Chuck's Newsletter - 13th Anniversary

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CHUCK'S NEWSLETTER ™ 2000

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This is (usually) about Mental Health (well, there is a link to my MindStar.org).

13th ANNIVERSARY ISSUE 11/7/2000 - #26	CN 26
Since 1987 - 14 Years Ahead of Its Time* (13 down, 1 to go - uh-oh)	(From Chuck's Newsletter* #13, 1-89:) According to M-TV, there is a magazine article that sees that by the next millennium everyone will have their own newsletter. Well, we've been around since 1987....The next millennium is the year 2001. You don't need a calculator to know that this newsletter is 14 years ahead of its time....
Circulation: unknown as yet on Internet and no copies by mail +Please read, post and/or circulate+ copyright Š 2000 acexpress los angeles, ACE UnLtd. Corp. CRAZY U.S.A. ™

Intro
I’m down to my last hand-written note of what must have been 30 or more notes of things to do - "4 Days till CN13th". So here goes --

On 11/7/87 I started Chuck’s Newsletter and by the time I finish this one, G-d help me and maybe He won’t (explanation soon) on 11/7/2000, you’ll be reading this 13^th anniversary issue - my abbreviation is CN 13^thor since its the 26^th issue, CN26. Pretty easy to see I’ve averaged 2 issues a year (26 divided by 13).

Oh good, I can cross out the note.

Brief history
On Sat. 11/7/87, I bought 4 new Firestone tires (when they were safe), and sped in my ex-Porsche 924 (on a day that it ran) to my new job to catch up on my work. I can’t remember the work I did that day, but I wound up writing the 1^st issue of Chuck’s Newsletter. It was a personal rag to a few friends and relatives. Well, here's how I described it in the 7th anniversary issue. (By the way, "7" is significant to me, comes up a lot of times just in this issue, and there's more to it.)--

INTRO

Seven years ago today, 11/7/87, I started a newsletter and called it, since all of the possible other names were taken, Chuck's Newsletter. It started out literally as a letter home, telling 10 friends and relatives how I was doing. In later issues I started to tell about my experiences in the insane mental health system but I was reluctant to use my name so I said "By XXX". People I knew all knew it was me but, fortunately, people I worked with didn't. I was often asked what the focus of the newsletter was. It seemed that everyone wanted to know the focus. I finally decided that the only possible focus could be mental health, what it's like to be diagnosed mentally ill, or as we say in San Diego, being a "mental health client" or just plain "client". I used my real name and told about personal experiences.

Sometimes Chuck's Newsletter came out monthly and some people told me I would lapse into mental illness if I did it that often. I always laughed at this and said, "No, not me." Well, I did slow down to quarterly. Now it's every two years!! but I plan to return to a monthly or quarterly format, depending on the rigors of law school that I just started. (Western State University School of Law, 4 years, expected graduation date, May 1998.) [Ed. note, it didn't happen.]

If you are receiving this by mail and have before, it's been 4 years since your last issue, #19. Tempis fugit when you're having fun. Issue #20 departed from the usual newsletter format and was entirely one article on my 60 days in County Mental Health, for which I had 60 pages of hand-written notes. Everyone always asked me why I was writing everything down. I said that it's because I'm a writer and that's what I do. I only issued about 20 copies of #20, CMH Diary, to people at a panel that I was on in 1992 on quality assurance in hospitals. Now, here's Chuck's Newsletter #21. I'm averaging 3 issues a year, so that ain't bad.

Now back to Chuck's Newsletter #26.

Favorite fortune cookie fortune of the moment -
"Your charms have not gone unnoticed by all the angels."

Well, that’s a relief. Do they mean Roma Downey-type angels (without halos and wings) or Broadway-type angels (investors)? In any case, it’s nice to be noticed. Preferably by the latter kind.

(I used to start my newsletters with a song clip - but now fortune cookies???)

My shrink asked me yesterday if I had any problems, and I exclaimed, "Yes, Fred, I’m going fxxking blind and I can’t afford the laser surgery!" Much of the time, like now while I’m typing, I wear these extremely-magnifying glasses (2.75 diopters). I can see my screen OK but I think I’ll boost the font size from 10 to 12. Wow, that’s perfect. How big does it go - 72. Just 7 words fill my screen. Well, maybe when I’m blinder.

"I studied Milton till I went blind. Oh, you are a quick crowd."
--Bette Midler, Divine Madness

Now that that stuff is out of the way (and the damn spellcheck is going to tell me I just used "that" twice in a row), here’s my "main stuff" - AKA table of contents - it coincidentally came out to 7 items. My favorites are #1, My 1st DotTV Home Page and #2, O'MyG-d! And that was before I wrote the expanded #7, Election Results - TV v. Internet (and many election developments you may not have heard).

Table of Contents

My 1^st Dot TV Home Page

O'MyG-d - 10 Days with G-d
"Very amusing" - Fred Berger, M.D. (mien shrink)
(he laughed 10 times in 1.3 pages)

My Web Sites 5-9…- highlights of my notes

53^rd Birthday

Life and Death in the Board & Care - Not Kidding

World Events - Millennia, Olympics, World Series, GLD, Halloween

Election Results - TV v. Internet (and many election developments you may not have heard)

My Web Sites 5-9……- highlights of my notes

I created a document originally called "Web5" because it was about my 5th website. As I added sites it became "WebSites 5-9..." These are some highlights.

Web5… will be my 5^th website - with a difference--it will make money. Stat - $19B or more ecommerce sales in 2000.

I rapidly chose & registered xxxxxxx.tv (have to censor it till launch) on 11-1 after spending (4) months thinking of & searching about 80 names. This was day after 1^st seeing xxxxxxxxxx.com site -I’m not ripping off, I’m being evolutionary.The webcam idea came to me only about 2-3 days before. Getting .tv for $50 is a bargain vs.the .com being auctioned for $3300-$5k. The other .tv is such because the .com was taken. Note - survey after you register a .tv name has how many sites do you own, smallest choice was 1-5, it goes up and up. So you're expected to own more than one site.

How each will make money---all will have banners & stores as appro. Banner ads typically bring in $20/thousand or 2 cents per hit on your site.

Specific possible income sources for some of my sites include -

publishing - banner, CN store - t-shirts etc., vehicle for selling book

webcams - cameras etc.

training - sale of training services

Research on shopping -- searching consumer electronics, video conferencing - gives reference to big stores - products retail - current hot products promoted on search engines, at site both lower priced and higher priced products at a good discount

To heed - TV commercial for my SAP.com shows your dot com name being scraped off door - says in phase 2 need to learn it's more important to manage your co. than promote it

Steps to take -"Like shooting fish…"
Complete budget of income and expenses for generic site. Then prioritize which of others to register. Expense will be registering, hosting, shopping cart & credit card processing where applicable…email.

Could be $445 1^st yr.!!! [Update - some charge around $800/mo.!!! for hosting & ecommerce support.]

Production hardware & software - Flash, Real/QT production software…FTP

[Much of the document is my notes on researching registering, hosting, etc.]--omitted from here

a priority is getting acceptance of .tv—use samples on main site (www.tv)

After budget accepted:

Register & obtain hosting…

Register LLC corp.

Ads - develop banner campaigns- e.g., keywords

Do time line & implement. E.g., time-delay to get search engines operational.

Back to Contents

53^rd Birthday
I turned 53 on 10/18/00. I remember when I was a child I subtracted my 1947 birthday from 2000 and got 53. Well. I'm there now. Not a milestone like 50 was. Went to see Almost Famous and had dinner at the Creole buffet. Was planning to give myself a birthday gift of a class at The Learning Annex on getting a writing agent.

Saw my former board and care manager, Beth, 2 weeks later. She didn't like my new beard, said I looked 75 with it and looked 45 without it. I said I thought I looked 65 with it. She asked me if I remembered when she trimmed my beard before - I said that wasn't a beard but very long sideburns. Now that I'm self-employed and not a slave to job interviews, I can have a beard or whatever I want.

Back to Contents

Life and Death in the Board & Care - Not Kidding
10 years ago I had to change the section heading in Chuck's Newsletter from "Life in the Board & Care" to "Life & Death in the Board & Care" because there were deaths to report all the time. Here's the story of 2 Teresa's, one who died 10 years ago and one just a few months ago.

suicide
I've known too many people who have committed suicide, including 2 best friends, and now 2 women whom I've barely met named Teresa. Of course, depressed people are far more likely to commit suicide and die at a much younger age than the so-called normal population. The statistics are awesome.	DEATHS... TERRI FRANTZ, 21, Case Aide, Intensive Case Management Pilot Program. She was a client who was hired to work with clients. She apparently committed suicide by overdosing on her prescription medicine. She had made an articulate speech in Sacramento against the budget cuts. She had just won an acting trophy. After her death, one of her fellow board members said, "She really acted and fooled us all. Her award for acting was well-founded--she kept it all from us." I only met Terri once. She was very friendly and said "Hi" every time I walked by. Although I didn't know her, her death affected me for several days. I kept thinking about her and the other suicides whom I've known. The list is too long. Well, one is too many. *Chuck's Newsletter* #19, 9/22/1990	TERESA (last name unknown), 40s, resident of my board & care. All I know about her was that she would sit on the couch in the smoking area and read. Maybe twice she talked to me in the month she was here, just to offer gum or candy. The last 2 weeks I noticed that she had 2-liters of Diet Pepsi and Little Debbie fudge bars, the same 2 snacks I usually had. I thought of talking to her, but she was always silent, keeping to herself. Then one day someone said she had died the night before. My 1st guess was suicide. Then they said it was out front. I figured she had jumped in front of a car. A couple weeks later someone was talking about her and said she laid down in the K-Mart parking lot. Someone said she had a teenage kid. This is all I know about her.

Back to Contents

World Events - Millennia, Olympics, World Series, GLD, Halloween
We had a great celebration of the Millennium/2000 at the board & care - shocked me that they let us drink beer. I feel that the real Millennium is 2001 - hint: the 1st day is 01-01-01.

The Olympics was great but I got burned out from watching 7 or 8 hours a day. In 1996 I ran about 1/2 mile with the Olympic torch.

I've always been for the Yankees in the World Series since I was 7 or 8, except when they're playing my home team.

I worked for 5 months as a Volunteer Webmaster for the Benjamin Franklin Institute, specializing in Internet Audio & Telephony. I wrote up about 24 critiques on software products on these topics and then created web pages for each. The project was linked to Franklin's website for their annual Global Learn Day (GLD), a virtual 24-hour trip around the world highlighting uses of technology and distance education. I was promoted from Webmaster to Guru.

Halloween is the holiday of my birth month. I didn’t have a Halloween costume but thought of going as the lead of a favorite musical, The Phantom of the Opera, which I finally saw last year. That reminds me, when I did my work for Franklin, I set up my own radio station on the web, Chuck's Perpetual Radio Station. It runs on its own. My playlist includes songs from Phantom. The song lyrics are for viewing simultaneously.

Back to Contents

1. Election Results - TV v. Internet - Intro
In the last election, I started using the Internet as a potentially faster source of results than TV. Actually I used both TV and Internet to see which was faster. Now that the date of this Chuck's Newsletter 13th Anniversary issue coincides with the day of the Gore-Bush Presidential election, I plan to add some insights here on Tuesday night. But first:

I've heard tons of election jokes during this campaign, but the one that sticks is this one. A black comedian on Conan O’Brien (11/2/00) (forgot his name - hey, NBC, who vas that schvartze?) reported that he recently said to an audience of wealthy Democratic donors, "It’s good to see that Joe Lieberman is on the ticket, the multi-cultural thing and all…which goes to prove what New York women have known for a long time. It takes a Jew to lick Bush."

I voted absentee about 5 days before the election I think for the 1st time. What a relief to be able to say "so what! I already voted" to the myriad of election ads.

2. The Election: Internet v. TV
(and many election developments you may not have heard)
Above I said I was planning to add some details Tuesday night. Now, 9 days later, the election was going to last at least 11 days. I kept track of a lot of news items and comedy about the election that you probably didn't hear or read. If you're going to this link before it's all over, please come back for further updates.

3. Enough on the 2000 election. The best election for me was the 1996 - and I just recently finished 4 years writing Chuck's Newsletter 25 about my experiences - "I was incapacitated at the 1996 Republican National Convention".

Back to Contents

And now my standard outro -
PEACE - LOVE - CIAO - BYE

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