Corvetteditorial
Rear View Mirror - July, 1991: The club
roster had twenty four lines of
members/couples, of which 8 are still
members (but many are still friends); 14
members went to the Big Bear Bash,
which had 600 at the dinner, Barbara &
Barry Sklar won 4th place in the slalom,
Steve Montagna and Merle Walker won
car show trophies, we had our new jackets;
Brunch at Fisherman's in San Clemente,
thence to Deer Park; July 4 Oceanside
Parade; Marie Callendar's rally/brunch;
Corvette cookbook started; Wette Vette car
and boat combination unveiled; 66 Vettes
take Route 66 from Santa Monica to
Chicago; and planning for the 2nd Annual
Day at the Races.
Welcome! To all our new members. I'm
Joel, your faithful newsletter editor,
Corvette nut, ZR-1 owner, and new father.
I haven't been around too much lately
because of the last, but now that Allan is
sleeping most nights I hope to join in a little
more and get to know all of you. "What,"
you may be asking yourself, "can I do to
help our newsletter?" I'm glad you asked!
This isn't the "Joel Newsletter," it's the
"North Coast Vettes Newsletter." That
means we actively solicit your input,
whether it's stories of your dear old lost
Corvettes, articles about Corvette events
you've attended, tips for keeping Corvettes
in shape, newspaper and magazine
clippings about Corvettes (although, you
can skip the Corvette magazines, unless
there is something unique, like they are
from Uzbekhistan), cartoons, original
poetry, whatever. I reserve the right to
absolute editorial dictatorship, but, hey, I'm
easy. Just keep it about Corvettes, or at
least cars. If in doubt, submit it, it's not like
you'll get a rejection letter, go into a
downward spiral and wind up drinking
Mobil1 in the gutter.
There are a number of ways to submit
things for inclusion in the newsletter.
Obviously, I do this on a computer, so the
least work for me is a submission in ASCII
format, so I can take it and format it like
everything else. I can receive files in
several formats, via modem, IBM PC disk
or e-mail, but not as an email attachment. I
can receive faxes sometimes on my
computer, and at work, please put a header
sheet on it and call before faxing. You can
dictate it onto my answering machine,
which actually works fairly well, because it
becomes a well-told story. Hand it to me at
a meeting, mail it to me, just do it!
A word about the World Wide Web. Well,
more than one. WWW is fun and all, but
generally inappropriate for the newsletter,
for several reasons: tends to be formatted
all wrong, repetitive, and of dubious validity.
Please don't get all excited about
something, print it out, and give it to me
with the expectation I will copy it for
everyone else's amusement. It is far better
simply to give me the URL (that's the
electronic address of it), and then I can
judge whether it is appropriate, and if so,
manipulate it electronically to work with the
newsletter. The point of the WWW is to
communicate electronically!
There is more to the Internet than the Web,
and much that can interest gearheads. The
Grand Old Tradition of the Internet is
Usenet, which is basically like a message
board system, where the messages get
copied from computer to computer,
eventually getting to a computer where you
can look at them, and add your own
message. Early users discovered a
number of sociological phenomena
associated with this form of communication
(as well as the similar BBS echoing), some
of which was obviously counter-productive.
As a result, the idea of Netiquette was born,
a set of social rules to avoid problems.
One big problem is that, unlike talking,
there are no voice overtones or facial
expressions to modify the meaning of the
words. So a simple sentence that would be
wry humor or sarcasm when spoken gets
taken as a huge insult when viewed on a
screen. So the person who takes offense
"flames" the original author, and possibly
other people flame him too, and then the
original person feels he needs to get back
at all of them, and you have... ta-da... a
"flame war." This can be much worse than
cutting off a lowered Beemer with Daytons,
except you're not quite so likely to be
physically blown away. To avoid the
appearance of flaming, you may add
"emoticons," which are little pictures like a
smiley face when you are joking :) or
even put the emotion into words, like
[sarcasm]. Some interesting groups are
ca.driving and alt.auto.* (* means any
number of possibilities). There are also
email based groups, where you submit to
the group by email, and everything gets
sent to everybody on the email distribution
list. There are several Corvette based lists.
Unfortunately, with the growth of
commercial services that can access the
newsgroups and mailing lists, some
unscrupulous people abuse the system and
send junk mail and spam (which is
broadcasting large amount of inappropriate
postings). If you can imagine trying to
carrying on a conversation while someone
blasts an infomercial for 1-900-FOOTSIE
into your face with a boombox... it's sad.
The New Big Thing on the Internet is the World Wide Web. It started off as a way for scientists to reference other publications from within their own publications, by the means of "links." For example, an engineer
working on a new transmission could refer
to a particular kind of aluminum alloy, and
link it to a publication of alloys on a
computer in, say, Germany. The person
reading the document could click on the
highlighted alloy, and immediately see the
document from Germany. Then when he is
done, go back to the same place he was
reading about transmissions. The software
to do this has evolved some, but still has
the same basics, and growing problems
now that it is exposed to the general public.
You see, academics publish or perish - they
have to refer to other academics in their
papers, and be subject to peer review.
Bored fourteen year olds have no such
review (or it isn't the same...). In addition,
the new software actually allows programs
to be downloaded from the net, and run on
your computer, without your knowledge.
So we now have a situation where the
same kids who get a kick out of disabling
computers with poorly written viruses now
have a way to get their stuff onto your
computer, merely by having you access
their web page. I would strongly
recommend disabling "java" or any other
downloadable executables if your software
supports it. There are at least 3 known
security holes in Netscape, as of this writing
(only found because Netscape offered
$10,000 to anyone who could find any
holes). For anyone interested in the
technical details, check the CERT archives,
or the newsgroup comp.risks.
Beside the risks of bad people, there is no validation of information on the net. Any jerk can say he is an expert in anything, and many do. There are several search services available, that look at all web pages and create indices. So you can say "give me every page that is about Corvettes", and it will tell you. For me, the web is simply way too slow, I work at ethernet speeds (5,000 times faster than your modem) 8 hours a day, so I'm spoiled.
Now that video is going over the web,
everything is getting much slower. Video is
a road-hog.
Membership News
By Helene Sheehan
Membership Chairman
6/5/96 Meeting
At our June 5th meeting we were pleased
to welcome guests Betty & Daryle
Mcmanus from Carlsbad. They have a '95
red Vette and heard about our club from
Bob Stahl Chevrolet, Weseloh Chevrolet,
as well as my having left my North Coast
Vettes business card on their car in front of
Hennessey's Restaurant a while back. It
pays off to advertise since they joined our
club as well. A warm welcome and we look
forward to seeing you both often. We
talked about the Vette Sets' car show the
upcoming weekend and the McManus' did
join us at the Vette Sets' Annual Car
Show in Manhattan Beach. It was really
nice to see such new members participate
in an event.
Mario Peyrot also joined our meeting as a
first time guest and joined our club as well.
Mario is from Carlsbad and is the proud
owner of an '86 white & silver Vette. He
met Richard Eaton and Eddie Sheehan at
our Weseloh car show. They encouraged
him to join us at our meeting. We wish you
a very warm welcome as well, Mario, and
hope to see you soon.
6/19 Meeting:
We had four guests at this meeting.
Enrique & Harriet Laso of Carlsbad joined
us as guests and left the meeting as
members. We are very pleased to
welcome them and hope to see them at
many more meetings and events. They are
the very proud owners of a red ZR-1 coupe
(it has a car cover & garage also).
Also visiting were Gil & Joan Carlyle of
Encinitas. They own a beautiful '64 red
coupe. Eddie Sheehan met Gil in a
parking lot in Encinitas and struck up a
conversation and invited him to our
meeting. We hope we will see them again
very soon.
Membership Dues
Membership fees were due and payable on
June 1st. Rates are $60.00 per individual
and $70.00 per couple.
Please give your checks or cash to me at
our meeting or mail them to:
North Coast Vettes
P. O. Box 188237
Carlsbad, CA 92009
Thank you.
Helene
Meeting Location
Denny's Carlsbad
1048 Carlsbad Village Drive
Carlsbad, CA 92008
West of I-5
North Coast Vettes
P. O. Box 188237
Carlsbad, CA 92009
Sponsored By
Weseloh Chevrolet
Car Country Carlsbad
5335 Paseo del Norte
Carlsbad, CA 92008
(619) 438-1001
Advertising rates are $5 per issue for
business card size.