President's Message

September 2008 (v2.6)
Rob Limbaugh - President

It's probably too soon to mention this, but the Holiday Season will soon be upon us. That means we have upcoming Board Member elections and our December 'Annual Meeting' at which the membership is needed to vote. It's also the time to look forward to John Patrick giving his annual presentation about where Internet technologies are headed. At the moment, I'm sort of stupefied about how much faster this year seemed to go and how much of that I should thank (or blame) on technology.
 
Clearly, our group is full of people who love tech toys. We have plenty of time to get a list together, so how 'bout it?  Have you picked up a slick computer and/or tech related gadget or gizmo that others might like to put on their wish list?  Please be sure to include a website link and a few sentences about why you like it. Then we can post this list on our site and share it with everyone who is looking for gift ideas.
 
A forward moving DACS
Well, you've heard discussions about a DACS’ 'online community'. We're several steps closer and are now testing some ideas about how to structure it. For now, Jeff Setaro has donated some web server space at http://www.jasetaro.com/dacsforum. There is also a link to it from our main website. Be sure to check it out. This test area is where we'll start posting announcements and 'Member Only' information. While this is only a temporary springboard, we will be exporting it to the final site in the coming months. At this time, this is a 'beta test', but it is functional.
 
To register, click 'Register' at the top. Be mindful of what username is chosen as it will be used in the forums to identify you. If you haven't updated your email address in a while, please send Charlie an email with the correct info (and any other changes needed). This is necessary because the validation process requires human intervention to compare the email address used for registration to the one on file in the Membership list.
 
Don't worry; we're going to step through this at the next General Meeting. We'd also like some opinion, comments, questions, and suggestions from everyone.
 
Vista, video, and other projects
I've been satisfied enough with Vista that I put Vista Ultimate on my Home Theater PC. It has been more than stable, easy to configure and use, and the out-of-the-box recording features are pretty cool!  My next step is to add new HDTV tuner cards. We'll be doing a make-up Windows SIG for this sometime in September as both the August and September SIGs had to be cancelled for scheduling conflicts.
 
Part of my Home Theater PC project has also turned into a minor endeavor into Home Automation. While I don't intend to cover that in the make-up SIG, I do plan to touch on it soon, so stay tuned.
 
With summer almost at an end, I'm not sure if I'll get much accomplished on my arcade cabinet this year. I've picked up some new toys for it, but have yet to do much with them. Headway is being made, though. Last week I worked on reverse engineering a dot matrix display from a cash register (it's an eye catching vacuum fluorescent display). The intention is to add it to the cabinet's array of visual effects.
 
On the road…
Work has me at our North American Headquarters to go over some disaster recovery planning. Tomorrow will be another long day, so I need to pack it in for the night. Hope to see you at the next SIG and at our General Meetings!

 - Rob

ROB LIMBAUGH
relimbaugh@dacs.org


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