[conspire] PING

[Rick Moen]

begin  Dagmar d'Surreal quotation:
> Well, I was mainly asking because I just moved to San Fran a few
> months ago and am looking to find where the Linux people are out here.
> There were quite a number of them in NLUG back in Nashville, and after
> subscribing to two different lists here, waiting a week or so and
> seeing *nothing* come through either of them, I was starting to get a
> little worried.

Oh, don't worry much.  There are very active mailing lists for SVLUG,
SlugLUG, NBLUG, SULUG, SacLUG and LUGOD.  BUUG has a somewhat active list.  
BALUG and CCSFLUG's lists exist but are seldom posted to.  EBLUG has a
(lame) Web-based forum you can participate in if you wish -- and BUUG
has one, too.  CalLUG used to have a mailing list, but I'm not sure it
does now.

Hardly anyone has (yet) found out that _this_ mailing list / newsgroup
exists.  In a way, it was my final test platform for GNU Mailman's NNTP
gateway functions.  I have in mind to offer list/newsgroup hosting for 
free to CalLUG, for one thing.  I might wait until I've added and
debugged a search engine for the Web archive -- or might not. 

I've been working on this for a while:  Mailing lists have a lot of
disadvantages, that go away when you add (1) NNTP gatewaying, (2) ASCII
archives, and (3) Web archives with (4) a search engine.  I now have
everything but the last piece.

There are InstallFests run by CABAL/BALUG, SVLUG, NBLUG, LUGOD, and
SacLUG.  CABAL/BALUG's will be convenient to you (Muni and/or BART); the
rest only if you have a car or ride along with someone.

The groups' regular non-InstallFest meetings pose a similar problem:
Only BALUG currently is holding meetings _in_ San Francisco (in
Chinatown).  You could get to CalLUG's (in Berkeley) on BART, and
CABAL's (in Menlo Park) via CalTrain.  CABAL used to be a _very_ 
active group in South of Market district, S.F., but lost its meeting
location.  (We hope that, if our sponsor Richard Couture finds another
good location for his Linux-based CoffeeNet business, we can resume
S.F. meetings.)

If you hadn't found it already, let me point out my Bay Area Linux
Events page:  http://linuxmafia.com/bale/

So, I'm guessing one of the two lists you're on is balug-talk at balug.org,
right?  And this is the second?  That would explain it.

You may be interested in the SVLUG mailing list, and in the upcoming
SVLUG meeting in north San Jose.  SVLUG is probably the biggest Bay Area
group, at the moment.  The next meeting is this coming Wednesday
evening, and features Eric Allman, author of Sendmail, talking about
mail filtering.

SVLUG meetings tend to be large and run mostly in lecture format, such
that there's limited interaction among the attendees.  Partly to
compensate for that lack, SVLUG has after-meeting dinners, and also
its InstallFests the 3rd Saturday of each month.

-- 
Cheers,                                Before enlightenment, caffeine.
Rick Moen                              After enlightenment, caffeine.
rick at linuxmafia.com