by Jack Kincaid / jkinca1@cugkc.cjb.net
The January meeting was a little better. The Roach family was there: Alana, Gabriel, and Lenard. We were glad to see Gabe out of the hospital and able to mix with people again. He spent most of his time playing with Scott's new toy, the 64 DTV. He even gave us a demo of some of the games that are stored in the ROM chip. Helen and Les Lacy were there along with Scott Heider (with toy) and me. Not a bad group overall. Tom Moloney left a message that he will be at the February meeting. We are still on the lookout for Vance and Bethyl... Maybe next month?
Lenard and Scott paid their dues finally, so they are in good standing. The Club also paid for the next six months of our Loadstar subscription.
All righty then! The next meeting will be on February 10th at 5120 Cedar, which happens to also be the Roeland Park library at 6:30 pm.
Go to our website at http://cugkc.cjb.net and log in to post a message on our new Forum.
I still have some 64s and 128s along with 1541 and 1571 disk drives. I also have monitors and printers just sitting in my basement doing nothing. For a miniscule fee they can be at your home or organization doing something! Call or see me at the next CUGKC meeting. My phone number is 816-761-4777, and I am home most days after 4:00 pm.
Financial Report
Balance Dec. 2004 ................... $325.15
Income: Jan. 2005
Renewals (2) ......................
$ 20.00
Expenses: Jan. 2005
Newsletter copies .................-$ 15.66
LoadStar subscription (6 month) ...-$ 38.00
Total Expenses: Jan. 2005 ...........-$ 53.66
Closing Balance Jan. 2005 ........... $291.49
by Scott Heider / sheide1@cugkc.cjb.net
The Group meeting for January was held Thursday, January 13th at the Cedar Roe branch of the Johnson County Library. 7 members attended, including Lenard, Alana, and Gabriel Roach. Gabe, it was great to see you again, freed from the hospital!
At January's meeting we held the election for officers for 2005. There were no nominees for any position, so all current officers were reelected by acclamation.
As I promised in last month's newsletter, I brought my new Commodore 64 DTV (Direct to TV) to January's meeting. Gabriel Roach put it through its paces, and he played the games much better than I ever will!
Finally, a reminder about the next Group meeting. It will be held at our usual place, the Cedar Roe branch of the Johnson County Library, on the usual day, Thursday, February 10th at 6:30pm. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend, but I hope that you can!
by Lenard Roach / lroach1@cugkc.cjb.net
Well, here it is February again, and the only things happening this month are that roses and chocolates sell for double their retail value on the 14th, and you can get 50% off mattresses and pillows at the President's Day sales in the local malls.
Things are moving slowly on getting any Commodore printing and programming done. Some good news on the printing side is that the youth pastor of Glad Tidings Assembly of God in Kansas City, Kansas has optioned one of my skits that was written and presented to her in GEOWrite 128 v2.0 format. It would be a real encouragement to me to see what I have written in GEOWrite translated to the stage.
News on the programming front is that the work on "The Envelope Addressor" is also moving slowly, but smoothly. I am debating whether to make the editing portion of the program a separate module that would be accessible as a subroutine as well as a stand alone working program, or just make it a part of "The Envelope Addressor's" program as a whole. I am leaning on making the editing part an internal subroutine, as well as the directory reader that also needs to be incorporated into the work.
The "Attn:" segment of "The Envelope Addressor" fit well after the fiasco of making the proper LEN adjustments (as I detailed in last issue) into the existing BASIC text, and alpha testing is showing impressive promise even at these early stages. But if "The Envelope Addressor" program gets done before the tentative beta test deadline of April 30, 2005, there's still the task of writing the "How To ..." text. My personal problem with writing my own "How To ..." manual is that after hours of alpha testing, I know all the ins and outs of the program so well that I tend to forget to add a function description or a tip or trick to help move the program along more smoothly. This is where good beta testers come in, to show me where I've made my slip ups and report same so I can make the necessary corrections and adjustments.
At the Commodore Users Group of Kansas City's January meeting, it was so wonderful to have my family attend. My youngest son got ahold of Scott Heider's 64DTV game stick and ran that thing through its paces. To Gabe, it was nice to have some old Commodore games at the ready like that instead of sitting at Dad's "old dinosaur" of a computer and having to wait several minutes for a single one of those programs to load. In my opinion, good things are worth waiting for.
My article for this month is short, but some people may say that brevity is the sign of a person who's got their thoughts in order. Yeah, right. Tell me another one!
I will expose more of my twisted intellect in the next issue. Ciao for now!
The Commodore Users Group of Kansas City is a not-for-profit educational support group for persons using Commodore computers.
Membership benefits include a monthly newsletter as well as access to CUGKC's library of over 1000 public domain and shareware disks.
Dues are $15 the first year, $10 annually thereafter. Disks of the month and library disks cost $3 each for members.
Meetings are held on the second Thursday of every month at the Cedar Roe branch of the Johnson County Library, located at 5120 Cedar Street in Roeland Park, Kansas. Visitors are welcome to attend any meeting. For more information, contact any officer:
Email us at cugkc@cugkc.cjb.net
or visit our web site at http://cugkc.cjb.net.
Our snail-mail address is:
CUGKC
6025 Corona Avenue
Kansas City, Kansas 66102