December dichasium

We had a new sort of meeting last night! Lauren and Jason were at the usual venue (Fuddruckers) while Cheryl (that's me!) helmed the stay-at-homes and set up an iChat room (in iChat: File > Go to Chat Room...). Lauren reports that while they didn't have the Clearwire modem last night, he and Jason set up some local Bonjour networks and there was chatting to be had -- though they couldn't meet up with the stay-at-homes. But I did hear that Pat got a good dinner, so that's what counts ;-) Just before 7 Cheryl set up a Chat Room and three cheers for our chatters who popped by for a good long time: Larry, Leslie, Brad, Charlie, Bogie, and Gerry. It was a wild and wooly time (at least from my point of view as I'd not used the iChat Chat Room before) and much fun. We learned that the room is a text-only sort of thing and we experimented with sending files (which you can't do in a chat room) so now that's settled. We had some simultaneous one-to-one chats and Leslie and I had a grand time with a video chat during the meeting, with Larry joining us for a bit to see what it was like to have a 3-person video, and then we were delighted to see Gerry join us toward the end of the time. We were online until just after 8:30. We floated the idea that either we could do this during our usual venue meetings or even have iChat get-togethers at other times, to keep in touch with our BoiseMacs members and friends who can't make it to the monthly meetings. Sounds great to me!