September 6, 2013
The meeting was called to order at 7:39 p.m. by President Chuck Horner. See Lola Hunter at the ticket table, for raffle tickets, door prize tickets, and 3" x 5" cards to write questions for discussion/answers at the end of the meeting. Get at least one $5 raffle ticket for this month's raffle prize, a Philips Universal Remote controller.
There were no SIG announcements.
Charles Dumm was visiting after a long hiatus. Charles, Diane George, and Bill George have been members since the beginning of PCC.
Presentation: Diane George presented a retrospective of PCC history. The PCC started in July 1988, when it broke off from the TRS Nybblers to add a focus on MS DOS, the leading edge IBM operating system of the day. There were 14 members in the original group. Shortly thereafter many more members joined.
The Clubhouse met in a space donated by a balloon factory. Then we were displaced by a paying tenant, the Zucchini Festival, replaced by a vegetable.
The Main Meeting met at Cal State Hayward. Diane showed pictures of both Main Meetings and Executive Committee Meetings. Presenters included Paul Dodds of Borland and Jeffrey Armstrong (St. Silicon).
PCC had a booth at the West Coast Computer Fair, the Hayward Computer Show, and the Oakland Computer Show. After the Clubhouse lost its space at the balloon factory, it had a brief stint at Castro Valley Adult School. Then the Clubhouse moved to Hayward Adult School.
When Cal State raised our rent, the Main Meeting moved to Hayward Adult School. In 2010 the meeting moved to the Calvary Baptist Church. The Clubhouse lost its Hayward Adult School space in 2011 and moved to SIG leader Sid Jordan's garage.
PCC started using Prado to host the Club Web site and then moved to The Diamond Lane (TDL) over a disagreement about content. When webmaster Diane wanted to expand capabilities and use Joomla she had to change hosts again.
Discussion of other memories that attendees have led to a discussion of the Wayback Machine, a Web site that archives Web sites. Look there for Nybblers and PCC history. Other useful resources brought up included Project Gutenberg, which has many public domain books. Open Library is a similar resource. WorldCat.org lists books, dissertations, and theses and tells you which nearby library has it. Many libraries also loan ebooks. Main Meeting attendance can yield many valuable random tidbits.
PCC has had many SIGs, among them OS2, Genealogy, Media Mania, Corel, a Palm SIG, a PDA SIG.
Drawings took place after anniversary cake and ice cream. No candles, no singing.
Question on a Card: Is there an email program that allows composing offline?
Answer: you can compose offline in Outlook or Thunderbird and then activate the Internet connection.
Another Question: How do you archive emails?
Answer: Save them as a text file. Look for a detailed explanation in an upcoming issue of PCC News.
Thank you to George Kornbluth for taking care of refreshments.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:45 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Bayle Emlein, Secretary
