Well, I guess it's time to break my silence somewhat.  Those whom have
been receiving the FML for a while might have noticed that I've been
exceptionally quiet lately :-)
 
On a personal note, just to bring some of you up to date, I now have
three fuzzies.  Slink, my ferret that had her esophagus accidentally
cut during surgery, finally died almost a year ago from resulting
complications.  She held on a long time, and died peacefully as she slept
beside me, so all in all I couldn't ask for much more.  I've had a varying
number of ferrets "boarding" since then, and just recently acquired two
permanent ones from someone who could no longer care for them.
 
Other than that, my life is just busy.  I'm trying to be rather involved
with animals and trying to keep up on the latest news of the ferret world.
I'm sure one day I'll move out to the country someplace (anyone have any
jobs ;-)?) but for now I'm still employed by CUNY.  Which leads me to...
 
 ... the future of the FML.  I think that *if* the FML readership would
like me to continue the list more or less as-is, I can do so for the
near to middle-term future.  As you know, CUNY does most of the distribution
of the FML anyhow, as well as handling most of the bounced mail.  In addition,
the software that does this also supports automatically sending a digest out
once a day, so I think people would hardly notice any changes.   I even
think I can make the future issues of the FML keyword-searchable if they
move over here. (I can't do that now due to slight incompatibilities with
Chris' digest format that I don't have time to address.)   Anyhow, it should
be up to the readers, I think, so other suggestions/proposals are welcome,
but if nothing more appropriate materializes at least there is no immediate
need for panic.
 
In response to the AOL subscriber voicing some security concerns in issue
921: Chris is correct.  The FML subscriber list is password-protected and
isn't available for review.  I don't know which AOL subscriber was the
target of this "security breach", but I invite him/her to contact me
privately should you feel I can be of any assistance.  What I *think*
might have happened is that someone simply read the personal profile
that ANY user can store about him/herself on AOL.  AOL used to create a
minimal personal profile for all subscribers and invite the subscriber
to add to it.  Lately the default is to not create them automatically,
but AOL subscribers are encouraged to do so.  In any event, sounds like
someone trying to make a quick dollar in a not particularly legitimate
way.  Reminds me of some car alarm company that was in the habit of leaving
their business card inside parked cars.  Neat scare tactic.
 
I've gone on long enough, except for two short notes.  First, hello to old
and new subscribers.  Secondly, I mentioned to Chris that I will act upon
any subscription/unsubscription requests while he is on vacation, so feel
free to contact me with any FML problems.
 
Bill
 
[Posted in FML issue 0923]