CompuServe Messages

Hi Doug… The snail mail address of the AOS is: American Opal Society, Inc. P.O. Box 382 Anaheim, CA 92805 As for the internet (sorry but small "i" intended)…since you asked: (getting on soap box) Yes I know how to access inet and confess I use it occasionally to stay in touch with dear friends who aren't on CIS. But the first inet message I ever got came from one such friend via email through a Delphi gateway… Imagine this, a friggin' chain letter! Want to guess how many screens I viewed with the internet full screen address headers on a message that had been appended annotated and forwarded about 40 times…each forward by the way carried a small apology note so the whole thing was a monster of a message (about 40k if I recall). I sat for over half an hour politely (for the sake of my friend who later apologized explaining he had forwarded it to me without reading it) looking at screen after screen of addresses spreckled with a series of small notes saying something like "Jim" (Joe, Bob, Sally etc etc) "good buddy, sorry to send this to you but I don't want to break the chain and get bad luck, please read the important original message and forward to 5 email friends. best regards…" The message at the bottom was one of those stupid questionaires in the "Did You Know…blah blah blah" vein. Following the questions was the patent chain letter admonition about avoiding bad luck… Well I say what Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker said so well back in the '60's…"If it wasn't for baaaad Luck…I wouldn't have no luck at all!" I trashed the note, did the best I could to tell my friend what a jerk I thought he'd been and swore I would never purposely use the internet. That attitude is purely prejudicial and I reserve the right to rescind it at any time (g), but I keep hearing from CIS members in various forums who have venture out to the inet. They almost always come back with the attitude that they like it here better. The scientific community (eg here) is notable in not sharing that dislike for the inet (or, more gently, preference for CIS) and I understand I may be depriving myself of a valuable source or contact method. I also realize it's arogant on my part to be so closed minded but this is my stance at least until further notice. I also do a fair amount of emailing…eg on Prodigy during December of 1990 (the month before *P terminated their free email pricing) I sent a little over 1,300 email messages to our online club of about 18 motorcyclists. Obviously that has been curtailed a LOT 😎 and I get by with a minimum these days. As a point of information, I think you mistated the new email pricing —> ($0.10 first 7500K of a message, $0.02 each extra 7500K, $9.00/month free) I think the length of the message blocks is 7.5k not 7,500K (7 1/2 megs?). I use the executive option off the standard pricing plan because I rarely if ever go to the free areas, spending all my time online here, or the Audio, Fishnet and mostly the RIDE (motorcycling) forum. (off soap box) Bet you wish you never asked now eh? 😎 I do appreciate your interest and concern. And thanks for working on the online listing of Rock clubs… -Russ btw, I intend to post a report soon of the BLM geologist's talk concerning the effects of the CDPA…I thought I'd get it written before this but I've now got to get the Opal Society newsletter done first…