[Website Change Notice] Uprooting "The Tree"

Please excuse the forums crossposting, but I feel that the following
information is of usage to members of this forum:

As of this Saturday afternoon (14 June 1997), I've mirrored my index page
(called "The Tree") and several other pages to a new site. This is to let
fellow Scouters and those that have had difficulties accessing not just my
old site (www.vhm.com/~uscardnl/) but those of other Scouting organizations
using the Virtual Hobby Mall's free space know of what I've been able to
find out about the status of Joe "Fox" Nietman's webspace.

Two years or so ago, Joe "Fox" (for his Wood Badge patrol) Nietman, the
owner of a small business in Texas and the "mall director" of the "Virtual
Hobby Mall" announced the opening of the mall and the allocation of FREE
webspace for Scouting units, districts, councils and individuals as long as
he had space and as long as he could afford to do so. Several local
Councils and Districts, as well as several Arrowmen, APO brothers and just
plain Scouters like myself all took him up on the offer, and displayed with
a great deal of pride our webpages, collections and photos.
All Joe asked in return was a simple link to his home page and some kind of
acknowledgement...a small price to pay for as much space as we needed.
Joe is a longtime Scouter and District committemember in Houston, Texas.

About a little more than a month ago now, the Virtual Hobby Mall's
webservers in Texas suffered a serious hard disk crash. Joe was unable to
let us know about the crash, since it also affected his ability to send and
receive email, and since there was no "registration process" in getting
access to his FTP site other than to send him your email address and a
suggested password. Therefore, he couldn't "call us up" and let us know
what the problems were.

Several Scouters asked me, once I asked the question on Scouts-L about his
server, what information I knew. I told them that I have faxed, wrote a
letter, and voicecalled three times to his office and home, leaving messages
on his answering machine to please contact me -- collect if he needs to --
and let me know so that I can let others know. He has not contacted me,
although I did get a note from someone that has talked with him and told me
that he was getting ready for camp and that indeed, EVERYTHING at his site
crashed.

It was only after Friday afternoon's discussion with the wife of a potential
large client that I found out the personal effect of not having my webspace
"up and running": since the client could not see what my "home pages" looked
like, he decided that perhaps my services would not help him or the
community college where I was trying to get a nice contract (and better
hours than what I have to do now for "work")! Over coffee, she explained
that her husband was trying to show others that would be making the
decisions "your new site, the way you fixed things up and a little about who
you were"...only that in getting to the old address, it would tell them that
"error attempting to reach...." the old site.

Because I value Joe's friendship over the last few years, I'm NOT about to
"turn tail". It's possible that Joe's having some sort of financial or
personal problems that would be embarrassing to discuss or explain in an
open forum. What I've decided to do is to MIRROR what I have backed up onto
another server, and to promote that address until either I've heard
personally from Joe Nietman or be confident that this downtime is more than
a *temporary* thing. I was unable to get my backups to my pages until this
past week, when my personal effects and Scouting materials that I've sent to
Germany and Croatia during my active duty tour finally made their way back
to me at my new address here in Kentucky.

The new website URL is: http://dynasty.net/users/blkeagle/

If your APO chapter, OA Lodge or Section, Council, District, or unit ...or
you as an individual....has space with Joe, I ask that you continue to have
patience with him and at the same time consider pulling out those backups
of your pages and mirror them at another site. Also be advised that links
to any page starting with "www.vhm.com" WILL NOT WORK...please adjust your
links page(s) to reflect that fact.

There are no userfiles at the FTP site "defiant.vhm.com", which previously
was the webserver which housed Scouting-related pages and directories.
Therefore, if you did not keep backup copies of your page(s) and graphic or
other file(s), you will NOT be able to get them from the FTP server.

I cannot begin to apologize to those that have wrote me asking "what's going
on with your site?" as well as to those that have used my site as a
"launchpad" for Scouting, military and personal resources through my
links with Switchboard, Military City Online, DINFOS Online, and of course,
the Geoworks Users Groups. I've done my best to try to find out for all of
us what's going on with him, and I've failed in that effort.

Thanks for your time in reading this, and thank you for your extended
patience in this matter!!

Settummanque!
(c) 1997 Mike Walton ("no such thing as strong coffee,...") (502) 827-9201
(settummanque, the blackeagle) http://dynasty.net/users/blkeagle
241 Fairview Dr., Henderson, KY 42420-4339 blkeagle@dynasty.net
kyblkeagle@aol.com or waltonm@hq.21taacom.army.mil
---- FORWARD in service to youth ----

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