At 04:29 PM 4/6/99 -0500, John Payson wrote:
[snip]
>I for one was wondering how long it would be before someone
>accused me of being off-topic for that posting.  My wife,
>with her quirky sense of humor, would probably have been
>pondering the same thing.
[snip]

   John, you certainly don't need to respond to such trash. You have
been a valuable member of this group for several years. Most of the
[OT} complaints I've seen are from new members that have no idea how
valuable this list is. For those of us who have been here for several
years, it's like a family. Though many of us have not met, it still
seems like we are old friends. Your desire and courage to share with
us the loss of your wife demonstrates this and, as you have noted, you
have many friends here.

   I'm getting real fed up with the [OT] complaints. If one designs an
embedded controller, then you will deal with a variety of issues. This
will lead to topics ranging from soil acidity to thermal stress of SOIC
packages to Solar compost heaps to thermocouple cold-junction compensation
to an auto grain feeder for horses that needs to count the gains in bright
sunlight and it is all related to the scope of this group. Then there is
the fact that we are humans... If we go off topic for humor or other
reasons, that should be allowed to run it's course. All of us have a DEL
key and most mail programs allow you to sort topics by subject.

   And to Jory and Mark, be slow to remove folks from this list. Those
that get extreme will probably fade due to lack of response. Back in the
80's I started one of the first and largest Amiga BBS with several
hundered callers from around the planet (Northwest Amiga Group - NAG).
Then I went on to McGraw-Hill's Byte Information Exchange (BIX) as a
paid moderator with folks from around the planet. I moderated vendor and
closed developer discussions. I recommend that you give folks a long
rope before you `yank' them... In many cases, they will realize their
errors and will join the community as productive citizens. If not, well
you got the rope...

   - Tom