It's funny how the universe works sometimes. I took a one night class with "the Craig" of www.craigslist.org last month. (He's kinda famous in these parts.) The class was about "Building Online Communities". It gave me a chance to ponder things like weblogs, discussion forums, geography, everyday experts...and (of course) cowboy boots. I guess I was more prepared than I thought when those evil spam spewin' spider thangs showed up and made themselves at home on my ol' faithful bulletin board. I guess I had a headstart on figurin' out what a new board might offer above and beyond a spam-free posting zone. This morning I dismantled my old bulletin board...no new posts. I took off the posting form and change the file permissions to read only. It left me a little sad....I'm not sure why... it probably won't last long. I was workin' on the new board yesterday...and I could see at the bottom of my screen that Tex Robin was online. I tried out that new "instant message feature" and sent him a private message...then he bounced one back. It wasn't much more than a "howdy", but it made me feel a little more connected somehow.