Lee Lasson (EPICUG President) called the meeting
to order, made introductions, and conducted announcements and other business.
He explained that this meeting was a "BYOU" (Bring Your Own URL) Christmas
social, and that after everyone had partaken of food and drink, we would explore some
members' favorite places on the web.
Lee reminded everyone to note our 1998 Meeting Calendar,
in which we've scheduled our meetings for different nights of the week throughout the
year.
The evening's delicious food (pizza, deli/veggie plates, sodas, chips,
etc.) was provided by Lee and Sandy Lasson and Estes
Park On-Line, "Estes Park's premier web hosting service". Also, Goldrush Coffee "Estes Park's only
Internet Coffee House" provided free regular and decaf coffee for the evening.
Our thanks to Estes Park On-Line and Goldrush Coffee for their generosity!
http://estes.on-line.com/epicug/ - Lee
mentioned that if you aren't already subscribed that you should sign up for the EPICUG announcement list.
He also showed everyone next year's meeting schedule.
http://audionet.com/ - Lee showed the AudioNet site and
how to get Christmas music on-line.
http://www.amazon.com - The group also visited Amazon
Books, and several members noted that they had purchased books from them. Interestingly,
it appeared that in one case, a book was purchased more cheaply at a local bookstore.
http://www.wal-mart.com/ - We visited Wal-Mart on
the web and found sub-$1,000 computers more powerful than the ones some of EPICUG's power
users have! With Wal-Mart on the web, can we say that Estes now has a Wal-mart?! :-)
http://www.rmconnection.com/ - Ernie
Petrocine helped the group explore the products available on the Rocky Mountain Connection
and Outdoor World site. This month, Ernie's site is celebrating its first anniversary!
http://www.learn2.com/ - Yvonne Cocchi showed the
group the excellent Learn2 site, a place with fascinating and frequently updated
"how-to" tutorials on a variety of different skills and subjects.
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/ -
The group also made a brief visit to the Random House Publishing site to see a list of
featured best-sellers.
http://www.onelook.com/ - Mike Molloy showed the
group OneLook, an excellent search site which has indexed over 1,000,000 words and
acronyms. Several searches showed the group some good glossaries and dictionaries on the
web.
http://www.gwha.com/camera.html - Don Widrig
showed the group a great Boulder webcam and told the story of how he and his wife held a
large Happy Birthday Banner up so their son in Seattle could see it when he browsed the
webcam at a prearranged time.
http://www.pcconnection.com/ - Lee tried to
order a Christmas present for a friend on PC Connection's website and apparently
experienced "holiday congestion" as he wasn't able to place on order on their
secure server. :-(
http://estes.on-line.com/epicug/xmas97/
- Lee used his camcorder to record the evening's members singing We Wish You a Merry
Christmas and has encoded it for viewing using the RealVideo
player.
The meeting adjourned at about 9:00pm and all agreed that this should be a regular yearly
event!
