May, 2001      Diablo Blue      Page 9

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have both Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) demonstrating the new OfficeXP and Aladdin Systems (www.aladdinsys.com) showing us their latest versions of Dragstrip and Stuffit and perhaps a few surprises.
I am working on scheduling the summer presentations and would welcome any requests or suggestions. I have some ideas but I welcome your input. Speaking of input- how good is your computer trivia knowledge? We are planning a Computer Trivia Bowl. For example: Some people say that the personal-computer era began when a microcomputer appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics in January of 1975. Was the computer the IMSAI, the Altair 8800, the SCELBI or the Apple I? See you in May.

An episode in life, "Life Ain't Fair," or "neither are computers." The other morning I start to boot up so I can get my e-mail. This computer is one that I had just assembled in the last two months. The boot went to the splash screen, with the bottom where there is a blue and white moving strip that looks like blue sky and clouds. Well fifteen minutes later the strip is still passing by. I check the activity light, nothing, so I try to re-boot, but the same thing again. Also won't boot into Safe Mode either. So now [sure glad I made the rescue disk when prompted] in a DOS-like mode [Windows ME v4.90] I booted up the rescue disk in the A-drive, and ran ScanDisk.
Guess what my brand new hard drive had developed -- a bad cluster. So I had ScanDisk mask the bad spot. I now surmised that this bad spot is in the middle of one of the boot files. Now I tried to re-install Windows ME, and that does not get very far. I then ran ScanDisk again, and only to find that my hard drive had developed two more bad clusters. This prompts me to storm down to my friendly computer dealer. There I got sympathy, and a new hard drive. Well, I got so engrossed in partitioning, formatting, and re-installing all my goodies, that I forgot all about the Windows SIG meeting, until it was too late. Yes! The lessons learned from this are: "Nothing is quite fair" and "Always make an emergency disk when prompted."

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you get in a month. You'll discover very quickly how many scammers there are out to get you.
I have received 4,223 spams since January 1, 2001. Here is a list of the most frequent spammers. All the rest sent under 24 spams. As you can see, the top spammers are the 'freebie' sites.
286 Yahoo.com; 276 hotmail.com; 156 china.com; 112 aol.com; 106 msn.com; 61 usa.net;
55 lycos.com; 42 netscape.com; 42 angelfire; 41 headwind.de; 41 earthlink.net; 39 uole.com;
37 looksmart.com; 32 compuserve.com; 32 wshost.net; 31 verizonmail.com; 30 mac21.com;
30 arabia.com; 27 myrgv.com; 25 email-prom.net; 24 neovi.com .

Fred Showker is a designer, consultant, writer and speaker. He has published 60-Second Window and DT&G Magazine online since 1990, and is director of The Graphic Design Network which includes The Design & Publishing Center at www.graphic-design.com/. (1994) He was a co-founder of both The User Group Forum on America Online (1987), and The User Group Network at www.user-groups.net/. (1994) He originally founded Showker Graphic Arts & Design in 1972, has been an avid computer activist and supporter since 1984.