And I guess we can use this area to discuss suggestions about which topics to create. Best to start fairly general. Maybe: motivation, advisor and committee hell, stats, OT?

Thanks a bunch, Amy -- I didn't realize how nmuch I relied on reading the board till it wasn't there.....

To post a message, you must first register. Just take the "Sign up" button. Use a Yahoo (or similar free account) address if you don't want to put in your real e-mail.

Amy, I know what a headache this must have been for you considering that you're in the midst of moving and all. Thanks for putting up with all the trouble! I'm not sure I like the new format, but that's only because it's new and unfamiliar...I'm sure I'll get used to it, and like you said, maybe even grow to love it. In any case, your new topics sound like a good start, but maybe there should be a category for on-topic posts that don't fall under the existing categories, like "miscellaneous" or "potpou ri" or something. Thanks to Terry for the support, and I don't want to sound unappreciative, but I feel like we've lost our home and we're living in a tent in a refugee camp!     -Tom

] feel like we've lost our home and we're living in a tent in a refugee camp Isn't it funny how a virtual space can get to feel so comfortable and homey? Glad you and Kristin made it over, and thanks for saying you;'re here.

Hey Tom, Amy and Kristin! Yay! We have a new home! I was having severe withdrawal symptoms all morning and afternoon! Yep it's different, but we'll get used to it. Home is where you hang your heart (and your banner!). Amy, good luck with the move... I know how crazy that can be - I've been back and forth across the country 2 times now and will do it all again in May 2000. Thanks for sacrificing your day to get us set up! -kharyssa-

Welcome home - ok I too am not so sure of the new space but we'll all get used to it. I just told Barb we are back - she and I have sent several emails to eachother today just to make contact with someone from PhinisheD! :) Update on my thesis - USPS still says it went to SF at 7:38 am on the 24th, wonder where it is. Oh well if my advisor doesn't get it by Monday am I'll send another copy (FedEx this time:)) Amy - thanks for taking care of us while you are busy moving! Its wonderful to have a home even if it is new! Chrissie

OK I am here. I guess this will seem less unfamiliar in a few days. Anyway, I had to go to work today and played yesterday. It is time for me to get organized and back on track. As soon as I do I will figure out a pact. Hope everyone ends up at this location without too much distress. Again, thanks to Amy for taking care of us! Mary Ann

Good good good good. Glad everybody's stopping by. Tip. Once you're registered, here's the URL you may want to bookmark: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/phinished/all/new It takes you to the front page, and shows only those topics to which messages have been posted since your last visit. You may see all messages posted in the last week (including those you already have seen) by taking the link so marked, http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/phinished/all/since/-7 and you can manually adjust the number of days by editing the URL to see the last two days (-2) and so on.

Hi, all! So glad to see that our conference is up and running. Thanks, Amy and Terry. As Chrissie said, I was going a little bonkers without you guys today. Gotta get back to work. Barb

Hey, everybody. I woulda been here earlier but we had a slight catastrophy at home. The waterline from the street main to our house broke and we've been dealing with that. It turns out the piping that goes through the house foundation is cracked and hubby dug the piping free while I transplanted plants. Not the way we'd planned on spending the evening. :-) Many thanks and gratitudes to Amy for giving up her Sunday and to Terry for setting up the refugee tents!! Rochelle

One more lost sheep! Sorry about your catastrophe, Rochelle. Hope everything is ack to normal.

Not quite yet - the water is turned off to the house but we have pitchers of water to drink and a partial bathtub full of water to let us flush the toilets. Hubby said this is our Y2K prep - we learned a lot of things about being without water. I said we should tell everyone we did it on purpose...LOL! Rochelle

Rochelle I had to chuckle about the water (not that your situation is funny!) We had a Y2K discussion panel at church last night and I told them I went a little nuts filtering water through our Brita filters and freezing it in gallon jugs (we drink a LOT of milk in our house). We have so many jugs of water in our freezer that I can't fit any FOOD in there. We'll be hungry but well hydrated. Hope the situation resolves soon. Once we went a week with no heat - in January - and I appreciate such small creature comforts. BTW the question that got the most attention last night was "What if the sewer system doesn't work and we can't flush our toilets?" I recommended building an outhouse (tongue in cheek, of course)

I made it! But I had difficulty getting here from the main page, after I had registered. I went to the Yap(py?) area, but I didn't know where to go from there. The format is a bit weird but change is always uncomfortable. I"m sure we'll adapt. Thanks Amy.

Welcome to the Spring, Phinishers! And the best of luck to your ventures!

Hi, I made it. As everyone has said already - thanks Amy for the hard work! i gues Rochelle's mad e us all think Y2K now. Hadn't thought about freezing water. But .. must think about backing up data (a bit more fanatically than usual) just in case. After lurking around the Phinished board for a couple of months I had just decided to pact since I'm now 'wallowing' in the luxury of concentrating on the thesis (instead of working as well), and .. new home. Well, I guess we'll all get used to it. See you on the pact board in the next few days once I've sorted out what I want to commit myself to. Maggie

Hi Maggie! Welcome to the Spring! Backup: Do a weekly backup of your work on Zip cartridges, and a daily on floppy disks. Also store one floppy and one cartridge securely off-site. If your PC ever causes you problems, be sure not to back up from the back-up media directly - go to a friends place, and create a copy of the backup. Work with this copy... This way you're safe in case your box eats up media... Or is virus-infected (check friends box first, too!)... I had severe hard disk troble this quarter, and found having Norton Utilities around can improve mood when in doodoo. It solved my problems, and cut my down-time really short. After all, you don't want to work on the hardware, but on your paper, right?

Thanks Alexander. You reminded me I really must get a zip drive. As usual the problem's finding the ���s. My backup is on about 20 floppies right now! Maggie

At least you have one... Keep one set offsite. Ask the other Spring folks about the web space at visto - 15 MB! Perhaps if you zip that stuff with WinZip and put it up there once a week? Let me tell you - I run a mag, and the day I lost (a) all my contacts addresses, (b) all articles in the queue, and (c) consequently my nerves wasn't the worst day. Much worse were the weeks I spent until I had everything recovered (and I had my data on two hard disks plus a Zip cartridge...). My biz related productivity was zero, as all I did for weeks was trying to fix my !&%$�-equipment.

I'm here. Thanks Amy for taking the time to move us while you're in a physical move as well! Thank you too Terri for agreeing to house us! I'm looking forward to exploring your site and saying hello to fellow phinishers. -Lynn

Anita mentioned having some trouble finding her way back here. I wish I could leave some crumbs, but the birds around Spring.net always foil those attempts, so here is a step-by-step way back. After you take the "Sign up" button (I made those buttons, BTW, three years ago, not the one that says "Spring," though) from within any topic, like this one, and after you complete the registration, about two screens worth, you'll be presented with a short page with two links: Log in and Welcome screen. Choose Log in. And you'll be prompted for the username and password you just registered for. Put them in, click OK, and Then you'll be taken to the welcome screen anyway. Take the link marked Conference index Find PhinisheD; it's at the exact bottom of the list, as the newest conference, and Click on the Add to hotlist link beside the entry for PhinisheD. (Actually, a shorter way would be just to take the link marked PhinisheD, but by adding the conference to your hotlist, you will have created a link to the PhinisheD conference on your welcome screen.) If you didn't just take the PhinisheD link, do so now, after that same screen listing hte conferences has loaded. And you're back. Doing it is much easier than reading about doing it. Pretty intuitive, really.

Amy, everytime I hit a button I see new, wonderful things popping up on the board? You're very, very busy! When ya' gonna have time to move? Does the skull and crossbones mean I can kill (aka delete) spam when it starts popping up? And the profiles are there! I mean here! This is getting cooler by the Reload. ~:0

Where's the skull and crossbones? I found the profiles. How neat! Amy, but you have moving to do! How *do* you find the time???

As it turns out, I have a sort-of welcome, yet frustrating reprieve. I had not yet accepted one job offer, and another old prospect has come back into the picture. So the packing stops until I have a start date. The situation is making me edgy, so I seem able to do little things -- you know, stuff that will take 20 minutes, but I can't keep my mind on anything very complex. Rochelle and Tom and I, as conference hosts, can see the skull and crossbones. I think it must be a new replacement for the kill button, which erases a topic. Tom, forgive my presumption in extending host privileges; it doesn't mean you have to exercise them, but you're such a handy sort. They didn't cut off the bios script -- I guess it isn't such a processor drain as the Webbbs script. Rochelle, just send you a 3+ meg file attachment.

Cool, thanks Amy. Guess I should tell everyone officially since I let the cat out of the bag in that earlier rant. Everyone, Amy's agreed to let me write the PhinisheD book we spoke about at length on the previous board. She and I are in the stages of archiving all the messages and then I'll start coding shortly. I've got a general outline created but want to spend a bit more time thinking about the purpose, point of view and such before soliciting comments from the PhinisheD gang. So...more on this ater! Rochelle

No need to apologize Amy...thanks for the vote of confidence. And thanks for calling me a "handy sort", which I take as a compliment of the highest order. Since you didn't swear me in, I'll swear myself in: I, Tom, promise to faithfully and judiciously uphold the spam-free character of PhinisheD to the best of my ability. There, now I'm sworn in.     -Tom

Tom I like you spirit and your oath! :) Amy, Tom and Rochelle - thanks so much for keeping us all together and spam free! Rochelle - good luck on the book! Chrissie

Finally found my little text entry box though I have been on board since yesterday. Thanks to Amy for keeping things going. I was surprised to log on after the weekend and find a new board. I panicked for a moment when it took a second for the new address to come up. Thanks to to Terri for providing a cyberspace for us. So glad you are all out there. Personally having an unproductive week so far. Will go pact and maybe things will improve. The thesis binder sounds interesting. Can't wait to get this comp done and giveit a try. Deb

I was having withdrawal sweats! Now, where is everyone??? -Rochelle

Me too, Rochelle. Glad the Spring is back online!     -Tom

Do we have to join a PhinisheD Anonymous group now???

For all you addicts out there... I have some space on Yahoo I set up as a similar board before I found Phinished. We can certainly use it in time of outage. The address is: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/graduatestudentssupportgroup Everyone could put this site in their favorites folder for the occasional downtime emergency. -k-

Ok, I'm back from the Yahoo site. Dizzy, anyone? :)

Any more lost sheep out there? I had a problem with one of the topics. I must have accidentally hit the "forget" button, making the topic not visible when I try to view "all new," but the Remember button seems to be sticking for me. You can view such forgotten topics by taking the Forgotten link, but then it shows you all messages in that topic. So, for anybody who might have done the same thing, there's a little bitty link, "N/f" (new forgotten) that will take you to just the new messages in a forgotten topic. Tom and Rochelle, you a so have a Freeze button; this locks up the topic for everybody. I don't think we'll ever need it.

Hey, Amy. Tom and I were debating what the difference is between the Retire button and the kill button. I found by testing a dummy topic that retire deletes the entire topic. So does kill delete the conference????? If so, I don't think I want that button anywhere near my speedy little clicker finger! -Rochelle

How's the move/job decision stuff going? Last update had everything on hold due to an old option coming back into the picture. Sooooo???? How are you and are you happy and when are you moving or what job are you taking and ...? :-) -Rochelle

I'm off line for a few days while visiting the in-laws. See you guys next week. -Rochelle

Hi All, I'm a little new to posting at PhinisheD and my degree in general but know they both will become very familiar. My main reason for writing today is in the hopes that some of you may be able to turn me in the direction of some additional funding. I just started my degree in Ed Tech at NYU. One week prior to starting my funding was cut, significantly. It forced me from full-time to part-time status and scrambling for some sort of job. Basically, I need info. Funding or Jobs would be greatly appreciated. Any ideas? Thanks, Chris

I've been using the "new" key function to be able to read unread messages. But today, after using the new function, and then going back to all the messages, I found some messages that I hadn't actually read! Did I do something wrong?

Hello people I'm back! I had a wonderful holiday with my hubby, and have started my new job. It's fun. It's research, but not at a university, it's in industry. I'm loving it. I won't be able to stop by much anymore (the working world seems to have less net access than school) but I just wanted to say best wishes to everyone. Good luck with the book project! This sounds great. I'll stop by again when I get the examiners reports for my PhD, that will probably be in December. Hopefully Christmas time I'll be able to proudly announce that I'm Dr Powagirl! Cheers, Powagirl

Hello, Powagirl! So good to hear that your holiday with hubby was wonderful and that you like your new job so well (good to know that there IS life after academia). Surely the examiners' reports will be favorable. We look forward to sharing more good news with you. Keep us posted. Barb

Hi all! I've finally broken my silence, after a rather hectic four weeks, and am back on the Phinished board, at least for a moment. Thanks again for all involved who have kindly given us a forum here. It looks a bit different, but I'm sure that we'll all adjust (if we haven't already) -- after all, flexibility is a key attribute for anyone who want to pursue graduate studies, with its constant changes and challenges. I may be an old "dog" (...purely in the figurative sense, or so I'd like to think... , but new tricks are not beyond me yet! Just a quick note to Mary, wherever you may be, about Thomas King at Guelph. If you're still out there in Phinished cyberspace, please e-mail me! Karen

Tom approached me last week about a web server he has at home, and it looks like we'll be able to use it for a temporary home, with our old software. Tom says it's possible there may be some problems with keeping it indefinately, and that he can't forsee some aspects of its reliability, but all in all I think it a preferable temp solution. At least we'll be with our familiar webbbs. So, when it's all ready, the way to get there will be via the old URL at crossmyt.com: http://crossmyt.com/~amyloo/cgi-bin/phinished/phin.cgi Or, if you're ever away from your bookmarks, just http://crossmy.com and there's a link to the board URL on the index page. We'll also make a link from the main page here, from Bluemarble and leave crumbs all over cyberspace. It's incrediblly generous of Tom to do this for us. Thanks so much, Tom.

That 2nd URL is http://crossmyt.com

Tom and Amy, What a contribution to the sanity of Phinished candidates everwhere. You are the best! Can't wait to try out the new site. Ellen

Aw, Amy...I'm blushing! Really, everyone, here's the story: My wife and I have a MediaOne broadband Internet connection at home, which is a faster connection than ordinary mortals should be allowed to have. I also happen to have a commercial-grade web server lying around just gathering dust (long story). I put two and two together and decided to offer my surplus resources to Amy for PhinisheD. The fact of the matter is that Amy is devoting a great deal of time and effort to getting the software all s t up, so the bulk of the credit should go to her. I merely supplied the empty vessel, and Amy is filling it with her special brand of magic. I owe Amy (and the rest of the folks at PhinisheD) a debt of gratitude for all the support I've gotten, and the least I can do to repay that debt is to let you all play with my toys! So thank YOU Amy for all of your hard work! You'll probably never know how many people have benefitted and will continue to benefit from your kindness.     -Tom

Amy and Tom-- Thank you so much! You are both very generous. (Thanks to Tom's wife, too.) Kind as the Spring folk have been, it'll be great to have a space that looks like our old home again. (I'm nearly weepy-eyed at the prospect. I love our Board!) Barb

I really appreciate Terry's letting us hang for a while. Now I'm ready to go home. Rochelle

Amy and all others, Well I did make it over here and had just started using this site. I posted a question and one response and then, a week later, you moved! I was amazed at how quickly I appreciated the support from everyone! I hope that I can be of assistance too! The last time a posted I was having a very big problem with my proposal. I had a fairly major topic and methodology breakthrough and am finishing up my proposal. Does not sound like a lot of progress, but feels like a lot of work! Thanks Amy and all who support this. I am glad that everyone is out there. Gary

Gary, Finishing up the proposal AND having a methodology breakthrough is huge. Good luck...it feel really good when you obtain those signatures on your proposal. Keep going! Ellen

Tom and Amy - Thank yo so much! And thanks to Terry here who let us hang out! But it will be good to be home again as Rochelle said (at least I think it was her!) Chrissie Gary - sounds like you have made some major progress! Congrats!

They seem to have gone to whereever they came from...