Washington Apple Pi

When things go bad, all past successes disappear in a single moment (one screw-up wipes out 10 atta-boys). November's meeting certainly fell into that category. Our principle presenter, Adobe, did not make the meeting due to a scheduling mix-up. At the same time, your VP for Programs also failed to make an appearance. A cynic might suspect that I failed to attend because I knew that I would be burned at the stake for Adobe's absence but it was an unrelated occurrence, caused by a severe shortfall in paying attention. My apologies to all those who gave up their morning anticipating a program that failed to materialize.

A few folks threw themselves onto the sacrificial altar and tried to make a silk purse from this sow's ear. Lawrence Charters extended his question and answer period with some backup by Tom Witte while our Office Manager tried to run down both the Adobe guest speaker and yours truly. After that, Mary Keene conducted a mini-tutorial on graphics and crafts for the holiday season. Mary explained how to combine the techniques possible in computer drawing and paint programs with specialized papers and custom framing as an ideal way to create home made crafts, gift cards, packaging, T-shirt appliques and the like.

To try to gain some credibility back, we've been working hard on getting a quality program set up for next year. Our upcoming schedule looks like this:

• December 11, 1999 - closed meeting, computer show and sale
• January 22, 2000 - Corel will present their new programs Print House and Print Office as well as an update on their other Mac Programs. Additionally, Darek Mihoka, President, founder and lead wizard of Emulator Inc will present Gemulator, a combination hardware and software solution that lets you emulate a Macintosh on an Intel based computer (both presenters are confirmed).
• February 26, 2000 &emdash; Terry Davis of Asante is going to demonstrate a series of home networking solutions (confirmed) and 3dfx has indicated their interest in showing their new video graphics display cards for the Macintosh (tentative).
• March 25, 2000 - Nova Print Explosion and Microsoft Internet Explorer/Outlook Express 5.0 (both confirmed)

I'll try to reschedule Adobe to join us in April and there are numerous other folks in the wings lining up for the rest of the spring and summer. We will also be scheduling a QuickTime festival in the spring although the date for that meeting is as yet undetermined.

A few good things did come out of this meeting. Adobe had sent ahead prizes for our drawing. Several lucky winners went home with extraordinary parting gifts. Michael Croft acquired a copy of Page Mill 3.0. Sheila and Richard Allen picked up Image Styler and Georgia Sadler was the lucky winner of Photo Deluxe. Ed Sutter is the happy owner of Acrobat 4.0 and Paul Hertel picked up the grand prize, Photoshop 5.5. If you consider the suggested retail price of these prizes, these were exceptional prizes. Of course, when Adobe does make an appearance, there may yet be more prizes give away and that means more happy winners.

One last reminder about our big December garage sale &emdash; fill your holiday computer shopping needs with us or bring in your Mac for a tune up! Have a most joyous holiday season and we'll see you in January.