I’d like to thank a few people who are doing such a great job for us on the Board of Directors. Jenny Lind Olin, Mary Sheridan and William LaMartin. Now everyone on the BOD deserve a round of thanks, but these three are doing more than their share. Jenny is so diligently watching our club treasury that we all can sleep knowing the money is all accounted for. Mary, as programs chairperson, does such an outstanding job of getting guest speakers month after month. The quality of the programs has never been better. And all you have to do is look at our web site to see what a job William LaMartin is doing. The web site is always developing; slowly because a lot of thought must be given before making changes, and the quality of that thought is very evident. And of course our newsletter has been consistently outstanding since he took it over. In addition to building the newsletter, William also has to badger writers every month for material, make up the newsletter, print it (with one volunteer) and then fold and mail it (with a small but loyal group of helpers), also maintain the mailing list, and finally run to the post office to mail it! Did I mention that he also writes a usually large article himself?

Which leads me into one (non) favorite subject: soliciting articles for the newsletter. Now hear me out. If you’ll notice there are three or four people who are there month after month. There are three or four that can be counted on to contribute every few months or a couple of times a year. That’s basically it. Everyone, and that means everyone, is capable of writing an article for the newsletter! It doesn’t have to be top quality. It can be on an everyday subject, something that you do or have experienced during your time on computers. We need much, much more material. If twenty five of our most loyal members would write one article a year, we could lighten the burden for a few dedicated members and increase the diversity of subjects.

I’d like to thank our member and secretary Jim Weber for an outstanding talk on MPEG-3 last month. It was just outstanding. I enjoy home-grown presentations as much as the outside speakers.

I need to remind you again as always … we need to bring in new members. Remember there’s a prize for bringing in the most members. So harass your friends and neighbors, make a nuisance of yourselves and drag some new faces in.