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Hi all,

        I've  been  lurking  on  this  list since mid-September.  And,
     since I find some useful "gems" among the many posts to this  fo-
     rum, I thought I might come out of hiding for a moment and intro-
     duce myself so that folks would know who I am when I  do  finally
     interact with the list.

        My name is Bill Parrette.  I pronounce the last name like bar-
     rette (a bar or clasp for holding a girl's hair in place) with  a
     'P.'   I  live  in  a suburb of Cincinnati, OH called Westchester
     where I am employed as a UNIX trainer and course developer.  In a
     class  I  was  teaching back in September, one of my students no-
     ticed my tremors and told me about this  mailing  list.   So,  my
     thanks go out to Carl McLeod (and, indirectly, his wife who is on
     this list) for telling me how to get subscribed.

        I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease some three years ago.
     But,  since  I  get rather verbose, long-winded, and wordy when I
     write (a condition not uncommon among teachers and published  au-
     thors  :-) ), instead of taking up a lot of bandwidth in this fo-
     rum and wasting people's time who  are  not  interested,  let  me
     point  you to a Web-page I have written that tells a little of my
     disease history:

               http://w3.one.net/~wap/wapTremorStory.html

        As a brief aside, I have been on the 'Net for about six years.
     I  have  been  on *many* mailing lists in that time and, in fact,
     administer a list myself.  And, what I want to  pass  on  to  the
     folks  here  is  that  the Parkinson's mailing list "issues" that
     people have been discussing recently -- list volume, list police,
     on-topic  posting, etc. -- are subjects that come up *everywhere*
     (even on the list I administer) all of the time.  So, as far as I
     can  tell,  this  list  is  very typical in its 'Net personality.
     (BTW, my list is configured to automatically send replies to  the
     original  sender instead of the list.  IMHO, this is the best way
     to configure a mailing list.)

        And, (in no way am I flaming, or intending to be  mean-spirit-
     ed,  or  saying  anything  bad about anybody or anything on-list)
     here is my Internet 'Netiquette promise to  my  fellow  list-mem-
     bers:

          * I will always post in plain ASCII text to the list --
            you will never see any HTML or MIME-encoded data in
            my posts.

          * I will never "quote" the entire text of a message I
            reply to on-list.  I will only include those portions
            of the original sender's post that are relevant to
            my reply and that give it context.

          * I will use the carriage-return frequently and
            guarantee that no lines in any message I send will
            be longer than 80 characters.

          * If the text of my reply heads off in a different
            direction than the  original post, I will change the
            "Subject: " header to reflect the change in subject.

          * If my post is not directly related to the list-topic,
            I will put "OFF TOPIC: " in the "Subject: " header.

          * I will not post any large files -- graphics, sounds,
            movies, whatever -- directly to the list

        FWIW  --  this is just how I do things.  Oh, and BTW, it is my
     opinion that everyone should subscribe to the digest  version  of
     the  list  at least once in their list-stay -- even if it is just
     for a day or two.  It is really eye-opening! ;-)

        Anyway, I'll go back into hiding now as I head on over  to  my
     list  to  try  to  extinguish  the last few embers of some recent
     flame-wars.  But, I will be listening and  assimilating  some  of
     the  useful  information  that  I find on the Parkinson's mailing
     list.  Thank you for reading and, as I am often wont  to  say  in
     closing, may you always grok in fullness ...


Bill--
  ...who keeps emotionally active by catering to his favorite neurosis.
                                                       __  _-==-=_,-.
.___. William A. ....._..._ .......7177 Heritage Drive/--`' \_O-O.--< ---+
| _ \__ _ _ _ _ _ ___| |_| |_ ___ .Westchester........`--'\ \   <___/.   |
|  _/ _` | '_| '_/ -_)  _|  _/ -_).OH 45069-4012......|    \ \\   " /    |
|_| \__,_|_| |_| \___|\__|\__\___|.513/779-0780.......|     >=\\_/`<  42?|
..... http://w3.one.net/~wap/ .... [log in to unmask] .......+--- /= |  \_/|----+
                                                         _/=== \___/

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