we'd like, but we keep plugging along. I hope you all have a good week. BRN..