Jim.

Thanks for the insight, and of course your help maintaining the list
and efforst toward making things more efficient.

I have a **small** understanding of the importance of a domain name,
but, if "Vanagon.com" ended up being, say, "BelovedBricks.com" or
somesuch, I wouldn't care. Just my .02 on that front.

I know it takes money and time. Hopefully people could help out. Be
monetary or actual physical/brain help.

And imagine this.

What a great online contest that would be! Coming up with a great new
domain name for this list?! --- :^)

Cheers,

Neil.

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 9:00 PM, Jim Arnott <jr.arnott@gmail.com> wrote:
> Robert, etal;
>
> I apologize for not replying sooner.
>
> Allow me to explain my position in all this....
>
> In my capacity as "List Admin" I have very limited access to
> gerry.vanagon.com.  How limited? I can approve or deny subscription
> requests. I can add, moderate or remove folks from the list.  I can
> query to determine the status of a subscriber. I can change the
> status of a user. All commands that are interpreted by LISTSERV. What
> I cannot do is access any of the gerry.vanagon.com server functions.
> I do not have access to the web pages, the operating system, or any
> of the back end stuff.  Nor do I have access to the hardware. Most
> importantly I have no access to any of the logs. I simply cannot
> provide what is necessary to further troubleshoot this issue.
>
> Immediately prior to when I volunteered to "take over" the admin
> duties, Tom Carrington was bemoaning the cost of providing the
> bandwidth necessary for gerry.  Since I am employed by an ISP with
> server shelf space and bandwidth to spare, it was my understanding
> that gerry was going to be moved to my engine room and Tom was going
> to move on to other things. At that time, I would then have the
> necessary tools to actually administer gerry.vanagon.com. (Like
> PHYSICAL ACCESS!) This has not happened. All that has happened is
> that Mr. Carrington apparently no longer receives my requests for the
> occasional "laying on of hands" in that to actually get something
> done I have to either email or call a fellow listmember who lives in
> the same general area as the server is located and ask that that
> member attempt to contact Mr. Carrington. For the past year or so,
> this has been a hit or miss proposition. (Hence the outage a couple
> weeks ago.... Someone forgot something and gerry.vanagon.com was
> unavailable for a few days.)
>
> IMHO, this situation is becoming a mess for lack of a better term.
> We have the vanagon.com domain owned by Ron Lussier who has had
> little to do with the list for a number of years, hosted on a box in
> Sausilito pointing to gerry.vanagon.com, hosted on a box that lives
> on the east coast in a guy's closet who is rarely available running
> mailing list software administered by a guy who lives in Oregon and
> takes most of the heat. Any piece of it breaks and, as Jeff Dunham
> says, all I can do is run to the end of my chain and bark.
>
> Legally, this mailing list belongs to Ron Lussier. Historically it
> has belonged to the listmembers (we bought the hardware and
> software.) I have my thoughts as to how this ought to be resolved,
> but frankly, it's managed to stumble along as is for seven or eight
> years so I really don't expect that much will change. Truth be told,
> I getting burned out because all I can do is tier one support. I do
> not have the tools or the access necessary to actually fix the
> problems or update the site. I don't even have a direct line to tier
> two support.  I just have to leave a note and hope that someone will
> get back to me.  Just like you.
>
> I'll open this non-vanagon discussion to all in that I believe that
> this directly affects all list members. Let's hear your thoughts on
> hpw to proceed.
>
> Sorry to bitch publicly and sorry that I can't help solve the root
> problem.
>
> I remain,
>
> At your service,
>
> Jim Arnott