Reunion Page Updated

[Jim Sheppard]

I have finished posting photos of our reunion. I have fairly good coverage...seems I only missed the Banquet & the Thursday Afternoon Presentation.

Visit the "Reunion" page for the photos, the final attendance list and the minutes of the Association Business Meeting.

If anyone has photos of the Banquet, please send them to me & I will add some.

I also tried to post a movie I took of the Archives Room....but it took too long to load & "froze" my computer a few times.

Your system video player may be able to play this file(The file is nearly a Gigabite in size...and took nearly a minute to "load" on my system): http://www.ichiban1.org/Archives.MOV

[RJ_Smith]

Downloading the video now Jim . It's 100 MB, not 1 Gig (which would be 1000 MB).

We're doing good on server space, using 446 MB / 3000 MB (3 GB maximum).

[Jim Sheppard]

duh....and I was always a math wizard! Damned decimal points! ~grin~

I fired off a "head's up" to Chris on adding photos and that video. We will still be far short of our maximum. I did a little extra trying to do the hypertext to have the video run on a page, and I was successful, sort of. I got the video to show & run, but it was taking forever and locked up my system twice. I did not want to post that page and run the risk of giving the guys fits...so I just put the link to the file on the message board. Their individual systems should be able to run the video...unless they are working on old equipment. My desktop is about ready for replacement. It's about 5 years old now & has already "crashed" once (last spring). It can't handle the lightscribe burning I had to do for the reunion (maps DVDs) & it's time for an upgrade.

I will be considering the course at the local community college on Dreamweaver. They were still offering the course (Full College Credit) as of last spring....and now that I may be semi-retired, I might have the time to learn things the right way rather than simply using an FTP and Hypertext Editor like I have been doing for 6 years. I'd like to set up a system specifically for websites....and be able to back up our site completely...something we haven't been able to do. I know Chris has it all backed up...but we should have that capability as well. We would also be able to communicate between ourselves better if I had more knowledge...and I now live in a town that is RIPE for selling websites. I could go "door to door" to the shops in our shopping district and sell websites....but I need to know the whole 9 yards.

Primarily, I would like to redo the entire site someday. Many of our graphics are showing their age...and the site is still too large & contains too many pages that are redundant or too obscure. Things could be more efficiently consolodated and edited. Your idea for a template for all pages is something I would like to "tie in" somehow, An entirely different home page setup could likely accomodate such a template change. But it's all a couple years & a college course away! I suppose you might inherit the whole thing eventually...when we all get too old to do this. Something streamlined should remain for posterity....small and compact & cheap to set up & maintain. I touched on the possiblity of Ray Sarlin returning to run the site some day at the reunion...but the consensus is that no-one want to run the risk of being abandoned again. If he returns to communicating with us, it would be as a member only and/or for technical advise. (We've had our differences, but I still like Ray & miss him...although all my attempts at reconciliation have brought no response)

In the interim, I would like to see if I can do streaming video on the sight. There are a few things I could work on in that area (I have a VHS I could convert that is some footage of our tracks moving down a road in Phan Thiet), but it's not something I NEED to do right now. I will be working on new idividual memorial pages and redoing the existing memorial pages this coming year. I'll likely give Barbara a "break" while I do this, then next year we can get back to finding more family and friends of our KIAs.

Sorry you couldn't make this reunion...but I understand why. That new family you have started should ALWAYS take precedence. Next time we will be reutrning to a Springtime venue & I believe we will get an even larger crowd (This one was the largest yet).

I realize this is probably "off topic" stuff...but it can act as a sort of "historian's report".

[Jim Sheppard]

Just when I thought I might be done....Roger Burch sent a load of great photos...and I added 24 of them tonight.

[JAT]

Jim,
Thanks for the great pics!