Just got this from Doug:
Crafty, I am forwarding from my cellphone this very cooperative reply I
received from Eric. I won't be in computer contact for awhile. I was
intending to post this to the forum, since there are personal numbers
included it might be better to send a copy direct to those who expressed
an interest, especially Mark and Gene.
He makes a mention of chipping in on cost. If the amounts are
reasonable and we can split it 3, 4 or more ways I will certainly pay a
share.
, , ,
- Doug
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:18:01 -0800
From: Eric Mack
Subject: Re: Our Piazza
To: Doug
Cc:
Hello Doug,
Sorry for the delay in getting back with you. Lots going on around here.
I'm glad that I was able to keep OP going as long as I did. I realize
that I've been involved supporting the site one way or another since June of
2000. Six years. Wow!
The last post I saw on archiving (early October) was that someone (You?)
were going to screen scrape the site into something else. A tedious job
to be sure. There are over 70,000 posts and the file is a few gigs (less
if you purge the index). I then saw the posts that DogBrothers had set up a
new forum and that folks had moved. I kept the site up through 10/31
just in case there were any stragglers. Given the lack of activity at OP, I'm
pretty sure that those who wanted to go to the new site are already
there. I would imagine that the new site is better, too. The existing site
software was outdated and getting expensive to maintain. One of the
features I always wanted to ad to OP was RSS feeds. Hopefully, the new
DB site has that.
With regard to PDF creation, I offered to look into generating PDFs.
Apparently the new version of Acrobat 8 ($449) has a new "archive from
Lotus Notes:" feature that will generate searchable PDF documents. I
have no experience with this product as I do not have it. I did go to the web
site and the process seems straightforward. I wonder if Adobe's ever
archived a single file this large. In any case, I would be willing to
look into this again, if there is interest and if folks are willing to chip
in. Meanwhile, when I have time to drive down to the NOC to pick up the
server, I'll archive the databases to DVD for safe keeping. I will not be able
to deal with this for a few weeks, probably not until early December.
Doug, I don't know what my plans are for the domain, however, I do not
plan to sell it at this time. I had prepaid the registration for many years
in anticipation of building up an on-line community. As we know, that never
materialized and I was unwilling to sell ad space to keep OP going. As
it is, I paid for the past 21 months of dedicated server hosting. At this
point, I cannot explore this further, though I may do something in the
future.
I'll try to stop by the new Dog Brothers forum though, practically
speaking, I probably won't do that either until December.
OP has been a fun "experiment," as someone once called it. I've met some
interesting people and it was a privilege to sit as a flay on the wall
and read some of the discussions.
I wish everyone the best.
Sincerely,
Eric Mack
PS. I tried to send an email update to Roger and Gene, however, the
email addresses I have no longer work ( deleted for the forum).
