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MESSAGE ARCHIVE 2003

Last update: 01/04/03






04-10-03 3:47pm PST update: I am still not yet recovered from the big meltdown, but I am working towards normalcy. HA! Anyways, we have some exciting (if not nirvanic) changes around here. Today we have added Paul Tye's "The Amoeba" cartoon to our cartoon page family. Thanks for letting us use it Paul! What's a journal without a cartoon page, eh? The more the merrier!

More big news is that Whoosh will start releasing at least one article a week staring May 1st, 2003. They will be archived into monthly issues. What does this mean? The issue will have the title of May 2003 Issue #77, but article(s) will be released the 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd of the month. Issue #78 will repeat the schedule. We shall see how long we can go at that.

I am still having a friend working on recovering the lost data. If we cannot recover it, i will approach the authors and see if they have copies; if they do not, we will just go to square one and start over again if necessary.

Anyways I am excited about this new schedule. i am always way behind, but hopefully this new schedule will allow me some time to devote my copious spare time to other projects at the site.

I have lots more to say but little time to do it all in, so I will be updating the whats and wherefore periodically. I appreciate everyone's patience deeply.

Ciao for now!

03-23-03 12:20pm PST update: After almost six weeks I have returned from my computer experience from hell. Suffice it to say i am back on-line but mightily behind. I had three computers and a back-up fail on me. I am still testy about it all. I am working towards either recovering data or re-constructing it. Things are going to be a tad slow going for a while. Please be patient. And there's no milk in the refrigerator. I am close to panicking. I ...must...be...strong.

02-14-03 04:55pm PST update: Happy Valentine's Day. Thanks to Daela Gibson for her donation to Whoosh!. I am especially excited because I got my new computer yesterday and after a day and a half of getting everything into shipshape, I have at last a fully functional machine. I have been playing around with it, and I see into the future that I will be able to produce inhouse premiums for those who are gracious and kind and generous to give cold hard cash to Whoosh. Hopefully, one I get everything produced, I will be able to offer four different premiums. Maybe even more...who knows what great potential awaits us all! I am also all excited about at last having time to devote to the complete re-design of Uber uber Alles, the Whoosh Uber area.

02-03-03 07:59am PST update: Good morning! I am behind as usual. However, I have finished my taxes and all I need do is file them. It turns out that donations paid 85% of the operating costs of this website. YAY! I cannot thank everyone enough for their kindness and generosity. And we are still here! YAY AGAIN! And...I received two more donations in February! TRIPLE YAY! We are currently at a donation level of 38% covering the operating expenses so far this year. If we keep at this level, I will have to remove some areas of the website until we get the donations up again. I have put a hold on plans for expansion, of course. If I have a budget crunch, I will take down Uber uber Alles first and then On the Road. After that I will take down the multimedia and then graphics in the journal articles. I hope it will not come to that, but the site will reflect the size that visitors are willing to support.

Passing some news. People send me info now and then and I thought I could start passing it on here. Christien Anholt will be appearing in the next Adventure Inc episode. That will be the episode called "The Angel of St. Edmunds" -- it sounds all so veddy British for Anholt and all.

Also, two mythology sites were brought to my attention: Odin's Castle and The Joseph Campbell Foundation.

Odin's Caste is quite exhaustive. It covers not only mythology, but the history of sciences and social sciences as well, spanning from the dawn of humankind to modern day. It is a portal site where you are taken to even more websites. It is a great way to waste a day or two.

The Joseph Campbell Foundation is in honor of the myth guy himself, Joseph Campbell. Campbell was one of the most renown myth scholars of the 20th century. Whoosh! would be shy many articles without that guy! (For you trivia buffs, he is mentioned in over 68 articles on Whoosh!) Membership in the foundation is free and only requires you to make some contribution to the website -- it can be anything from something major, to just participating in an on-line dialogue (aka bulletin board!).

Thanks for Farid for passing these sites to me.

Before I go...I want to thank No One In Particular and Lydia Woods for their recent donations to this website. I also want to remind everyone that I am available for parties and meals and other gatherings at the Xena convention this weekend. Just e-mail me the time of the event, the address, and a cellphone that will be in use at the time of the event, and if I am free, I will pencil you in. I have already been booked for dinner Thursday February 6, 2003. However, if there is anything going on later that evening, I am free!

01-21-03 10:40am PST update: Perfect Day...NOT! All allusions to Legally Blonde aside, today is turning into a sucky day. I am still suffering from my pinched nerve in my spine so I can only turn my head so far to the right without experiencing truly excruciating pain. And now, I just went into my car and the battery was deader than dead. It wasn't even gnawing on a cracker dead. So now I am waiting for someone to drive over and give me a jump. Life can be soooo annoying. Some good news though, I finally found some time to start work on issue 76 that is coming up in March. I have already closed the issue, so all we need do is process the articles. I am aiming for 12 articles. After that I will probably go back to the ten articles per issue, but I have not decided yet. I also have some for 77 too, so things are looking up quite well. I still have to do some major post-edits on some of the papers before I can submit them to coding. And of course, two of the papers are rather long so coding will have to be soothed. But that is all in the day in the life of a crazed obsessive webmaster editor fan-oid. Another day in the life thing is getting mysterious, bordering on rude and psychotic e-mails from people I do not know or have never contacted (how do I know? I keep a record of all e-mail addresses that I send things out directly from my e-mail address). For example, I got this charmer a few days ago:

Status:  U
Return-Path: 
Received: from dimode ([210.219.75.150])
	by kestrel (Earthlink/Onemain SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 18AbWM3yA3NZFlp0
	for ; Sun, 19 Jan 2003 01:40:56 -0800 (PST)
Received: from smtp0532.mail.yahoo.com ([61.84.224.251]) by dimode with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5329);
	 Sun, 19 Jan 2003 18:41:34 +0900
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 09:39:41 GMT
From: csaguier@msn.com
X-Priority: 3
To: ktaborn@lightspeed.net
Subject: GET OUT OF MY LIFE
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: 
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 19 Jan 2003 09:41:35.0250 (UTC) FILETIME=[F4CB5720:01C2BF9E]

KEEP YOU EMAIL AWAY FROM ME FOREVER
Well, this was kind of like the proverbial question "When did you stop beating your wife?" I had never contacted this person before through my e-mail address. If they had subbed to one of my lists, then they should just un-sub, you know? However, if I answered that I did not know them and had no idea what they were talking about and that they most likely had the wrong person, etc., I would be playing into their little psychotic plans by actually not keeping my e-mail (so quaintly put "you email") from them FOREVER. It also makes me wonder, what the heck this Nonexistent Kym did to them to warrant this type of response. Maybe this Nonexistent Kym is like a demon burrowing into their head and they are screaming this very moment "Get away from me...forever...you demon...aroint thee!" Or this person is just confused and passive-aggressive? Or maybe they too are having a perfect day ... NOT!

Hey, the guy with the jumper cables came and now I must drive around for a half hour so my battery becomes strong and healthy again. Thanks for being there to share my perfect day...NOT! Later gaters.

01-19-03 03:40pm PST update: Yeah, I have been slacking off on my updates here. Okay, I am in trauma because I own an SUV and now I have the guilt of supporting terrorists. By the way, a friend of mine recently showed me a magazine advertisement from World War II USA, that had a picture of some sharp looking mind-1940's guy driving alone, with the ad copy of, "When you drive alone, you are driving with HITLER!" Eek! And I thought I had problems supporting international terrorism by driving an SUV. At least I am NOT driving with Hitler.

I am starting to compile my Whoosh! finances for tax purposes, and when I am done I will post my report here. The big news is that Candi Raxter is the first donor of the new tax year! THANK YOU CANDI! I am also trying to think of a thank you gift to the 2002 donors. Thirty-six different people generously subsidized (some more times than once!) this website last year. It was an immense help and allowed us to continue on to 2003. Now it's a new year. We are at 1% of our 2003 budget (no increases from last year). We are 100% larger than we were last February and I hope if we get enough donations, we can grow another 50 megs in quality product for our visitors. We are always free, and over 100,000 people visit us per month so a lot of people like to hang out here. It is estimated (and this is very conservative) that for each individual that visits us in one year (meaning not counting their multiple visits) it costs Whoosh a quarter of a cent [when counting all visitors for 2002, including repeat ones, the cost was $.0016 per person, or 1 cent for every 6.2 visit]. And yet who is paying? Thirty-six people graciously took it upon themselves to pay so that over a million people could access this site for free last year. That means each contributor paid for 27,777 other people to use the site. That is very exciting and shows how charitable and giving and generous the Xena fan community and Whoosh! users are. So remember, each cent you donate to Whoosh will cover for 6 visits, a dollar will cover 625 visits, ten dollars covers 6,250, and twenty dollars 12,500.

01-05-03 03:30pm PST update: Yes, it's been a WHOOSH-arific weekend! Yesterday morning I found new energy and yesterday evening I completely revamped the Film area. Eventually it will be an area upon itself. It will be where I can discuss and sound off on my love affair with world cinema. Eventually I am going to have an "auteur" area where I can obsess about the complete oeuvre of any given artist. I will move my Godzilla area there. I will set up places for Michelle Yeoh, John Sayles, Liev Schreiber, Sandra Bullock, Govinda, and whoever else catches my obsessive fancy at any given moment. Check out the new and improved films area (please don't be put off by the dust), at http://whoosh.org/films. Tell me what you think if you get a chance. Just click here for all comments. I'd like to know what you think.

01-04-03 10:50am PST update: Salutations and Greetings! It's the new year! Yaaay! And although we are starting a new bi-monthly journal rhythm, that means MORE TIME for me to play around with the rest of the site. I have to confess that last year burned me out big time. The pressure of a monthly issue, keeping the website up, not having enough time to keep up the other parts, bring just plain overwhelmed constantly, outside demands, etc. I was afraid that I would never feel the joy of working on this website again. It would just become another obligation in a life of obligations. However, yesterday, something sparked. I sat down and said, "I am going to update the Airing Schedule." I was not looking forward to it, but I really had to do it. So I did it. Afterwards, I felt, "Gee, that was not so bad. Maybe I will do something else." So I updated the subject guide, author/subject index, and issue update list, which was so old the data was from issue 74 (mille regretz Mike!). Then I started feeling frisky. Should I do more? It wasn't feeling as burdensome as I anticipated. It was FUN! I was enjoying doing the mindless busy work of the site again! So, I updated the cast and characters lists in the episode guide that was supposed to go up about 9 months ago (mille regretz, Andrew!). And after that...did I want to pack it all in? NO! I went to the Malibu page and updated the past Space Station Fly-Bys. My current mailbox holds 159 neglected emails. Last night, there sat over 225 emails. By doing those updates I worked through over 65 emails. I felt good. Like a good citizen! Can you see me beaming? I am producing more light right now than I am receiving. I am glowing. I am proud! I have rediscovered the joys of mindless repetition at Whoosh!.

How's that for an introduction after a month plus of hiding in the grass? I have great plans...great plans I tell you! And of course you have all heard this before if you have ever followed my ramblings. And the big question is...will I deliver? Will I realize the dream that is Whoosh!? I dunno, but you're invited to tag along with me as I machete myself through the jungle of life and that overgrown, untamed cyberplace called Whoosh!.

I will be preparing my taxes sometime this month. When I do that I will have the complete data on the donations 2002 for Whoosh. From a rough glance it looks like I was subsidized by donations by 80-85%. I am very grateful and humbled by the generosity and kindness of the visitors of this site. Not only do you share your creative output with reviews, articles, and skills, but you also contribute actual cash to the endeavor. You put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. That is honorable and kind and just blows me away. Thank you. It's pales to what has been received, but thank you again. Around 100,000 people still visit this site per month, even with a withdrawn and burned out webmaster. One hundred thousand people are benefiting from the money given out of fellowship and comraderie by fellow visitors. It just makes my heart so warm and makes me feel like we are a part of something more than just a knuckle-headed website following knuckle-headed TV shows. We are exhibiting the signs of a community. That makes my heart even warmer. I am feeling so warm and fuzzy I had to take off my sweatshirt.

The last donation of the year 2002 was David E. Milligan (and it was his second time!!!! WHAT A GUY!!!!). Thank you David! I am planning on cost cutting measures this year, to make the site more lean and more mean but also to have the ability to grow in the areas that the production staff and visitors want! We looked into going non-profit so people would could write off their donations on their taxes, but that would costs us at least $600 to do it, and that just seemed too much for us at this stage. So, this year we remain accepting donations but they are not tax deductible to donator and are taxable as income to me, as the donee. Every buck goes towards the website and website development. Hopefully, I will cut down on costs to make this website eventually completely donation funded. It might be a pipedream, but we got about 85% funding last year. I would like to see at least that amount this year, or maybe even higher.

I have to continue my clean up of the past issues. We have graphics that could be reduced in size. We have duplicates. And we have just files in there that are doing absolutely nothing! So, i will continue my review of the website and removing anything that is redundant or does not have anything to do with the site. I am up to issue 10, I think (I am working on my Space Cadet badge). So I am hoping to recover at least 5-10 megs of space just by cleaning up the past issues area.

I better go now. I just wanted everyone to know that I am still alive and plan on whipping this flabby website into shape! Later gator, Kym




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