>
>Sorry to vent, but totally frustrated by the archives... whoever designed
>that mess... are they in a mental instution right now...lol..?
>Lyle

Lyle,

         Searching the archives is a bit like panning for gold... it takes
time and effort, but the payoff is, well, golden. It may help to realize
that this is an *old* list, running on software that is fairly primitive by
today's standards. That doesn't make it bad, just less newbie-friendly than
you may be used to.

         - Keep your search phrases short, trying to add more terms
generally finds you *less* hits, not more.
         - Limit the time-frame for searches, Vanagons tend to wear out in
the same places, so there's a good chance that whatever you are searching
for has been discussed repeatedly every couple of months. You don't need to
search the entire archive (how many years worth now?) each time.

         By the way, one perennial topic is "can't we update these archives
to a newer, faster, cooler search engine?"... while this is obviously
*possible* it has yet to become *practical*. Updating the archive search
would require time and/or money, and no one has ponied-up enough of either
to make it happen.

         I haven't volunteered because I already spend enough time in front
of a keyboard every week, and a project like that would leave me no time to
keep my vanagon running! Besides, it took less time to learn how to play
nice with the archives than to figure out how to fix 'em. ;-)

Tim