Folks: In 1998 I was yearning for a place to ask questions about my new hobby, small-scale live steam railroading. I decided to start a mailing list, which I dubbed SSLIveSteam, and people started joining it.
I posed my questions, got answers and the fact that others might have benefited from it was pure gravy, from my perspective. The list survived my 2000 household burglary wherein all my computers were stolen and it survived a 2005 switch to the its current platform, a Macintosh 7500, upgraded with a G4 processor, 1 gigabyte of memory and a pair of 160 GB drives, wherein it runs the Postfix mail server and the Mailman list server software. By my count, there have been at least 16,445 messages sent and received on SSLiveSteam -- I seem to have lost the first few weeks of messages, so it's certainly been more than 16,500 messages. (As an aside, you can see many of the messages on the web: 2004-2005 messages are at http://www.mail-archive.com/sslivesteam@colegroup.com/ and 2005 to current are at http://www.mail-archive.com/sslivesteam@postfix.45mm.com/ ) But times have changed since 1998 or 2000 or even 2005. Most people today communicate on web-site forum software or on chat servers. SSLiveSteam has had only 13 messages in the almost seven months of 2013 and there were only 45 messages in all of 2012. While the Mac 7500 still chugs along, it is an old man in computer years -- it was built in December 1996 -- and like many old men, it sometimes "falls asleep" requiring my manual intervention to wake it up. A small task, but it adds up. And though you all don't send messages to the server much, the spammers love that address. For the last couple of years, I have to deal with anywhere from 20 to 100 pieces of spam per day sent to the list. It's not a whole hell of a lot of work, but it is an irritant. For these reasons, I propose to shut down SSLiveSteam, effective July 31. I will entertain arguments why SSLiveSteam should be continued (I'd move it to a slightly newer computer and use different software that requires less maintenance), but my sense is that the list's time has come and gone. Since becoming editor of STEAM IN THE GARDEN, I developed a nice full-functioned web site that has extensive forums. I strongly encourage you to register at http://www.steamup.com/ and use the forums there. Thanks for all the help all of you provided, both to one another and to me. \dmc -- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Dave Cole Gen'l Sup't: Grand Teton & Everglades Steam Excursion Co. Pacifica, Calif. USA <http://45mm.com/> <mailto:c...@45mm.com> ATTEND THE NATIONAL SUMMER STEAMUP IN SACRAMENTO, JULY 16-20, 2013 For more information, visit the web site at <http://www.summersteamup.com> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ _______________________________________________ SSLiveSteam mailing list Send messages: SSLiveSteam@postfix.45mm.com Cancel subscription: http://postfix.45mm.com/mailman/listinfo/sslivesteam Rules: http://www.45mm.com/sslivesteam_guide.html
