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Too bad Burma Shave signs and cyberspace never existed in the same time dimension. There has got to be a good one out there for things like data compression, uuencoded data, downloading and other cyberwackiness. Folks, this is part an AOL problem and part a digest problem - I know others of you experience it too, I hear your screams occasionally and I almost hate to broach the subject once again because I have no good answer to the dilemma but, is there a brighter person out there somewhere in ParkieLand (or perhaps we can all group think together and levitate this problem about 3 feet off the table and out the door) who can think of a way to organize our informational traffic in a more predictable and size compatible way?. Case in point - last digest I received and the John Cottington "listserv archives" information. John, no criticism intended - you are one of the luminaries on this list and I am very appreciative of ALL the information you send out. It is very informative; it is needed - keep up the good work! My problem is more in the digest packaging of this in the stream of things. It is kind of like being in a fast food restaurant's drive thru and the car that is 2 cars ahead of you orders 7,000 cheeseburgers. As you can imagine, the predictability of service to queued customers breaks down a little at this point. Does Burger King want that 7000 cheeseburger order? You're double damn right they do! Do I want John Cottington's info - damn straight! I'd trade all the cheeseburgers in Burger King's empire and the next 10,000 acres of rain forest they will slash and burn to produce it to keep getting John's info. But, accepting it in the stream of the more mundane data messages sends AOL into downloading overtime, occasionally blows my old DOS word processor out of the water when I try to make it eat something bigger than its head, etc etc etc. Ok, so kidding aside, Any good ways to deal with this? Barbara, Parkie DungeonMaster, let the soft rain of your good advice fall down upon us like Rom Carpathian's mantle of poetry ... deliver us from data infarction. How about sending heavy duty missives out on Saturday or Sunday only? Would the digest processor fold them into large packets of 1 or 2 or 3 of these substantially sized messages and thus not break the continuity of the steady stream of smaller data packettes during the week?. Or, Barbara, could these large packages of data go out to the list as ScienceGrams or some other separately flagged and separately sent out data? I remain, the Rat in your midst, D T Anderson (or shaken well in a blender by a seasoned Parkie like me .......Sand Rodent)