Reminds me of when I fixed the hex values in the joke e-mail about the mysterious letters that appeared when you heated your Windows XP CD in the microwave. I made them actually have the ASCII codes for the letters that were supposedly there, since the author hadn't taken the time to get it right.

But converting binary to ASCII on-the-fly in one's head--Man, that IS geeky. I would only get through a few letters before my head hurt too much to retain the letters I'd already translated.

BTW, were the CR and the LF really necessary?

Cheater. ;)

Well, folks, I didn't think we would get a response so quickly, but here it is. This is the response I got from ASA concerning notification of a change in the bat lists and other changes:


Mike,

Thanks again for the suggestion.

Sending an E-Mail to all would be the best avenue, however, we do not have all the umpires addresses and the way that E-Mails change it would be difficult to keep up with that many changes.

To that end, here is what we will do to facilitate this information being sent out in a timely fashion. When a bat is added to the Non-Approved list, an E-Mail will be sent out to all council members, JO commissioners and all Local Association UIC's. This will happen as soon as the bat goes on the list. An announcement will also be posted on the front page of the Web Site at the same time.

Hopefully this will be able to get the word out in a quicker and more accurate manner.

That's great news, Mike, and I appreciate your efforts on this. It's a step in the right direction.

I've added everyone to the distribution list who asked to be included. If you guys later change your minds, just send me a PM or an email, and I'll make sure to delete it off the list.

I'm also talking with ASA about it, and we'll just see where it goes.

I've made a few changes to how things will work on the automated list. Previously, I asked users to send a PM so I can manually add their email addresses to a list that was, well, just a small text file that the script goes through.

However, I know I can do it better! The server on which the script is running is a Mac OS X server with other cool features... like a listserv!

Being in IT myself, I'm always concerned about privacy and users' rights. Manually adding and deleting addresses from a list, to me, just doesn't provide people the "warm fuzzies" that if they choose to unsubscribe from the list, it will be handled in a timely manner. I may go out of town or out on vacation, and a removal request would sit there until I returned. However, a listserv can handle it for me, allowing the recipients to unsubscribe immediately at any time without my intervention.

I'm still working the kinks out and setting up all of the privacy settings, but I believe I've gotten them largely taken care of.

For those who wish to subscribe to the list, you may do so manually by going to http://mail.whispers.org/mailman/listinfo/batlist

From there, you can subscribe as well as unsubscribe. You may also unsubscribe by sending an email to the listserv with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

For those of you who contacted me earlier wishing to be added to the notifications, I'll add you to the listserv, unless you have any objections or concerns. :)

If OKC wants something similar, I'll be happy to set this up for them as well for free (well, just buy the equipment, my plane ticket and put me up for a night). It's easy to set up, and it requires minimal intervention on their part. :)

Oh btw... I also added, among others, Dutch language capabilities for those Dutch-speaking umpires who might wish to subscribe. ;)

No, seriously. I did. If there are any other language requests (Swedish, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, etc.), let me know. I'll do my best to accommodate you.

Dave you're a certified geek, and I admire that (that takes a lot for me to say that to a Mac guy!). :D

Thanks for the work you've done on this but I know you enjoyed doing it just as much. We IT folks are kind of strange that way. :)

Ain't that the truth!

Living here in the shadows of the construction cranes at Microsoft, I am confused. What is a Mac? Unix? These cryptic sounding "other languages?"

Just kidding. I know a guy in CA with a Mac.

And thanks for the batlist.

You know Mac in CA? ;)

Not only do I know Mac, I also know his knife.

Looks like the ASA website is down, so my script won't work. Anyone know who to call to tell them they need to fix the server? :)

No one. It was planned maintenance, that voting members and others were given advance notice about.

Well, I had a little incident with my server earlier. The hard drive started to fail on it (it's only 18 months old, damn it!), so I had to replace the drive. However, I believe I've gotten the automatic notifications back up and running.

If you've asked me to include you on the notifications, you should be back on the list. However, I had to do a little testing of the notification mechanism on my end, so if you got a notification a few minutes ago that the list has changed, please disregard. My apologies.

If anyone else wants to subscribe, feel free to let me know, or go to the site below. :)

http://softball.whispers.org/mailman/listinfo/batlist