What's New for 2001

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December 19, 2001        

She said, "I can't go back to America soon
So God damn cold it's gonna snow until June.
Yeah, they're freezing up in Buffalo stuck in their cars
        And I'm lying here 'neath the sun and the stars."

 -From Jimmy Buffet's MAÑANA          

   I'm a Floridian via New York so I know hot and I know cold and let me tell you: Chicago is a COLD city! Locked in his cockpit, the pilot told all 4 of us on the plane that Midway Airport was 45 degrees and overcast.  45 degrees is "inscription" weather in New York - not uncomfortable when lying on the ground adding another name to a monument. But I found 45 degrees in Chicago to be blistering.  I spent Tuesday night walking around Solider Field Stadium and hung out on Michigan Avenue. It's also a quiet town. Met a few people - mostly street people - who said the weather was astoundingly warm. I couldn't help but think that if they found THIS warm that their blood was way too cold for mere mortals.   The Best Western at Grand Park was cool too. I had to run a bath 3 times to get it warm. When I sat in the tub? The bottom was icy cold!  I ran the room's heat all night which kept me wide awake while it cranked on and off, yet I was never cozy.  I did get a kick out of those naughty movies they show on the TV, but ee-gaz! the acting is near scary! I arrived at the Federal Court Building of the Northern District of Chicago Ill. on time and met MonoType's Lawyer, Bob. Nice guy even if 10 minutes in the sun would leave him blistered and sick. Still, 10 minutes sitting with him outside the courtroom made me delighted that I couldn't find a lawyer. Putting all the issues in human terms and up front as we did relieved me of the bogeymen my lawyer and my own imagination had created over the last few months. I don't know where we're all heading with this matter but my apology to MonoType from the December 8th posting (see below) not only stands but has real heart behind it now. They are just trying to protect their trademark and, hey guys, as artists we fully support that.  I think I made it perfectly clear to Bob that I didn't personally intend them any harm.  I am sure they realize some jerk uploaded the fonts to me and they are pretty much bent on finding out who that was.  I can help them in that endeavor - as I should - by tracing my system logs. And I will. After our talk I roamed the chilly streets of downtown Chicago, the area around South Dearbourn Street. Gosh, they have some mighty tall buildings forming narrow breezeways out of the busy streets.  I can see why it's called the windy city. Thankfully the wind knew I was in town and stayed elsewhere. Most of the natives were in suits. One or two actually were walking around in short sleeves!  Thinking back on our meeting I recalled Bob had told me that he was on the golf course the day before. Meanwhile I'm standing outside the Chicago Post office which is this monstrous dark glass rectangle living aside a welded iron sculpture of....who knows what....wearing a turtle neck, a woolen shirt, a goose-down over coat, ski hat and gloves. As I went to hail a taxi (getting around Chicago is a lot easier than New York) I noticed a little old lady staring at me with a pensive look written all over her face. "Cold?" I asked. She shook her head only to say, "No, but you are."  Like I needed to be reminded.  I was back on Long Island by Tuesday night in time to get drunk with all my friends down at Hogan's Goat.  'How was the Windy City?'  Cold.  Nice Jazz Clubs. I sure was knocked over by Soldier Field. They asked in they're usual rollicking manner if I kicked ass on MonoType. "Don't think so," came my reply. "I think we're both friends in a dark room swinging out at enemies and struck each other by mistake."

December 17, 2001 
       I'll be on SouthWest Airlines in a few hours heading for Chicago in order to appear in Federal Court Tuesday morning very much alone.  My lawyer - technically represents ADSTONE which has been a non entity since July so he won't appear.  Adstone can default, it doesn't exists anyway.  I am not the guy they served but I will appear to defend this archive.  I am nervous and a bit frightened so wish me luck.  This is all a little overwhelming to a cute little computer geek like me. I'll be back Wednesday with a report.  December 8, 2001 
       No, I didn't kick MonoType's ass in court, but the fonts are back. They're over in the library under FONTS for Stone. Took me nearly forever to weed out the 13 fonts which I knew 100% for sure are not copy protected by anyone else but little old me, Alan, PLM and Shelby.  And from now on nothing goes in there but fonts I can confirm are yours or mine.  I don't know what I'm going to do about the MonoType law suit.  Lowest price I found to accept the case was $10,000 (was 5 then they upped it) and if I sold off everything I own, maybe I'd end up with that.  So I'm still tossing and turning over it.  While I'm at it, let me apologize to MonoType on behalf of myself and all those members (who should NOT send me copyrighted works in the first place!!!)  Since we are a subscriber's only board and 34 of the 37 present membership consists of memorialists - who really don't use generic (TTF) fonts - I'm 100% certain by this assumption and my system logs that your fonts were not taken by members of the public, and only 2 members from this service. Still, I should have been more careful, sorry. But please, next time, tell me I'm posting your property before spending $$ on lawyers. (Just a sensible and friendly suggestion.)  If an agent of MonoType is reading this and wants to "check-out" which fonts are online here, call me and I will supply you with a password for membership level access. 888-756-0710, Joe.

December 4, 2001 
       Now get  load out of this!  The Great Dane has reared his crazy head again.  Yes, he of Etcher Machine fame, has called me from out of the blue!  Apparently he's been offering his machine to better minds than I - such as Jim@monu-cad and to Pete over at ArtStone - with no success.  (What did he think they were NOT in this for the money?  I'm the guy who hates money, not them.) Sez he even sold one for $30,000.  Now who is that sucker? So he returned to the first sucker on his list - me.  His offer is that I get $1,000 for every machine I sell.  Great.  Buys me 2 yearly passes at Disney.  3 at Universal!  So I ask if the machine is any better than the poor performance we saw last time, or did he drop the price to match the quality of the machine?  He sends me an image of the machine.  Go figure.  Anyway, I am not very much interested in this project (I am involved with the MonoType lawsuit, getting my colon removed, and battling for custody of my grandson, so whose got the time for Dane?) but I will say that "here he is again, folks,"  he wants $17,000 plus my cut of $1,000.  If interested, let me know and I'll probably just send you his number and you can cut out the middle man. November 17, 2001 
    Here's a bitter sweet chunk of news:  I have contracted with kua.net to locate our servers on their big pipeline to the Net for less than we are paying now! ($225 per server as opposed to an estimated $400 per server on the Adstone.net) That means your fees will drop! Don't get excited, tho.  What it means is that as soon as we pay off the Nimba attack and the transfer fees (estimated both at $8,800) your monthly fees will drop - hey, better than me telling you I have to up the ante next year, right?  But, in the wake of losing a batch of members recently a few of you have made some repeated suggestions that I handle MyDraw much like I do the Flower Shoppe - run MyDraw like a business.  That rubs me wrong because it's not a biz per se, and I'd hate to start paying/charging for drawings or telling contributors, "Yeah, I made $400 off your talent this month." On the other hand, more members mean lower fees.  So, I'm going to adjust the messages across the board to reflect both concerns and feelings.  I will offer 1) lower fees to members who recruit new members. 2) A milti-level membership package at different rates and services.  And I'll send out a mailing like we last did in 1995. If I see this is spending more $$ than it brings in - as mailings usually do - I'm going to make a 180 degree turn. So your comments are really requested here. Joe@gemrock.com  and none of this is a promise.  The survival of the archive is my only concern.  I am shutting down my office computer as soon as I finish this post to pack and drive up to Long Island and the flowers I have to ready for Xmas.  So send email, but I won't respond until after Thansgiving. November 13, 2001 
    I just gotta brag.......... I just finished converting the very first batch of files Moses had sent to me almost 2 years ago! That's close to 2,000 drawings  posted from Moe alone over that time - not to mention those from Mark, Kimon, Derick and my own and a few from scattered friends! I think the total runs near 10,000 conversions - not bad huh?  Ok, well, now I have this new file from Moe (one of almost 56 zipped-up he has sent since) and I think there's over 4,000 in there (and I still have a ton of Derick's and Kimon's archived yet to convert.)  I'll be back to brag when those are done!

November 9, 2001 
    Just a heads-up on members whose due date runs from the 8th to the 14th. I've switched to Card International Credit Card service with a lower "take-back" of roughly 5% instead of Novus's 8%.  We can use the extra pennies after the Nimba attack.  However, this service requires I run it on the Net rather than from the XL300 terminal I'm use to.  Problem is their virtual terminal requires I supply your full name, address etc and so forth and not only don't I have such info, I don't want it.  So, I'm in the midst of trying to get them to change their requirements - or we've right back to Novus.  If your due date falls in here, I'll get ya later this month. November 8, 2001 
    Gosh, what a month I'm having - for a peek, check out My Last Letter to New York.  And who turned the world onto us these last few weeks?  I have been getting such accolades, thanks and well wishes, I'm wondering if there's another MyDrawingBoard out there people are mixing up with us?  2 of these kind folks (one I helped out with a design problem , the other asked for a tech favor) labeled me a Guru. Me.  "Guru."  I always held Jim at Monu-Cad and Moses (and my Dad) as my heros - check me out, I'm a Guru.  Cool beans.  Well, back to earth: the Guru has not done well this last month as far as posting new designs.  Under 100 new ones posted, sorry.  I'll do better next month. Problem is that I am adjusting the Data Bases to bring them up to date - their menus are not pointing correctly.  Most are done now.  A Happy Thanksgiving to ya'll if I don't get to post a new message by then.  October 28, 2001 
    For members who pay by check please start making the check payable to My Drawing Board instead of ADSTONE.  Some time between now and year's end credit card holders will also notice the change of charge over to My Drawing Board.   Because the credit card companies have pushed up their fees to 8% plus a $35 monthly service fee I'm going to encourage you to pay by check.  I don't send hard-copy bills but I will send you an email on or before your due date.  If you desire to switch to paying by check, send me an email and I'll adjust your account. It's not Techie and Information Age-istic but, really, who cares?  When I look at my stock portfolio I'm not impressed with Mr. Gates' Wondrous Machine anymore. In fact some times I wish I never ever seen a computer!
    I'm a little concerned about the loss of 4 members this month.  Over the last 15 years we've only lost 2 members, suddenly 4 of you leave?  I am chalking 2 up to canceled or changed credit cards, 1 has to be that spy from Mono Type, but the other is a bit baffling. Well, we're still here and I now have 2 providers who will gladly take over the operations if something should happen to me or my computers.
   Oh, I want to thank all those who took the World Trade Emblems and left such very kind comments about MyDrawingBoard and our services and art work. Gosh, there's some really sweet people out there.

October 2, 2001 
Remember the RT. 66 Road Trip? Either do I, for that matter. Anyway, it's turned into a MARDI GRAS Road Trip. Click here for the details.   In other news: It appears that our servers still hide that miserable W32Nimba virus.  It has been popping up here and there.  This server, MyDrawingBoard, appears clean but we are replacing its "guts" anyway.  Expect crashes and down time over the next week or so. September 28, 2001
Thanks to Jim @ Monu-Cad for the virus info. Thanx to Comp-U-Pro for the virus scan tools and thanx to no one else 'cept me for hacking the NT box and getting MyDraw back online.  Not to be nasty about it.  Just de fax.  I had to toss out all the following listed machines and domains, so if you're on the list, find another host.  My email server is exclusive from now on. No email accounts allowed - save my immediate circle of friends.  Good to be back up and running. Was a really nasty bill, folks.  But could have been worse if I decided not to shed the following: 
ADSTONE.net and all its departments - bank accounts were closed down, filing last tax on 9/31/01.
LIfish.com and .net on trashed cpu #18
mymagicfingers.com on trashed cpu #12
drchrishansen.com on trashed cpu #13
plmgraphics.com on trashed cpu #13
adstone.com on trashed cpu #13
photo2poster.com
ontracktrains.com on trashed cpu #18
stealindan.com .................................. I heard the US Congress wants to make virus senders equal to terrorist.  I support that measure.

September 17, 2001
   I've been a really great guy by keeping up on conversions through the mess we and the world has been in. But contributions are pouring in at record pace nowadays.  I have no real head count but you're probably looking at close to 1.5 million drawings even with the mass elimination of the clip art library last month. And with guys like Moses and Derick who must spend every waking minute drawing, I just can't keep up.  So I'm thinking about cutting my work short by reducing the number of conversion formats on say the next million drawings give or take a few thousands.  Everyone can import DXF. Generic Cadd users do need GCD and old Mon-Cad users need CMP. CMX is popular but not necessary.  But I want YOUR OPINION on this before I do it.  So please write and voice your opinion and suggestions. Joe@gemrock.com September 16, 2001
   Only because this is the area where I present news, complaints, suggestions and the like, I have moved the World Trade Center Emblems to a different location. Click here to visit them.
   In other news: my lawyer dug up the Lanham act which is the basis for suing us over the fonts and to our surprise we are pretty sure we're going to walk away from this law suit. All the same, I will return the fonts I KNOW FOR A FACT are under our copy protection and you will begin to see copyright notices on each and every drawing - now that we are more educated about such things.
   Some of you know that once all this dust clears (the grandson, the lawsuit, stolen compressor, illness, Moses' traveling about) that Moe and I are aiming to open a little novelity shop in Florida. Now get ready for a chuckle - we are trying to find an etching machine so we can do little boyfriend-girlfriend and family etchings on stone and glass as a feature to the shop. Well, you know the non-success I've had with etching machine! Anyone have any leads to where we can find an affordable one please let me know. Joe@gemrock.com And I will sign or promise under the Lanham Act Section 15 that I will not use the machine for any other purpose (I'm not going to resell it and I'm not in the monument biz since 1988. So there! ((Rasberry intended))

September 9, 2001
I'm writing this entry only to try out an old HTML editor to see the difference from a new one I'm using, still you might find this message interesting. I started a new project last month before the world turned upside down on me. Now that I have cast off a lot of work and juggled things a bit, I can return to it. Albeit, I will be moving at a snail's pace. I came up with the idea when, after my compressor was stolen, I wanted to post a reward online for it's return. try as I may, I found no place to post a reward. So my next project, or along with everything else, I am developing forinfoleadingto.com Click on it to watch me design a website - a day at a time. September 4, 2001
Ok, one hysterical webmaster deserves it back from his members. Rest assured that the board will not shut down and if it does it will reappear under someone elses service under the same conditions or a trifle more expensive. I have no intentions of closing down this or any other of my websites.  But having said that and considering all the pressures on me lately, we do have 2 good offers. By offers I mean transfer of service.  I am not selling the board. If I "transfer" it, it will be given away at no charge - servers, designs, member list, Gerber system, converting programs and anything else needed to allow the service a easy transition. Copy protected designs can not be transferred or even sold unless the owners give the OK.  That's a horse of a different color and  I have no control over. Both offers agree to continue the service exactly as it is but both want compensation to do so (well, ain't the equipment and tools compensation enough?).  I giggle at that and reply that no experienced CADD designer (and especially a monument man) would pay for designs - in fact I get constant bitching about the fees around here! Even though if they ordered a common design found at MyDrawingBoard from a regular design studio the thing would cost at least three times the price of membership!  But that's not the deal here.  Everything here is free, always was.  Everything but the Verizon, repair, software and Verio bills, that is.  So far, I am saying let's see what happens and no to increases - hey, I will need the board too, I will likely return to the drafting table to earn my living.  Oh, just a note, even if nothing comes of it, here's a lesson for us all. All this fuss and such over the law suit and not one of you has said they miss the fonts.  In fact, some of you have even commented: "We had fonts at MyDrawingBoard, news to me."    Go figure. I can understand it.  There's so much here alot of you over look and the Font Lib has only been around since Nov, 1999.  But will never be back. From now on it's designs only.

September 1 , 2001     Bad health is the pits!  I apologize for sounding like a man shot by a gun and I have removed the last entries where I whine like a baby about the legal hassles.  I know I have every right to bitch but I am tired of hearing that, tired of feeling so sickly and tired of changing around this wonderful website.  I am not Microsoft, I didn't do anything wrong intentionally, and I doubt if any judge is going to make me suffer beyond a reasonable measure.  I will fight this and I will keep you informed.  Only one other thing to say and that's that the summons orders an impound of our servers.  There's only one ADTONE/MyDrawingBoard server so I am copying the server over to that old NT machine we used 2 - 3(?) years back and packing the server to bring to Chicago when I do get to go. It's so they can see that their fonts actually reside on the server.  Had they told me to remove them like everyone else from Design Services to the Ruritians had so politely done, the fonts would not be there. I am returning the usually look to the board.  James tells me we need some upgrades which means money which requires new members.  That alone made me jump and take notice this morning!  So;  good to be feeling a bit better and to be back.

August 28, 2001
Yesterday my dad was served with papers which were actually meant for me and ADSTONE and I am sitting here looking at two summons of over a 1,000 pages because some dopey company thinks ADSTONE has more than 2 pennies to rub together and that I and ADSTONE are trying to defraud its members that the fonts in our library originated from ADSTONE. How tedious and silly!  Is this what the Net has come to?  OK, as explained a dozen times I do not sell designs, fonts or anything else. You pay the bandwidth bill over here - that is all.  If I get $50 per month out of this setup it's only because the bandwidth dropped and I don't know how to refund 43 members their share of $50. I never intentionally post copyrighted material and remove anything anyone emails me about being so protected. Now I have to find a way to get to Chicago (wherever that is) and answer this summons! And how do I do it?  "Yeah, someone uploaded the fonts and I posted them in good faith. OK, I'm wrong. Here's all the money and property I have - about $1,000 - now point me back to NY or FL."   OOPS! Break here, folks, Cathy just called to tell me that my 16 month old grandson (you know, PJ, turned away by his folks and Cathy and I end up with him) has just leaped forward to use the potty for the first time! Trust me, that is an achievement for us!  Back to these papers: Obviously someone at sometime uploaded fonts to us that are copyrighted. The summons indicate which ones but they are so many that I will take drastic action concerning fonts. Effective immediately I am deleting the font library.  There really is no reason to have one with all the free resources online. The fonts I know for a fact to be created by Moses, myself and others who work directly with me I will save and post in a future font library. That library will be nothing more than links to resources online. For those of you who are concerned that MyDrawingBoard will close down, the concern is possible (hey, this is not a profitable thing for me and at my age and with my IRA of under $3,000, spending more time with PJ sounds good to me.)  But the magic of MyDrawingBoard will not disappear.  Moses or Jim at Monu-Cad or Shelbym or someone will surely be happy to have me send them all my designs and post them for you just as I do here.  Who knows, one of those folks might be able to buy bandwidth cheaper than I.  Stay tuned.   They'll be more.  --- oh, here's more already: my lawyer wants to know why no body told us these were copyrighted.  Good question. Why should anyone (in this case the MonType Corp) sue without a claim or a warning?  Anyway, dear members, please be careful when sending me stuff to post.  And don't worry about the Fonts, they'll be back but ONLY ones drawn by me, Moe, Derrick and others I know for a fact do the drawings. 

August 23, 2001
The Christian Symbol Library is now finished.   Click here to visit it and is also accessible from the Library's home page. Not to be a bad Christian, but, God, that was tough!  Still when I think about the pages I've built over in the Library, yeah, no one pats me on the back for them until they need them.  Then it's "you're the man!"  Whatever the case, I am glad to be back to drawing in vector (all those pretty pictures for the Symbol Lib drove me a little whacky)  and happy to be back to converting your drawings... still tackling that nasty cold, but mostly back to work.  My next project will be to open a website called forinfoleadingto.com and put up a reward for the creeps who stole my compressor.  Would you believe Merchants Insurance refused to pay because I retired in 1998, and had Dave doing my inscriptions since then?!?! Well, they sure accepted my premium checks didn't they?  Smucks! If you got Merchants, check your policies.  Email me if you do and I'll tell you the wording to look for. Joe@gemrock.com

August 20, 2001
Back from Florida.  Took my grandson with us and not only did he break 3 of my ribs in a bath tub accident but gave Cathy and I horrible colds!  Kids are just such wonderful bundles of germs, ain't they? We've been baby sitting since June 19th and since we won't be back to Florida till October - well, you guessed it -  I'm playing Daddy.  At least in NY his natural grandma can help out on weekends. I have posted very few designs this season - around 300 - and will make up for that this next season.  I was involved with the Christian Symbol Library, re-working the servers for a bit more speed, and have posted those 3 novels I wrote way back when... feels like it took me 20 years to get them posted! They are now on-line at my personal site in the His Literature section, click here.

July 26, 2001 - The day I got my official FLA Driver's License.
Spank me with a wet noodle! Here it is 2001 and I forgot to post for you Monu-Cad, Generic Cadd, OurCadd and Visual Cadd users DATES2.zip.  Like the last century's Dates.zip  thest with a sippy-cup of milk are all dates from 1877 to 2001 spaced correctly for the year 2000. They are all CMP files and the handles are where the handle for the 2 in 2000 would be.  (So kern in 2000 john 2000 then tag the handle of the 2, delete the 2000 and place in ((say)) 18780.cmp.)  These dates are also expanded to fit SKS exactly... no thin bars there.  DATES2.zip can be found on page 12 of the font area -just click here.

July 23, 2001
      Thanks to Moses, I am creating along side the Flags Library a STATE SEALS library.  All 50 state's seals are there from 7 to 10 inches.  Since these are from Moe, you know he jam-packs them with detail which often doesn't work for the stone guys among us.  So I started to redraw them.  hiseal, kyseal, meseal, mnseal, moseal, neseal, nmseal and wvseal have been adjusted for granite.  But I don't have the time until I'm old and gray - oops! too late! - to redraw them all.  So anyone please do some and send them to me in any format so I can exchange them, please. (Monu-Cad, Generic CADD, Our CADD and Visual CADD users look for CMP, handles at 0,0)   I can't say when this Florida dial-up will work well enough to upload all these seals... might have to wait till I get back to NY in mid-August.  The State Seals Library is in place, if a seal is not there, try again over the next month. Click here> STATE SEALS
       Talking about this link,  at one level up from it is another new Library, The Christian Symbol Library.  However, it is a work in progress and still needs to be completed.  You can check it out and bookmark it at this link SYMBOL LIB. It should be finished by the time I return to NY or soon after. 

July 10, 2001
REALLY GOOD NEWS! I want to thank Moses for introducing a new contributing artist to our service. They met at a recent convention in Las Vegas. I can see from the style of the work being sent that these two have a lot in common and probably hit it off really good. Moses tells me that the new boy is as prolific as himself - now, that I gotta see! One thing I will say from what I've seen so far is that the man is no slouch. I will begin posting his work this week, so look for it. You can do a search by his name: Welcome Kimon Brown. Still, hold your horses until after July 12th. And even then there might not be more than a handful posted.
REALLY BAD NEWS but some of you in the stone cutting business can relate to this. Last night robbers broke into my yard and drove away with my sandblast truck, compressor and equipment. As you know I am no longer in the stone biz but lease out the biz I did have way back when. These theives then pull the truck around the back of Ye Olde Friendly Flower Shoppe, strip it and leave with the compressor. Tough neighborhood, huh? I trust the insurance will cover most of the loss, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I do feel for Dave (at CHOICE) who leases the stuff. He might be sitting on his hands awhile.
June 8, 2001
Attention OurCad and Kern-It users! Got the thin-bar font blues? Changing your Data Factors to Exaggerated Serifs still doesn't work? (Oh, listen to me, jeeez) Well, I got the fix. Thanks to our new influx of files, I have discovered we now have Roman Modified and Condensed Roman fonts which are wide bar SKS look-alikes specifically for Monu-Cad ver. 4.5 and earlier and OurCad all versions. As you know, I design in OurCad and Monu-Cad and have struggled for years with those thin bar fonts. So I tried these other fonts and, man-o-man are they nifty. The font can be found near the bottom on page free12. May 25, 2001
I knew we had Roman Modified Condensed fonts online and I am often asked for it. Well, I found it, finally, buried in a bunch of files awaiting conversions. I also have other treasured fonts in there and will get them up soon. Meanwhile, go get it, folks, from:the font library, click here. And I apologize for the wait.

May 18, 2001
It's actually not news, but it might be to you.....................

We are still wholly owned by ADSTONE and nothing else will change. Except that we obtained an extra cool million drawings by taking in the partner. (Don't get excited, it will take me years to convert just what I already have archived for you.) Please also note that my email address will not change from joe@GEMROCK.COM April 12, 2001
OOPS! Sorry. Moses just informed me that my total for the drawings he sent was 5,695. Which then brings the total number of files I have to convert (THIS SESSION) to 6,895. I think, if my calculations are correct, that brings our grand total of archived drawings closer to 1.1 million. Give or take a dot one. Moses is trying to get us another Gerber system that will convert the near million not yet converted into PLT 3.5; with little success by the way. Anyone out there have a Gerber Composer for sale? Cheap?
Like at eBay prices?
Doesn't have to draw, just convert to 3.5?

April 10, 2001
Since Kathy left us I'm sure you have noticed that the general house keeping around here has been awful - my shame. Mark and I were wondering why we hadn't gotten any WISH LIST requests as of late. Well, James comes in yelling that the links on the page were all messed up. Ut-Oh. Well, folks, if you sent a request, please re-submit.
Another flaw - which will not change - is that I will NOT phone or email you if your credit card expires or is declined for whatever reason. I just suspend your account and wait for you to get to me at 888-756-0710 or email Joe Not to be arrogant, but Kathy use to run up some big phone bills calling folks who just decided to change cards and not inform us - or for whatever reasons. Since we don't really have a profit around here, I will wait for you to re-activate your account. I won't email because in 9 out of 10 cases, I don't know your email... Kathy's records are in Chinese... or Greek?

April 6, 2001
I'm in the midst of Easter holidays as well as just getting back to NY after 7 weeks in FLA. Hate to admit it but due to FLA's horrible Internet access I wasn't able to add more than 37 drawings to GemRock. This while Moses and Derick - oh, Mark also - emailed me daily with designs. In all, I have close to another 1,200 designs to add. And, by the time I get to them, they'll be another 1,200. Sorry for the delay, folks, but I'll catch up after Easter. One regret are a ton of drawings from Moses; one file contained the Presidents of the US and another a bunch of that race car driver (Ernhart?) who died at the Datona 500. Ask Moe: had I better Net access those drawings would have been there within 3 days of the accident! Now that they're anticlimatic, I'm working on other stuff. Too bad. But if you should need them, just email me and I'll send them along to you. Right now they're in DXF format only.

 March. 12, 2001
We have been credited for over 48 hours of bandwidth I have been fighting over since last year so expect a reduction in user fees in your next billing period. Looks like $5 per member. If you've been billed for March, then it will show up in April.

Feb. 5, 2001
Hold onto your hats, folks. There's this new service we've been kicking around. Actually, it is an extension of the WISH LIST service. There's just too many wishers out there and I've been talking this issue over with Eddie from ADSTONE Designs, Moses, Jamie, Pete and Derick - these guys are usually the fellows who draw up your Wishes. At the same time, one segment of the design business who do not usually sign up to GemRock are the retailers who do not have access to CADD. They either sub out the work or buy from brochures or hand draw their own work. GemRock had only one thing to offer that retailer - a lot of drawings online to show their customers. But now, we're going to offer full size details, signs, shop drawings and stencil cuts to them and everyone else. Don't get all excited or disappointed yet - there's more to this than meets the eye. I'm not going back to layout, I promised myself that when I sold ADSTONE Designs. GemRock will act as a broker / payer-guarantee. Not because I want a piece of the action, rather because GemRock can place work with artists who are best qualified to do it and then assure the artists that he or she will get paid for the effort. Full paying members will get the service automatically. Folks without their own CADD and stencil cutters, who would not otherwise join GemRock will pay a lower monthly fee to have the MyDrawingBoard service - as we are now calling the project. 
     So, we're presenting our idea to you for several reasons: We are seeking other artists who can form a niche in the project.  Of course we need to hear from folks who need drawings and stencil and sign and sepias & blue prints. Unlike Dane's Ecther (which, BTW, he is down to 20 grand)  this project is pretty much a certainity - in one form or another.  So let's hear from you, click here.

Feb. 3, 2001
Usually, I announce a re-post about now. And I have added another 400 designs, but due to this new format, I have no way of "showing off." Grrrrrrrrrrr! Trust me, there's 400 brandie new files online. Moses has told me he has another 1,500 to send over and MarkT also has a handful. I also posted - in the Logo area - a way kewl BROKEN WING Harley Davidson design Derick sent us last week. I wanted to stall until Bike Week, but Cathy and I will be at Daytona for the festivities, so I posted it early.

Jan. 4, 2001
How unlucky can I get?!?! Tomorrow, Friday, early, Cathy and I will be leaving for our Florida home. We really need the vacation (we just got engaged at Christmas, by the way) and I need to "work" from that location to see how well I can run the network from FLA. And, needless to say I have a ton of things to do today - Thrusday - before I leave. Well, wouldn't you know it! I buy an IBM UPS to protect against electrical surges while away (till Feb 1) and when I connect 4 computers to it, all of them blow out. BLOW OUT!!!! Including Gemrock! Damn. Anyway. The servers are running through our backups (they're in Maryland) and if you run into problems email me and I will adjust the servers accordingly. Oh, well, looks like that test from FLA will be bulletproof by the time I'm back - huh?
If any of you are planning a trip to Disney World, I live 5 minutes from the east gate. Lunch or dinner is on me. Email me and I'll send along our phone number.

Jan. 2, 2001
For the next 18 months or so to cover bandwidth charges I have decided to bring all accounts to $40 per month. This will leave us an excess of $160 per month which we will return to you or invest in some upgrades - or even pay guys like Moses and other artists who contribute far and beyond what's reasonable to our acrhives. I know this hurts those of you who have paid nothing since 1984, and others with the lower access fees, but thank Alan Greenspan for destroying the economy and especially the Internet economy. Bandwidth is no longer a cheap thingie anymore. But we have a lease for 18 months; so we're safe for that span anyway.

Sincerely Yours,
Joe Auricchio

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