Number 245 - October 2003

UPDATE
RainCoast Conference    The 2003 RainCoast Conference, the annual conference for leaders of Computer User Groups in the Pacific Northwest (British Columbia, Washington and Oregon) will be held at the La Quinta Inn, Tacoma on Friday, October 10th and Saturday, October 11th. Registration is $50 per person until October 3rd when registration will be closed. Conference on-site registration begins at 4:00 p.m. on October 10th. Conference is over after the last breakout session about noon, but it could run later. Look it up at: www.apcug.org/events/regional.htm Happy Anniversary!    We forgot to mention last month that we had reached our one year tenancy in the new meeting place, the former Southeast Tacoma Mutual Water Company building Meeting Discussion Topics? Can You Help?    Since many of our members have subscribed to Smart Computing and articles in it seem suited to our user group, it was suggested, at the September meeting, that members volunteer to give a short (ten minute) resume of either the whole issue or a specific topic or article that caught their interest. Anyone wishing to give such a review please contact Sandee Gimblett with the topic and date of the proposed informal presentation. On Ubiquity    There used to be an old saw that if you were told a joke as you boarded a train in New York someone would tell you the same joke as you stepped off the train in San Francisco. Was it the telegraph or telephone that enabled this phenomenon? Perhaps, but things have speeded up a bit since then. Now e-mail does the job. We received many e-mails sending us the following item. Since there's an outside chance that you haven't seen it we've included it here:	The Amazing Human Brain    Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are. The olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe. Tahnks to Pual for tihs one, algothuh mnay otrehs e-imeald tihs it aslo. A Little History Lesson    In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannon fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck was a problem.    The best storage method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate with 16 round indentations, called a Monkey.    But if this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make Brass Monkeys. Few landlubbers realized that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey"!    And all this time, you thought that was a vulgar expression, didn't you?    (You must send this fabulous bit of historical knowledge to at least ten unsuspecting friends. If you don't, your hard drive is going to fall off and kill your mouse.)
Number 245 - October 2003