Saturday was sunny, 85 degrees, an unseasonably warm autumn day here
in Utah. Today we barely hit 50, under dark, rainy skies, snow in the
hills above town. Quite a drastic change in a short time.
And some changes may be coming to Team.Net. Back in August I worked my
last day for the University of Utah. Thanks to some major budget problems
roughly half the full time facility staff of the School of Computing is no
longer employed there. That would include me. Drat.
So I'm looking at ways to put a few bucks in my pocket. Maintaining the
various Team.Net services isn't a full time job, but it does take a good
sized chuck of my time. I've been happy to just do it, and be glad with
whatever donations I can scrounge up during the fund drives once or twice
a year to cover out of pocket costs, hardware replacement and such.
If you've been a member for a while, you may remember that the usual
fund raising comes along in one or both of April and October. I won't be
doing an official fund drive this month, I imagine folks have been getting
tired of various hurricane relief pleas hitting them from all sides over
recent weeks. Of course, if you want to throw some dollars my way I won't
complain - check out http://www.team.net/donate.html for details. You might
have noticed the appearence of that link in the trailer lines below.
But rather than outright begging, there may be advertising of various
forms involved, in the hopes I can get companies to cough up some coin
to pay for your attention. Each list message may have some advertising
blurb included, various web pages may have some commercials attached,
we shall see. There could be a new twist to how it all works. Basic list
subscriptions will still be free, but you have to put up with the ads.
Getting commercial-free mailings could require an annual subscription
of a dollar or two a month. And there may be some other subscription-only
services Team.Net could provide.
Nothing certain yet, still kicking around various ideas, but be forewarned
there could be changes coming along soon to a mailing list near you.
mjb.
|