The Legend-News

Convoy 2000: We're Not Famous Yet

The plans and publicity for Convoy 2000 are rolling along. Alan (TA) Chafin and Carey Dodson are the guys behind the scenes, and they've been working hard to spread the word about our little trip. Several radio stations have contacted us, and even The Washington Post has shown interest. And as a reminder of what it's all about, we've got a few copies of C.W. McCall's Greatest Hits that we're sending as bribes incentives to get the attention of the news media.

Be sure to check the official Convoy 2000 site for updates on the itinerary. The route is final, but Alan's added the locations of some of the stops that we'll be making along the way.

Only 36 days to go!

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch

You may not have noticed, but The World's Original C.W. McCall Web Site is undergoing a major redesign. About once each year I realize that the layout of the site and the page design isn't as good as it can be, and so I find a way to make it better. This time I'm using a new web host, WestHost, which is providing me with features that aren't available at my current host. Not that I don't like where TechRen.com is, but there were some abilities that I needed to advance the purpose of the site.

First, I've established a new domain, TechRen.net. All of the content of "C.W. McCall: An American Legend" will eventually be moved over to that new domain. In fact, I finished the discography and lyric pages today, and they're now available at TechRen.net. The moving of the complete site won't be finished for a few weeks, but don't worry: during the transition, both TechRen.com and TechRen.net will carry all of the C.W. pages. But the ones at TechRen.net will be better!

(By the way: if you decide to start your own web site at WestHost, put "TechRen.net" in the form field for "Referral Domain Name". Yeah, I'll get free time if you do. :)

Das ListBot

If you're a member of one of the C.W. McCall mailing list, "Other Wild Places" or "The Legend-News", you may be aware that the list is currently hosted by ListBot. You may also have noticed that messages which are posted to the ListBot groups have been, uh, "delayed" by up to 96 hours (and that's just a rough guess on my part).

Last week, on 23 April, while logging into my account at ListBot to check for problems, I found a special message displayed on my login page:

That was a week ago, and the problem continues. In fact, ListBot sent me a nice note on Saturday:

How nice. Here we are, five weeks away from the biggest event of the millennium — Convoy 2000 — and our major source of Convoy 2000 information is "...experiencing delays..." Hey, ListBot! Delay this!

Thank you. I feel much better now.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that ListBot has screwed up at a bad time. Last November 15th, on the birthday of Bill Fries, The Legend-News didn't get out on time. Well, I sent it to the list, but it didn't arrive in your mailbox for two days.

These latest delays are the last straw. I have reestablished the mailing lists at my new site, TechRen.net, and my lists aren't being delayed. As of a few minutes ago, 23 list members have joined the "new" list. The other 60+ of you are still subscribed via ListBot, but not for long.

UPDATE, 17 September 2003. The instructions in the next paragraph are incorrect. The forum discussion list, Other Wild Places, is now an online forum.

If you are not yet a member of the "new" list, send a message (any message) to [address not valid] and you will be automatically added to the new list. Don't unsubscribe from owp@listbot though, or you may miss a message or two. I'll tell you when it's safe to unsubscribe.

Sometime this week, I will manually subscribe any stragglers to the new list. So if you get a message telling you that you've joined a list to which you didn't sent a request, don't worry: it's just me.

Song A’ Th’ Week

Spring has finally arrived, and the often weird weather of April is being replaced by the rising temperatures of May. And in the high elevations of the Rockies, the columbine is blooming.

Columbine
(C.W. McCall, Bill Fries, Chip Davis)
From the album Wilderness