\input tex
\twelvepointpunk

Sorry it's been so long I contacted you. So much has changed\dots{}. We
(Josh and I) havemoved into a real apartment. It has it's pleasant
side-effects, even if space is tight. It's amazingly cheap -- \$680 for
three bedrooms. Yes, that's cheap here in SF.

I don't have a BBS right now. I probably will before summer's out. I
wonder what BBS software I'll run! Maybe still Fido just to be
anachronistic (seriously, I can't imagine running anything else). It
will probably have Internet services attached though.

I'm running a full-time Internet host now. My same old 386 box, with 8
MB of memory. Had to spring the bucks for 4MB more. Ouch. The software
is pretty buggy, but it works. Conservatism pays, as always. I'm still
managing the Internet cooperative, 'The Little Garden'. I'm getting
\$490/mo from it, which, surprisingly, is OK. Josh and I did a big
Ethernet and telephone cabling job for a friend's employer, and made
\$4000, back in January. We've been living off that since then, plus it
paid for the move-in costs on this apt. Not bad.

That damn laptop you gave me. It's become utterly indispensible. I
believe I told you the time I dropped it onto concrete. Well, the modem
went AFU for a while; it was solidly intermittent. I finally found that
the crystal, one of those new-fangled surface-mount jobs, wasn't
soldered in right! Easily fixed. It's been flawless. I'm writing this
on it. Everything I've put into FidoNews recently was done on it
(including the recent magazine reviews that seem to have drawn
criticism, apparently for the language used, sigh). I run NOS, aka
Network Operating System, to test the Internet gunk as I travel around
the Bay Area, rebooting PCs and threatening crappy modems.

Are you still traveling about? I am gettin {\it real} itchy to hit the
road. May, I think, I'll buzz down to Santa Fe, ostensibly to visit
friends there. My first stop will be just the other side of the Sierras,
Independence Calif., nothing special there, jsut the backside of the old
sea-bottom, from which you can see the volcanic chain and the huge
expanse of water-worn mountains. Half way from Rt.~395 up to some damn
overpriced park, is an outcropping of rocks, behind which I drive and
camp. Some small evidence of it having been a townie drinking spot some
time in the past, but on weekday nights it's quite deserted, and I
really don't think it's been visited by anyone but the likes of me in
many years.

From there to the Eastern Mojave (better hurry before the scumbags turn
it into a nuke dumping ground), the second night. I found it originally
by looking at the usual Rand-McNally road atlas, for the largest expanse
of terrain without roads or other features; then drove there. (Route 40,
Needles to Barstow, near Essex, so recently turned into Nat'l forest it
shows as such on nearly no maps.) There's hardly anything there, the
usual alien landscape, but up past the Rangers' Station, off the left is
a dirt rut heading towards a barely-visible white cliff, which turns out
to be chalk carved by the wind, and the site of an old ranch watering
station, long abandoned, all shot up in the usual Wild-West manner. The
road crests a small hill, so the site isn't visible from the road except
for the cliff. 

I hate paying to camp.

I'm embarrassed to say I just went and bought an envelope large enough
to mail all the Fido/FidoNet manuals in. I also put together a DOS
machine upon which to read the tapes the contain the Fido documentation
-- it more involved than I thought. (I had everying taped when I swapped
to unix, and no way to read the tapes!) I have the original The Book in
Mac format, and exported in RTF format, and my edit underway in \TeX,
which probably won't be of much use to you.

You can still email me from FidoNet. Send the message to {\tt
1:125/555}. Address it {\tt To:~UUCP}. Format the message so:

\vskip\parskip
{\obeylines\parskip=0pt\indent\tt
--------------------------
1: to: tomj@fido.wps.com
2:
3: The first line of your message starts here, as in this example;
4: line \#1 is the Internet address; line \#2 is blank (a space is OK);
5: line \#3 onward is the message body.
}
\vskip\parskip

(Every FidoNet address has a simple Internet-ized address: Dick Gladden
at 1:381/5 becomes {\tt Dick_Gladden@f5.n381.z1.fidonet.org}. Note that
you read an Internet address like you read a U.S.~Postal address; name,
localest address (street), less-local (city), least local (state, zip)
last. The appropriate machinery reads it right to left, as does the Post
Office. {\tt fidonet.org} is an Internet address, run by goold ole Burt
Juda, who has some kludgey program that converts most {\tt fidonet.org}
addresses into FidoNet addresses. (All but some like {\tt
postmaster@fidonet.org}, ie.~Burt hisseff.)

I tell ya it's awful nice not running a BBS. You wouldn't believe the
crap I had to deal with. Most people are of course nice and stuff, but
so many people had so many expectations, that somehow I was in charge of
FidoNet, etc, that pulling the plug became the most obvious choice. I
will run a BBS again, but I'll let the old expecations wither away. It's
supposed to be fun, dammit!!

Small world -- Jock Gill, the Media Liason for the White House? Turns
out, he's a friend of mine! Used to be my landlord, in the last
apt.~I had back in Boston (West Medford, specifically). A pretty cool guy,
actually, dammit he knows what FidoNet is. Can you imagine? Someone
amidst those dinosaurs (whatever their physical ages) actually knows
what email is, and why it's important, and all that rot. 

My plans to move to New Mexico have not died, they're still on the back
burner. Im some ways stronger. Staying here has been a good decision, as
I'm now doing some new stuff, managing this Internet cooperative. We've
run into troubles with the existing national network suppliers, and may
actually forge ahead with our own. Very leading-edge network stuff. And,
there's lots of Internet stuff going on in Albuquerque\dots{} Sigh, as
much as I hate to think about being counted amongst the employed, there
are worse fates, I suppose. But I don't like to think about it.

For about \$1000/month, you could rent a 64K data channel on a
sattelite, that uses a 3-foot diameter dish. One end you could leave
fixed, say in yoru house, and the other you could drag it around. To use
it, you'd have to aim it pretty carefully, but 64K is pretty good, about
four Zyxel's worth. Coverage: North America. Not bad. You could dump
DOS, get a 486 laptop with 200MB disk and 8MB memory, run eunuchs I mean
unix with {\tt X} windows (makes M'soft windows look like an
Etch-a-Sketch), and display GIFs out in the desert. OK, so it'd cost
about \$5000 up front and \$1000 a month, but what the hell\dots{} Think
how fast you could read your mail, and read Jack Decker's articles. On
se.cond though, maybe it's not such a good idea\dots

I'm babbling. Time to go!  Have fun drivnig around and scraping bugs off
the windshield. I'm envious!

\bye