Regarding our cancelation of this upcoming year's calendar, I've received
about 50 private responses. I can't begin to answer them all, so let me
answer a few of the more common comments in place of them all.

One person wrote:

> Calendar shmalendar!  Wirt, work comes first.  The calendars have been
>  great.  And just the bragging I get to do about them coming completely from
>  a 3000/Image DB is part of the beauty of it (it just drives the UNIX
goobers
>  and the NT geeks crazy that a "proprietary/legacy" system can do such
>  magic).

The driving the "UNIX goobers crazy" is a good part of the reason that we
print the calendars :-). Don't let anyone kid you, we enjoy making these
calendars as much as anyone who receives them and we deeply regret not having
the time.

A second person wrote:

>  You said:
>
>  We're trying to finish up three
>  separate new products before the end of the year and because of that, we're
>  not going to be able to make the calendars that a lot of you might have
been
>  expecting.
>
> I hope at least one of them is Van Gogh mode for QCTerm? ;-)

Yes. That's absolutely correct. A part of the holdup with van Gogh has been
deciding what sort of economic model we're going to use for van Gogh. We've
done that now, so it should be full speed ahead. We very much want to get the
forms mode of van Gogh working and in the hands of developers before too much
of the new year has elapsed.

(BTW, as you can guess, it's the developers who would much rather see van
Gogh get completed than receive a calendar, and from their perspective,
that's perfectly reasonable).



A third person wrote:

> But I wonder, perhaps it might be possible to put a PostScript file of a
>  calendar on your web site that people could download, customize then print
>  themselves? I know I'd be happy to customize and print one for all the
>  people in my department.

Yes, we'd be pleased to do that. It would require on your part owning or
having access to a large-format, PostScript-capable printer, but I would be
pleased to create both PostScript and PDF versions of the calendar that can
be edited by you to substitute in whatever name you would wish on the
calendar.


Finally, another person wrote:

> I was saddened to read your message in HP3000-L about the calendar
> situation.  Your calendar has occupied prime wall space in my office
> for several years and has drawn comments from several visitors.  I'm not
> sure I can survive a 2002 without an AICS calendar gracing my office wall.
> Have we talked about a bribe??? <G>

Actually, we may give serious consideration to that, letting people pay the
$16 it costs us to make each calendar. The purpose of doing that isn't to
raise money but just cut the list down this year (and this year only) to
those who really would like to get a calendar. I would expect that not more
than a hundred people would respond to that offer. We could print that many
calendars with just a few days' effort.

Wirt Atmar

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