[VAL] Spam, etc., etc.

["Tom Patterson" <pattersontom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As some of you who have been affected know, quite a number of list member's 
ISPs have recently stepped up their efforts to cut down on the amount of 
spam that is delivered to your mailboxes.  While admirable, it has affected 
delivery of both individual messages and digests to members in some cases. 
If you stop receiving mail from the list, check with me to see if we can 
determine the reason for the stoppage.  It may require you to contact your 
ISP and request that any mail from tompatterson.com be taken off their 
blockage list.  Then too, it may require me to work with my site hosting 
company.  Maybe both.

Meanwhile, for those who do not know, I archive both individual messages 
from the list, as well as the daily digests on my website, so that anyone 
who has missed any copies may refer to the site for missing information.  In 
both cases, the copies on my site will generally be slightly out of date, 
depending on when I get around to updating the site.

The individual messages may be found at: 
http://www.tompatterson.com/VAC/MHonArc/maillist.php.  They are edited, in 
that not all messages are necessarily added to the site, and those that are 
will usually have excess text removed.  Sometimes, additional information 
is, however, added to the messages to make them more helpful.  Examples are 
pictures at links that are temporary and which may soon be no longer 
available.  See 
http://www.tompatterson.com/VAC/MHonArc/2005_02/msg00084.php for an example 
of this type of message.

The daily digests are archived at: 
http://www.tompatterson.com/Digests/Digestlist.html.  They are unedited and 
contain all of the same information that is sent out to digest zubscribers 
each day.

Again, for those who do not know, I also archive, (and have done so for 
years), the daily postings from what is now the Airstream List on Yahoo. 
These postings are archived just as are the Vintage Airstream list postings, 
but without the digests, and may be found at: 
http://www.tompatterson.com/AirstreamList/MHonArc/maillist.php.

All of this information, and more, is contained in a searchable database on 
the website.  You can access the database and conduct searches by clicking 
on "Search Site" at the home page at http://www.tompatterson.com.  The 
database is updated weekly and results from using the site search engine are 
much more complete than results from using an outside search engine.  The 
content on the site is "huge"!  There are now over 65,000 pages in the 
website database and this count does not include any pictures or program 
files that reside on the site.  The count has been growing since the website 
began in 1998.

The website itself resides on a dedicated server, which means that it is the 
only website on the hard drive of a individual personal computer (known as a 
server) at the hosting company.  The hosting company does own a large number 
of other servers.  Having the site on a dedicated server allows me access to 
all of the programs that make up the operating system of the server.  I 
found this to be necessary in order to customize the e-mail list, and other, 
programs.  To reduce the cost to me though, the size of the hard drive I use 
is small - only six gb.  That is the primary reason for editing the 
individual messages that are archived on the site.  I do try to make them 
more readable, but primarily, I don't want to use up all of the space for 
which I am paying, on the hard drive.

This is likely more than you ever wanted to know about some of the how and 
why way that the list works.  However, I do hope that it will be helpful. 
Contact me if you have any questions.

-Tom