So, when the message boards died, I thought that using the eGroups.com system would be better for everyone. I was wrong. Sometimes you have to look at things from a different perspective and I can see how confusing the eGroups.com system was. We're not using it anymore.

What I did was I deleted the old message board system, installed a new one, and set it as the default. The old board's back again! I apologize for the screwup but this it part of the webmaster's job - finding better ways for people to communicate. I won't make the same mistake again. I was able to salvage some of the old messages which I'll be posting in an "Archive" section.

So, in the meantime, I still have the issue of disk space on the system. I had to remove some of the scanned images of the reunion from the web site so that this never happens again. I have to find a way to offload the images to another server so that this server doesn't get clogged again. I'm also looking into a system to automatically back up the message boards every day/week/hour/whatever. Had I done that before this problem wouldn't have happened.

On a different note, my email has changed. My old iamdigex.net email will work for a few more days but my new email is now starman@mac.com. No, I'm not working for Apple (as much as I'd like to), but I do have an account on their iTools system and that's what I'll be using from now on. Some of you already got an email from me about the change, so now I'm making it official.

As for the web page itself, I came across some Photoshop goodies that I'll be working with over the next few weeks. I'm going to give the site a face lift - it's been up for over a year so it's time for something new. Nothing major, but you can't expect this look to last for 10 years, can you?

Happy New Year!

Mike

Well, as some of you have noticed the message boards are totally screwed. It's partially my fault - in uploading the remainder of the pictures from the reunion I overshot the amount of disk space this web site is allowed. When this happened, as soon as someone tried to use the message boards there was nowhere for the new data tp be written, therefore the write failed and the rest is history. I tried reconstructing the message boards to no avail. It's dead.

The good news is that I was able to find a new home for the message boards. The new home is:

http://www.egroups.com/members/colonia85

This new site called egroups.com not only has message boards, but online calendars, event schedules, files, online database, and a ton of other things. They say that everything happens for a reason and I think it's time that we used this new site for the message board. This will also save me the trouble of having to support one more low-level part of the web site.

I'm fairly sure I can archive the old messages; they haven't been deleted, they just can't be seen via the web page. I'm going to try and put them up here somewhere for historical purposes :). In the meantime, join the new message board. You can't post until I approve membership requests - I did this only because I wanted to make sure that only people from our class can post and view messages on the new site. No stragglers. I check my email all the time so approval should happen rather quickly unless I'm away from my computer. If you have any questions/problems, email me.

-Mike

Today the web site turns one year old. It was Thanksgiving night 1999 that I put this web site up. I had no idea that it would turn out the way it did. I was hoping that a handful of people would use the site - and look at what happened in the last year! The web site's being used by more people than I expected, and we spawned a reunion!

I want to thank everyone for their support of the site in the last year. Without you people using it, there'd be no point in keeping it running. I'm hoping to make some improvements to it over the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions, let me know.

To celebrate, I've placed all the remaining photos taken at the reunion with the party cameras on the web site. You can check it out in the Photo Gallery.

Here's to another year!

-Mike

The poll for an annual reunion showed that the majority of the people want an annual reunion. Out of 39 votes, an overwhelming 36 votes (92.3%) in favor of an annual reunion were cast, and 3 against (7.7%). Look for a new poll soon.

I cleaned up the main page. There's a link to the older news at the bottom. I'll be cleaning this up on a more regular basis. The front page should load faster now.

Since it's the time of year when we all get out and vote, I've decided that i'd put a little online poll on the site to see what you think about an annual reunion. The voting will run for a week and I'll report the results at the end.

Voting ended

On another note, now that the reunion's over, I'll be giving the web site a much needed overhaul. I have some pretty interesting ideas so keep an eye out for them. Mainly, I want to completely overhaul the Photo Gallery since it's getting rather cluttered. There will be some more interactive sections to the site as well. I'm currently in the process of renaming all the reunion picture files so that they're a little more meaningful than "100-0400".

*** Late Update 11:30 pm ***

The reunion was a success! We had great weather, a lot of fun, and lots of pictures were taken. The first batch is up in the Photo Gallery. No thumbnails or captions just yet, I just threw some up on the site for people to see. More to come. Enjoy!

With the little money we had left over we decided that we're going to get those disposable cameras and let people take pictures, and then leave them with us when they're finished. We'll get them developed and placed on the web site ASAP. I and some other people will have digital cameras with them so I'll even have pictures up as soon as I get home.

For those of you that cannot attend, we're looking into having the Tiki Bar web cams pointed right at us the whole time so that those of you in Florida or California or Germany can sneak a peek at what's going on that night.

-Mike Gaines, Anthony Salvemini, Mark Coakes

Most internet providers give a certain amount of web space to their users. If you have web space, put up a small web page for yourself and send me the URL so I can set up a hyperlink on your name in the Class Directory. If you don't have web space, the best places you can get free space from are xoom.com or yahoo.com. They both have great tutorials for getting a simple page up quickly and they're free.

-Mike

Mike

The account's been set up.

The invitation's been sent out for approval.

The paper, stamps, envelopes and labels are ready.

The invitation will be sent out on July 5th.

Those of you I have email addresses for will get it early via email in Adobe Acrobat format. I'll be posting it here as well.

-Mike

-Mike

I'm looking into moving the site due to the obtrusive, ugly banners that prohosting.com has added to the top of this page. The people most affected are the people with small monitors and WebTV.

If you got here from using the colonia1985.com URL, until I get this resolved, all I can tell you to do is to use the original URL to get here: http://lightning.prohosting.com/~chs85. That will keep the namezero.com banner from showing up on the bottom. I'll keep everyone informed as to the state of the site. Don't worry, it's not going to disappear.

-Mike

-Mike

First, we all agreed that it's not a good idea to make it a family event with kids. With an open bar, plus everyone trying to enjoy each other it just didn't seem like a good place to have kids. We hope this isn't too much of an inconvenience for some people.

Second, we're hoping to get everyone's mailing address by the end of May so that we can start sending out the official invitations. Anthony Salvemini has a list of addresses as recent as August 1999 of family or grads that still live at their original homes. Altogether we have about 250 names out of the 370 that we need. I'll be posting an updated class list with a new legend in a day or two so that everyone knows who we can't get in touch with at all. If you see anyone on the Class Directory in red that you have contact information for, please get in touch with us.

Next, I wanted to mention that Lisa Hamilton was kind enough to send me some pictures of her to scan in. They're some great pictures and they're available in the Photo Gallery. Thanks, Lisa!

Finally, I wanted to announce that you no longer have to type in the monsterous URL to get here anymore. I've signed up with namezero.com to bring you our new URL:

http://www.colonia1985.com

Now, when you use that URL, you get a namezero.com banner on the bottom of your page. It's unobtrusive, but that's what you get when you sign up for free stuff. If you don't like the banner you can always use the original URL. The cost of having a domain name is $70 for a two-year registration and about $20/month to have someplace host the site. At this point, it doesn't seem worth the money to do that, so like this web page, the domain name costs nothing.

-Mike

Here's the information you need. Please click in the Reunion 2000 button on the left for more information.

Place: Martell's Tiki Bar - Point Pleasant Beach, NJ

Date: September 16, 2000 2-6pm.

Cost: $46/person

Everyone involved is real excited about this. Our current reunion crew is John Fabbo, Anthony Salvemini, Michael Gaines, Mark Coakes, Ben Danzi, Beth Brennan, and Andrea Venice.

Currently, there's no need to send us any money. We'll be sending out the offical notice as soon as we can via snail-mail. In order to make sure you get your invitation, please send us your snail-mail address.

Please click on the Class Directory button on the left and see if there's anyone listed in red that you have contact information for. We'd like to get both a head count and a full list of mailing addresses as soon as possible.

We have some real neat ideas lined up, but it's way too early to announce anything else. Stay tuned!

There's a company called namezero.com which registers domain names for FREE. This beats the usual $70 registration fee plus the annual cost of having the site hosted. The downside is that you have to install their software on your system. The nice thing is that I can always find a way around that :). The site isn't up yet, and in fact namezero.com hasn't finalized their procedures, but I'll let you know as soon as it's done. I have the domain name already reserved.

I spoke VERY briefly with John Fabbo tonight. Those of you with kids know that 8:30 is a bad time for two year olds which we both have so we'll chat again soon. The subject of the runion did come up so I'll keep everyone up to date as things progress.

Also: the new Steely Dan album is out. I have it but haven't listened to it yet so if you're a Dan Fan, be sure and pick it up.

The year 2000 marks a milestone for us...the time of a 15-year reunion. As I stated on classmates.com, if anything's going to get done, it's going to have to get planned ASAP. Is anyone up for a reunion? Hello? Bueller? Email me and let me know what you think. In the meantime, if anyone has any contact information for Laura Adornetto or John Fabbo, let us know!

I hope that everyone had a safe holiday. What do you think is going to happen on 1/1/00? I think it's all overhyped and that come midnight on New Year's Eve, everything will be just fine.

I have the next week off from work and might give the page a face lift. This was all slapped together quick and dirty so I'd like to spend a little time making it look a bit less drab.

Darren Johnson sent in a set of four pictures for the Photo Gallery. Three are from the Senior Prom, and one is a scan of a clipping from the News Tribune where s

ix members of our class were asked "Who Made a Mark in '84?". Thanks, Darren!

Sorry for the late update, we were in Vegas over the weekend. How is Vegas this time of year? COLD! Don't be disillusioned by the fact that it's in a desert. We actually had to buy hats because the wind chill was below freezing.

As for the the look of this page, it's just a little cosmetic change. I didn't want the place to look boring!

Added Darren Johnson to the class directory.

I've added some more pictures to the Photo Gallery section. So far this makes a total of 12 pictures. If you have any pictures that you'd like to add, please email them to me.

I've started a mailing list for people that would like email when items on this page have updated. If you're interested in it, please email me and just mention that you'd like to be added to it.

I've added a WebTV support section. So far automatic email is the only problem with WebTV.

I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and didn't get trampled at the malls on Black Friday. I'll be doing a lot of online shopping this year as an experiment. The problem with online shopping is that you really have to at least go to the mall to browse the stores before you buy what you want. I find that online browsing doesn't work the same way that going to the mall does.

I've updated the Photo Gallery section. Currently there's only a United States Geological Survey satellite image of CHS. It's interesting to see what it looks like from so high up. Enjoy!

It's eerie listing to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" while I write this up. It seems like yesterday I listened to it for the first time. Time flies and I suppose there are a lot of people that feel the same way. Fifteen years creeps on you fast doesn't it?

What I hope to gain from this is that people feel more comfortable here than on classmates.com where it seems that everyone on the planet sees what you're writing about. I'm doing my best to keep this place secure. It would be better if people found out about it from word of mouth than posting about it publically. I'd like only '85ers to come here.

For the next few weeks, this site will be going over constant renovation. First and foremost is getting this main board looking better. I'm also aware of WebTV users, in fact the main page was written with WebTV users in mind. If anyone has any problems with the site, email me or post a topic in the Suggestion Box of the Message Board.

That's all for now. Go forth and tell others that the site exists. Check out the message board and just post a 'howdy' and let everyone know what you're up to. I did my best to keep the discussion groups as diverse as possible, and yet have a place for anything that people would want to talk about. The Class Directory is up, but right now adding to the directory will be done via email to me until I can write up a perl script so that users can add their information themselves.

See you on the dark side of the moon.....

Mike Gaines - 1:16 AM, Thanksgiving Day 1999