Episode: 3002
Title: HPR3002: World of Commodore 2019 Episode 8: Vote of thanks
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3002/hpr3002.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 14:45:37

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 32002 for Tuesday 4 February 2020.
Today's show is entitled World of Commodore 2019 Episode 8, Vote of Thanks.
It is hosted by Paul Quirk and is about 19 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summer is.
This is the final episode of the World of Commodore 2019 mini-series.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello good listeners of Hacker Public Radio.
Paul Quirk here and welcome to my eighth and final episode of my World of Commodore mini-series.
Hopefully this series has gotten you through the worst part of winter if you live in the northern hemisphere
or the worst part of summer if you live in the southern hemisphere.
In this episode you'll get to hear the closing ceremonies of World of Commodore 2019
as Golan takes the lead and talks about the people that have made World of Commodore possible.
And so with no further ado I present to you World of Commodore Vote of Thanks.
This is a goal in the sports for dinner tonight.
Keep coming in, there's plenty of room, stand, sit up to someone's lap.
Whatever you like.
Don't.
I need you to come up front first.
You're working the camera for now so you can hang out there.
But if you want to come up I'd appreciate it because you need to be up here.
Did I better see? Switch this through wide angle.
Oh my goodness.
Check your bounce, bounce, bounce.
Oh this is really structurally sound.
Alright so I need some people if I need you.
And I need you.
Yeah I'm looking at you and you.
What the hell do I do?
That's why I need you up here.
Oh you are, oh you know I need you.
And you better get up here I need you.
You volunteer just by looking at you.
I need you for sure.
I absolutely need you.
You man you need to come and then oh if you're not up here I need to say a party.
Doug what are you doing Dr.
Get your ass up here.
You serving up here and I can phone around man.
I know I'm going shit.
Come on.
Anybody else if you're important enough to be up here you know we are.
Come on.
You, you of Santa get up here.
You, yes and your wife better be with you.
Am I missing anybody?
So one angle lens but it's not that one.
This is for people who are here.
What do I miss?
I miss anybody who's here tonight.
Are you waving at me Marlon?
No we're getting.
Thanks for coming to the world of Commodore 2019.
If you have a good time my name is Colin.
Is not my name is Stewart.
My email will be addressed on the website.
Anyway this has been a great party and I wanted to let everyone know that this is
You only have, we're missing, come on now.
Come on now, yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay, where was it?
So this is our, this is actually T-Pux 40th
Continuous Year of Operation.
Woo!
It's not a regular one, I don't do this, though.
Yeah.
And that is a smaller birthday is our 50th
Continuous Year of World of Commodore.
Woo!
All right.
I feel weird right now.
That's okay.
All right.
I'd like to clap for myself.
Let's do this.
Okay, so what's this all about?
Well, so T-Pux was a, sort of 1979,
a gentleman in Doug Lyman, and our
yearly departed friend Jim Butterfield
had this brilliant idea that they're
Lyman, Lyman Doug, sorry.
Have this brilliant idea to get some
light-minded folks together who enjoy
fiddling with computers.
And somewhere between 1,500,000
friends showed up.
And was the largest user's group in the
world.
And it's the longest continuously
operating user's group in the world.
Anyway, the club grew to massive, massive
size.
It was a beyond comprehension, really.
And there have been hundreds, maybe
thousands of volunteers over the years.
Some of whom are here today.
And the reason I wanted to bring them up in
single mode is because we would not be
here today as a club.
We're not for their hard work.
And especially not here at this new,
if you will, world of Commodore,
which was a brain child of several
of the people up here.
This is one of them.
Here's another one.
And so I wanted to give them thanks.
There's another gentleman.
There's a big round of applause.
He was also, I'll also point out that a lot
of these volunteers have served on the board
of directors, which means they're the
people that do basically everything.
So once you're driven to the organization,
and they gave countless hours to, you know,
the meetings possible.
They don't want to organize events like this.
So I'm going to just go around and tell you
who these folks are.
And then you can scream the applause they deserve.
We have Santa Claus over here.
This is David Russey.
Yay!
A lot of people wouldn't know what the internet was
if they hadn't started on a BBS run by this guy.
Nice.
The standing next to him is our dear friend Doug.
One of the hardest working, most diligent people I've
ever met in my life and whose I can't,
everybody here deserves equal amounts of a claim.
But seriously, I'm Santa on the shoulder of giants.
And here's one of them.
This is, this is Ernie Charney.
Standing next to him is one of our, we actually slim down
from our official board of directors to a smaller
manager group as we, you know,
we didn't need so many organizers because the club
was as large as we slimed down.
So we have a very small group with us now that
managed the club.
Tell them the truth.
Were you right out of their members?
Yeah.
At some point, our membership started aging
and then the curve started going this direction.
So there's been a decline.
But we missed them all.
But one of our current, we call ourselves the management
committee.
One of our current members and tireless work went into
making today possible.
Is this general right here?
Big round of applause for Stuart Russell, please.
Applause.
Now this hippie here with the long hair.
He deserves no introduction.
He has been absolutely instrumental over the last few
years in taking the club from something that really wasn't
going to be able to continue financially and writing
the ship, helping us sort of reduce things.
We had storage lockers and things that we couldn't,
you know, we're paying more for the storage locker
than the items were worth.
And I can't begin to explain how hard he's worked.
And the amount of abuse that he got for the work
that he did.
But he kept going.
In fact, last year he retired as our president.
But he still was talked into staying on the management
committee.
Ian Cahun, please.
Applause.
Now this guy doesn't want to be up here because he doesn't
like this sort of thing.
He'll tell you that's all it's all to you.
You may not be able to get him on the phone or by email.
If a rumor is of his demise and you may be wanting to order
super snapshots or 1581 kits, he will get back to you.
He's about 16 years behind his email.
But he's working hard to serve you people.
Jump along.
Applause.
Thank you, Ian.
Thank you, Ian Cahun.
It's a free work this year and you're all going to spend
all of your disposable income on his business.
Because this man, like I'm sort of abused on this way,
but he drives that truck filled with all that software and
much stuff to every commoner show.
It's inconceivable what this guy does to support this
community.
So this is the man.
This is Joe.
You're going through exploding brake lines.
Yeah.
I'm going to scare you.
Who are the brake lines?
Yeah.
Get him aside to tell you some of the crap that he's been
through to keep this community alive.
It's just.
And then we have this guy.
Now this guy is another one of these giants that I talked about
when I was standing on the shoulders of giants in Ernie.
This is another guy who's without his.
I can't.
I can't even conceive of the amount of work he's been doing.
I've only been sort of running this blank show for a year.
This guy did it for so many years.
I've lost track.
And again, this is another guy that we would not be here
without this guy.
This is Tom Lough.
And he was the president and.
I don't know.
You've got a board member longer and probably some people
have been alive.
I'm going to applaud for this guy.
Now here's a cat.
Some of you might know.
The ever strong spirit never gets bummed out.
Never has a negative word to say.
I complain about everything.
And I'm sure half of you know that because he's taking my views.
This guy is the counter.
The opposite.
Always happy.
And the amount of effort he puts into organizing the monthly shows.
If you think this is difficult, he's got to do like what?
Ten of these a year basically never complains.
Leave blingless.
Now standing next to him is a fellow who during the lean and dark years stood up and said,
hey, this can't go away.
Another one of those guys that just decided I'm going to carry as much of a weight as I can
and continues to do so, helping us out as friends.
He's been there all the time when I personally and a bride have other things I can't.
I have no way to describe my love for this guy.
This is Emil.
You know I'm the legendist here.
Thank you.
Now next to him we have the quietest, shyest, most gentleman or human being on earth.
I'm standing in front of another guy who was a president of the club who struggled to keep things alive
and organized world of commoners and God knows what else he's done.
Including driving hours to come to his meetings and the CD.
Oh my God.
Talk about leaving with the, okay.
So T-Pug spent years accumulating a massive archive of software, public domain software.
Just fantastic stuff.
People all over the world would order discs.
We'd send them out and things.
Discs experience bit rot.
They go pot.
They're gone.
And with it would go the library and largely the legacy of this club.
Where they're not a couple of guys.
I mentioned to you earlier.
This is another one who said, you know what?
We're going to do something.
We're going to save this library.
These guys spend a lot of time and a lot of effort.
They've taken a software library and they've combined the whole thing onto a CD.
So it's 20 bucks and we still have some for sale.
It's everything.
There's software for Victor 20s.
For pets.
I mean, it's incredible.
Even look cool.
So our thanks go to Greg VanLair for his efforts right there.
More giants, more shoulders.
Okay, so this is where it gets really dark.
We're in the very dark years.
The club was almost ready to go under because we just things were,
it's difficult to manage a big organization.
Especially when it's transitioning to a smaller organization.
We could have gone broke.
The club would have dissolved.
There would have been nothing.
But a long came a person of incredible spirit, incredible intellect,
and incredible character.
And basically saved our collective bacon by writing the ship.
It's happened a few times.
This is one of the people and I give.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you very much.
This is Ian McIntosh, folks.
Now we got a two-fer.
You got a two-fer here.
So we have a very long time member.
I mean, from the beginning, who has done,
he's another one of those guys that there's never anything he says no to.
Can you do that?
We're going to do an inventory of our, of our, of the items in our locker.
In sub-zero temperatures.
Our fingers are turning blue.
Who's going to show up?
It's snowing.
Always the first guy through the door.
I was the last guy out the door.
I can't begin to tell you how much he's done for the club.
And what's more interesting is that his wife,
for reasons I can't even give you enough things and kudos for this.
But has decided to help us.
Year after year, she comes out.
Volunteers has done more than I've done, quite frankly.
You saw this morning when you were registering.
You've seen her at the table telling merchandise every year,
every world of commoners.
She's there.
So, a random applause for the both of them.
We have Caroline Williams.
Now there are lots of other people.
There are lots of other people who have helped out over the year
and done things for the club that either aren't here because of
inability to make it or age or a variety of reasons.
And even though they're not here, they're with us in spirit.
And there's one particular thing I want to single out for a
random applause and our love.
Because, again, he's another gentleman who's been with us with us.
With whom we have been since the beginning.
There's really nothing I can say other than that.
He's been the present club.
He's managed the newsletter.
He's facilitates our premises where we hold our meetings.
He's just a wonderful human being who's just...
And even at his age, he still comes out and does everything he can for the club.
I wish he could have been here today, but he's not.
I wasn't able to.
So, again, in spirit, we thank him.
And his name is John Easton.
To put that in context, if you look at the March 1978 version of
T.O. Newsletter, John was the editor at that time.
And almost, so, I guess, a year ago?
Yeah.
40 years of...
That's how it all started.
I met John Easton when I was 15.
There's context.
And now, he is literally Santa Claus.
So, now, I've forgotten a few names, and I apologize to them all.
And I give them all thanks.
If you can remember me...
You forgot, I've a guy named Gola.
Yeah, he's a prick.
I've got a very useful one.
Well, occasionally, he can crack the whip.
Anyway, so, one last round of applause for all these people,
because God bless them all.
Thank you.
My mom just told me, by the way, that he hopes from equally large
We're equally large trying to pause at our 80th anniversary,
so you're going to want to put that in the L version.
It's 40 years from today.
There's one other guy that I just wanted to mention,
because he showed up early yesterday.
It took off work and came in early to help set everything up.
Unass just does this because it's the spirit of giving
and it's the kind of person he is.
Brian, why don't you just come up here and say, hey,
he doesn't like this sort of thing.
He's another one of these guys, doesn't he?
So yeah, this is the chair at your seat, man.
Okay, so I've run my mouth almost too long.
You can't have a birthday with the cakes for everybody.
So we bought some cake.
So what we're going to do, and I don't know how we're going to do this,
but we're going to volunteer one person, not me,
because I'm going to go to the Atari meeting up the hall to cut cake.
But yeah, if I don't, some have you guys want to just come up
and get cake and eat cake and whatever.
And what we're going to be doing is we're going to be screening
a great premiere of a great comment or documentary
in about half an hour.
So that gives you enough time to have your sugar rush and crash.
So I'm sure it won't be half asleep with the movie starts,
but anyway, so what we have up here are these,
let's see what we can do is fill them all over the floor.
We have these 40th anniversary cakes.
Ooh.
Ooh.
It looks better, but yeah, if you're looking for sugar rush,
you may bouncing off the walls.
So yes, we've got chocolate and vanilla, so everybody just,
once cake, just come on up and we'll work our way through this,
and who's good with a knife?
I've got it for you.
Seriously?
OK, long time member, and hey, cutting
volunteer, Paul Quark.
Woo.
Woo.
I've got to take the piano, people.
So yeah, this is Paul Quark, a pack of public radio.
That's OK.
Pack your public.
You want to give a quick plug?
Yeah.
Pack your public radio podcast, guys.
If you're into open source, community podcast,
hacker public radio, I would like to put a world of cometer
up there, and maybe bring some more people into the book.
Great.
Not sure who need a knife.
Yeah, we have a big knife and a spatula over here.
I know, it's sort of funny.
You have to see your tongue get comfortable.
This is going to be like 30 cows, but just we'll try and figure it out.
We're going to see the lines here here.
There you go.
There's the vanilla.
So hit your choice.
OK.
One line.
All right.
Oh, the line over here.
Whatever.
That was the mine.
I said I was going to start a line over here, and people would follow me.
Perfect.
That's great.
We're going to line up on the 10th of the group at the end.
And ask you to start this, man.
Good.
We'll call you.
It's a pretty good paper, man.
Just wait a little.
You have to research.
Yeah.
That's all you know about that.
Come on up.
Don't be shy.
Let's get this part in here.
That's what I'm going to line up on.
This was my favorite episode, because at the end of the day, it really is all about
the people.
I hope you enjoyed this mini-series of the world of Commodore as much as I enjoyed making
this podcast.
And hopefully, this will motivate some of you to come out to the next world of Commodore
if it happens.
I have some good news.
I've decided to contribute to Hacker Public Radio with a series of my own podcasts on topics
that interest me and hopefully you as well.
I'll start off my new series by talking about a hobby I've enjoyed for as long as I've
owned a computer.
And that is photography.
Until then, please drive safe and make sure to have fun.
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