So. It's been 40 years since I've been initiated as a brother into the Delta Chi Fraternity. I occasionally get the question, "You're not the typical fraternity type. Why did you join one?"

( The short answer: I wanted brothers. )

Recently, fraternities and sororities have come under fire, especially when one of them makes the news as a result of an alcohol abuse incident, a sexual abuse incident, or a hazing incident. We've been fighting that battle since I first joined, and we're still fighting it now, 40 years later.

Years ago, when I was in college, I fell in with a group of people who had the common interest of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The group was called "Don't Panic!", and were working on their version for the school's low-power AM radio station, WRUB. (It broadcast its signal via power-line communication, using the electrical system in the dormitories.)

Who was in the group? John Feinberg, Larry Fein, Ron Odde, Don Henk, Tim O'Brien, and a few others whose names I can't remember. We all had copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Radio Scripts, and used that book as our script.

The first show of theirs that I was involved in was the final episode, "Fit The Twelfth". They had previously broadcast the preceding eleven parts. In this episode, we crowded into the studio. There was a section where a man was feeding his cat, whom the man calld "The Lord". And several of us were meowing like cats.

The decision was made to re-record an episode (with higher quality), and the fourth episode -- "Fit the Fourth"-- was selected. I played the part of "The BBC Radiophonic Workshop", in which my role was to create sound effects for the program. With the help of my trusty old Minimoog, I came up with sounds for the demolition beams, and the sounds of a spaceship door opening and closing. When it came time to record, we all crowded into the studio, and it went well.

We never recorded the other episodes, and I wonder what happened to the tapes of the show. I wouldn't mind having a copy for posterity. I know I still have the patch diagrams for the sounds.

Many years ago, in my college days, I was exposed to the Usenet, a store-and-forward bulletin board system that ran on computers running Unix. Machines would call each other and transmit the day's posts. The groups were named and partitioned by subject matter. Needless to say, I spent many hours reading the Usenet news, or netnews for short. I'm quite sure my grades suffered as a result of my addiction to netnews. It wasn't fun quitting "cold turkey" after May 1988. But it was the right thing to do, and I haven't looked back.

I saved all the articles from the Star Trek and Doctor Who news groups onto a reel of magnetic tape, in groups of 50 articles. I just went to the spool directory, typed "more * > filename", and compressed the omnibus file.

( The remaining steps. )