This is a combined reply to several posts.

V_R said:I'm always trying to recruit, but can't engage in any massive efforts, such as on the private brewing boards, for at least a couple more months, otherwise people become hostile because they consider it spam. Perhaps during the month of July would be good; shall we plan on another recruitment contest for that time?

Meanwhile, I have just posted the following recruitment message on Usernet groups -- rec.crafts.brewing, alt.beer.home-brewing, alt.homebrewing, rec.crafts.meadmaking, and rec.crafts.winemaking (I don't get much flak there):It will probably be helpful if any members will visit one or more of those groups to add their endorsements of the project.

Didactylos said:Well, 'D', my advice would be to take up homebrewing ... and then switch teams.

Fred said:A 'free' ad, as a charitable contribution, would be great. If an ad isn't possible, maybe a letter to the editor. I don't subscribe, so they probably won't take a request from me very seriously. I guess I should subscribe, but I get more brewing info on the Internet than I can adequately digest as it is.

Didactylos said:I agree wholeheartedly; medical research is MUCH more inportant than SETI.

Cheers, and happy crunching to all.

Bill Velek

dreamboat said:
Thanks, Rob. I found the thread and graciously wished them luck ... and also invited them to compete with us. I hope I was diplomatic enough, because I'm not going to try to steal any of their members. After all, HomeBrewers have got to stick together, ... right?

I'm also excited to announce that we posted a new record high in points yesterday -- 35,837 -- and our first time ever to reach 35 thousand. That advanced us another 7 places, IIRC. Maybe we can recruit enough members to reach 40k sometime in the next week or so, because I've just posted new announcements on the brewing usernet groups. That will usually help us pick up a few ... if the well isn't dry yet.

Edit: Hey, I just discovered that we picked up a member today. IT'S WORKING!!!

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Hi, Fred. Sorry for the slow reply, but I had active duty this week with the Army Reserves and a bunch of other stuff going on, too.

No one ever needs to apologize for what they contribute to WCG or this team. Every little bit helps, and you by far are our largest contributor anyway. Now, if anyone owes an apology, it might be me regarding your 'PS'. What Yahoo Group are you referring to? I own/moderate two groups -- one is for Brewing Equipment and the other is for this HomeBrewers Team. I just checked both, and don't have a record of your trying to join; maybe something went wrong on Yahoo's end. My BrewEquipt group currently has 377 members, and I really keep on top of it. The HomeBrewers group has just myself, which is cool. It's there mainly as an advertisement for our group here on WCG.

As for recruitment, I will try to visit the links you provided later today, if I have time. Re my posts on Usernet brewing groups, I think the well has, indeed, run dry. The one recruit since my posts was actually a member of WCG before those posts, and so he probably joined as a result of these forums.

By the way, I reworked the graphics on my sig, which you are welcome to copy or keep what you have. I decided I wanted to add an avatar to my sig, and there wasn't enough room without deleting an image. So, I deleted the bottom image and changed the top one to move the deleted text there, and then decided to change it a bit, too. Anyway, there's no need for all of our graphics to match exactly, but if you decide that you want to use it, the new image is at http://tinyurl.com/pktuc, and remember that you can drop the http:// portion in your sig file.

As for our team's performance, we've been off a bit for the past three days, but we are still moving up in rank -- and just passed the Seychelles team.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Nelsoc, I was not profaning anyone - your meddling is not appreciated.

FB

Fred, I know how you feel ... especially when that 'label' could leave a very bad impression. Without a clue as to what was edited, a reader is free to speculate and assume the worst or the best. I assume you probably used something fairly innocuous, like "hxll", and Nelsoc (apparently an admin whose primary mission is washing mouths with soap ) just did to you what he does to everyone else who uses even slightly off-color language. It's because of the 'kid friendly' rule that WCG has; I think it's a good idea to keep our forum clean, but it does seem to become a bit ridiculous at times. Whatever.

As for your wanting to get a domain name and set up a forum, there should be a number of variations of HomeBrewers available and suitable; e.g., "HomeBrewers-Grid-Team", "HomeBrewers-WCG", "HomeBrewers-DC" (for distributed computing, but some folks might confuse that for District of Columbia), or something like that. But do you think there are enough members who would use it? Hardly any of us ever post here. Whatever you decide is fine with me, and you'll have my support.

Cheers.

Bill Velek