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"When you figure out what we're doing tonight, just mail it to Prout." - Any one of us at some point.
An unusually high percentage of Prout Table were either termed Computer Geeks or were well on their way to becoming one. As a result, some of us decided that it'd be a lot easier to communicate if we all e-mailed each other. Since BGNet, our campus e-mail system, was finally somewhat stable I initiated the task of creating the famous Prout Table mailing list: prout-table@listproc.bgsu.edu.
Yes, but I'm biased. It was my idea, I think.
Every once in a while, I'd miss the ever-important lunch time gathering. Consequently, I was out of the loop as far as plans for the evening/weekend go--not to mention all the day-to-day gossip and humor that I'd miss. As with almost every problem I encounter, I knew there was a technical solution...
It didn't take long before the mailing list moved from being a novelty to a necessity. As time went on, semesters passed, schedules changed, people moved off campus, and the lunch crowd dwindled. This made it harder than ever to keep in touch with each other. Nowadays, the mailing list really is our primary means of communicating with each other. It's fast, cheap, easy, and usually reaches everyone.
Funny story.
Early on in the days of the mailing list, we had a few problems. Some idiot at another location (school, company, whatever...) decided that he'd be funny and subscribe another mailing list to ours. The end result being that any message sent to prout-table was also sent to some other, totally unrelated mailing list which was composed of people who didn't know they were going to be getting our e-mail.
Now, you need to understand how little experience Kacky had with e-mail at this point: VERY LITTLE. It took quite a bit of nagging from Jer before she finally broke down and decided to post a message to us.
So, she sends off her message--the message she thought was going to Prout Table and only Prout Table. Like I said, there was this idiot who had done something stupid, so her message also went to those unsuspecting people that she'll probably never meet.
Well, Kristin gets the e-mail silence award. During her whole time at BGSU, she posted less than 1 message to our mailing list. Now that she's at OSU, she has already posted one message in her first year of membership on the list. Wow.
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Updated: January 10th, 1996