
On the rumor front, keep an eye peeled for Netscape 3.0 beta. It should be coming out soon.
I spent most of the week moving my web site from best.com to bayarea.net. It's almost as much fun as crashing a hard drive. Any links to http://www.byrum.org/ should be changed to http://www.bayarea.net/~arkres/wiltb/
Besides posting my last missive with best.com, I also found time to write another article for lies.com.
As for the mailing list, a simple death threat to the support bunch at the new ISP was enough to get a commitment to setup the mailing list but not enough to get a date for the implementation. While I change their root password to "horsethief" and explain the new password is only available on the mailing list they haven't setup, Igor will knit another yarn.
Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a prince. He awoke one morning with a new idea. He jumped out of his royal bed chambers and rushed to tell his advisors. "I have a new idea," he exclaimed.
"Yes, sire." "Of course, my lord." "If you build it, they will come?" Babbled his court of fools.
"No, you court of fools! Sorry, the narrator already said that." Shouted the prince who shouldn't have been listening to the narrative.
"Look, knock it off!" Screams the writer who up to now thought he had some control of this story. The Web Walker snatches the keyboard from Igor. Explaining, as only General Haig of the Reagan administration could, "I'm in charge here."
OK, what are we doing to this tortured tale and where is it going? We have a prince with an idea. He's surrounded by a "court of fools" and we need a blind man. Where can we go from here and how do we get there?
"Shut up! Sit down!" commands the prince. "I don't need the author, narrator or any other damn fool stepping on my lines." His voice returning to condescending levels, he explains his idea. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
"Yes, sire" "Good idea boss" "Whatever you say." "Hey, that sucks"
One court fool is taken out and shot.
The prince, sensing he is surrounded by "yes men," leaves for the village below.
Entering the village, the prince runs into the author. As the author tries to kick the prince's head in, Igor drags him off explaining, "Boss, the story. The story." Shaking off the Fantasy Island reference, the Web Walker reaches for a beer while Igor reaches for the keyboard.
The prince, now in the village, finally encounters the blind man. After explaining the idea, the prince asks, "What do you think?"
"Stranger, I don't know who you are but your ideas are worthy of a king," replied the blind man with a straight face.
The prince swaggers back to the castle with thoughts of assassination dancing in his head.
A cripple, in new suit that looks very good on him, limps up to the blind man and asks, "Who were you talking to?"
"Oh, that was the prince," the blind man smoothly replies.
"How could you know that? You're blind."
"Easy, he didn't smell like shit," continued the blind man as he begins walking out of the village.
"Wait! Why are you leaving?"
"I'm out of here. I may be blind but I can see this kingdom is doomed."
The blind man continues to walk toward the next town as a strapping young man in need of a new suit approaches the cripple.
Busy with the move, installing counter support, following the campaign, writing a FAQ, working on the column and oh, yeah my day job, didn't have a lot of time left for surfing. With some help the San Jose Mercury News, here is this weeks URL's.
Late breaking news, the mailing list move has been postponed until Sunday, March 29th. Scratch that. The sheriff of best.com now says it's Sunday, March 31st. Anyway, this report will go out via the old list. I'll continue to pressure the new ISP for a mailing list.
The Web Surfers Report is also available from the websurfer mailing list:

March 24, 1996 |
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