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A DAY OF REST
00:01 PDT 13 JUN 1999
I'm taking a bit of a break from the news side of things to work on material for the User Friendly Book that O'Reilly & Associates is publishing in October. Keep an eye on the news tomorrow for details on the next contest!

JUST AN OLD COUNTRY DOCTOR
00:02 PDT 12 JUN 1999
I was very sad to hear of the death of DeForrest Kelley, the actor famous for his portrayal of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy on the original Star Trek series. Ever the social conscience of the crew of the Enterprise, Kelley played one of the most-loved characters in the entire Star Trek universe. The news report can be found at http://www.msnbc.com/news/279265.asp. Iambe has also written some heartfelt words of this sad event in her column today. Rest in peace, Mr. Kelley.

RC5 TEAM UFIE UPDATE
00:01 PDT 12 JUN 1999
It does look like we're still climbing up to the top. Fractal wrote in with a report that Team UFie has made it to spot #60 and was still ascending. As the tournament master says in Mortal Combat and Q3test, Impressive. :)

BATCH FILE
00:03 PDT 11 JUN 1999
In a continuing effort to give UFies stuff, there'll be another contest coming up on Monday, and you really don't want to miss this one. Especially if you like food. Good geek food. If you're looking for a job, and you'd like to work with User Friendly -- no, I'm not kidding -- head on over to Geekfinder and check under Sales, Marketing and Analysis. Look for the Dust Puppy: we're looking for an Advertising Sales Rep to help us sell ad campaigns. If that's your cuppa tea, we'd like to talk to you. Finally, it looks like things so far are running smoothly on UF's new server. For all who may have missed it: The new IP for the site is http://204.174.18.129/; we'll be running both the old and new IPs in parallel for about a week until everyone's DNS catches up.

SWITCH OVER TO NEW SERVER
18:16 PDT 10 JUN 1999
We're switching things over to the new server any minute now. The new IP for the site is http://204.174.18.129/; we'll be running both sites in parallel for about a week until everyone's DNS catches up. If you're still seeing this message in a week's time, someone at your ISP probably hardcoded the IP to the site and needs to change it by hand. Hopefully there'll be a minimum of hiccoughs in the transition. I think I'll start praying now...

USER FRIENDLY BRANDED POSTCARDS
00:09 PDT 10 JUN 1999
Just recently a deal has been struck with the folks over at http://www.grouphugs.com/ to provide some electronic postcards for the UFie community. Update: Business Week moved the press release to: http://www.businesswire.com/webbox/bw.060999/191601065.htm

SETI@HOME BOO-BOO
00:05 PDT 10 JUN 1999
Quite a few of you wrote in with the following news item: http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/20088.html In a nutshell, SETI@HOME had a technical burp that has caused all of the SETI participants to reprocess the same packets for some time. They're experiencing some serious backlash for this. Personally, I think we should just shrug and start over instead of getting our collective panties in a knot. It's not like they meant to have this happen.

DAILY STATIC REMAINS THAT WAY
00:01 PDT 10 JUN 1999
Well that was certainly an interesting last few days. Judging from the torrent of email about moving the Daily Static to root, it seems more of you want things to mostly remain the same. So, here's what I'll probably end up doing: The Daily Static will stay at /static, and I'll give both the root page and Daily Static a bit of a facelift with the rest of the site in an effort to make navigation much easier. The inclusion of a site map and some reorganization should make things a little better for all concerned, and by popular demand, I'll have some sort of navigation system for people who don't read the weekend strips until Monday. The latest cartoon may or may not appear on the root page; this is something I'm still considering. What I may end up doing is coming up with a few designs and letting everyone express their opinion on whichever one they like the best.

TEAM UFIE SETI@HOME NEWS
00:02 PDT 09 JUN 1999
This in from Latheos: Here are the latest numbers on the team effort (I'm not sure of the validity of the info, but it's what's posted):

Team User Friendly Stats as of Tue Jun 8 10:21:01 1999

Members: 352
Work units sent: 1660
Results received: 1261
Total CPU time: 41913 hr 04 min 47.6 sec (4.78 years)

Of those 352 members that have registered on the SETI@Home site, we only have 260 of you actually registered in our database, so if you know of anyone who's listed on the SETI page but is missing from our list, have 'em send a note to setiathome@ufies.org so they can be listed on our site.

USER FRIENDLY MOVING TO ITS OWN SERVER
00:01 PDT 09 JUN 1999
Just a heads up. Sometime this week we'll be moving UF over to its own server and so there might be some mucking about with DNS. Nothing to worry about though -- I'll have things in place to redirect you if need be. We'll probably run both sites in parallel for a while until everyone catches up.

CARTOONS AS TACTICAL WARHEADS
00:01 PDT 08 JUN 1999
It seems someone is using UF as a useful tool. This in from Robbie: I used your cartoon from 6/6/99 in a letter to the Australian Minister for Technology. The message I sent with the cartoon is as follows:

Dear Minister,

There are far better ways to prevent online pornography, etc., than the legislation which has just been passed. A bad thing should not be controlled by a worse thing! Please see the image over the page for what I think is an accurate opinion of your approach.

Now while I have some difficulty with the idea that pornograpy is a "bad thing," I admire Robbie for his desire to let his politicians know that they're being made fun of for their decisions. Say...wonder what would happen if we flooded the Australian Parliament with cartoons... ;-)

/STATIC OR /: THE SCORE SO FAR
00:01 PDT 08 JUN 1999
It appears roughly 85% of the audience would like to see the Daily Static at the root of the site, and the rest would like it to stay where it is. Here are some reasons for both sides:

My opinion on the site change idea: I would like the Daily Static to come up on the first page, but I would also like the links and current info to stay there as well. For me, having some of those favorite links on the first page a) let me know what sorts of things you guys relate to (and will I, maybe, relate to you) and b) it gave me advice on some good sites to visit. **

I would love to have the static on the root. I'm far too lazy to move my bookmarks, and so I have a 2-click exercise every morning to get my fix. It's not killing me, but it would be more convenient. **

The only downside I can see might be if you put the various announcements on a different page. People probably wouldn't see them nearly as regularly. At the same time, I suspect putting all those announcements on the index page probably wouldn't look good--though that depends on how you do it, I suppose. **

Please don't. And here's the reason: While I read UF every morning from work, I tend not to read UF on the weekends. Which means that I need to read Saturday and Sunday's cartoons (and any other days I may have missed due to vacation, holidays, and the like) on Monday (or whatever day I come back to the office). I'm guessing I'm not the only one who does this. Having the most recent comic on the front page would kind of be like having a spoiler, in a way. I'd try to avoid reading it first, but sometimes your eyes feed information to your brain, whether it wants it or not, and, well, there you go. **

I'll leave the doors open for feedback on this a little while longer. If you haven't already yet, please write me with your opinion on this!

CRUSHED BY MAIL
00:05 PDT 07 JUN 1999
Well, not really crushed, just snowed under. Normally I keep up on my mail pretty well, but my workload has increased dramatically for a number of reasons, and this translates into me taking a while longer than usual to get back to people in e-mail. The usual 2-4 day turn around time is stretching to 6-7 days now, so please bear with me if you sent me mail with a pertinent question.

'UFIES ONLY' DRAW FOR PRIZES!
00:01 PDT 07 JUN 1999
The chaps over at MyMovies were so appreciative of the feedback that the UFie community sent in for the site that they've agreed to run a raffle for us! Here's the deal: the contest will run from now until 23:59 PDT Sunday, June 20, which gives you two weeks to get in on this. Head over to MyMovies and under New Releases fill in the form with the word 'UFie' in the Referrer field. That's it! The prize will be a large box chock full of CDs, movie posters and t-shirts, and if the winner is over 21, a bottle of champagne will be included. The raffle is open to any UFie, anywhere in the world; the MyMovies crew will ship the box wherever you may be located, so none of this "contest only valid in XXXX" nonsense.