Thursday, November 2, 2000 – 7:00 PM at Ocean Enterprises. Guest Speaker is Bill Wilson of the California Wreck Divers. He will really be here this time.

Please note there will be no December meeting.

I am looking at the list of members who have signed up for the Bahama's trip and I must say it is impressive. We are currently up to about 16 people …that's the spirit!

Last Friday night Dave, Brian and I went out for an evening dive at the cove. Conditions were fair and the water was about 63 degrees …all the usual night time inhabitants were out with large quantities of lobsters smacking into us as we skimmed across the bottom.

After the dive we all felt great and it occurred to all of us, at the same moment, that we NEED to be doing this more often. We will begin scheduling after work night dives, whether it be for lobster or looks. I hope to see more of you join us.

Happy Diving! – Mark Clausen

Saturday Nov 4, 8:00am – Meet at La Jolla Cove to dive Boomers. Breakfast to follow the dive. Back up sites will be Hospital Point or Marine Room. Conditions at The Cove have been consistently good so get out there and dive.

We'll plan our next lobster dive at the meeting.

We don't have any club dives scheduled at the moment. Let Mark know if you're interested in diving the USS Hogan.

The Lois Ann offers club members a discount on many open boat trips. Due to heavy demand, they may not be able to offer the discount on all their trips. For more information, call 800/201-4381 or check the Lois Ann schedule on the next page or at http://www.loisann.com.

The Bahamas -

When: January 20-27, 2001

Where: Island Resort and Golf Club, Freeport, Grand Bahama Island

Why: Because we need it

Cost: Lodging: we currently have 4, 2-bedroom condos. Based on quad occupancy, lodging is $140.00 per person for the week. The condos are completely equipped with full kitchens, pool on site, hourly bus service to Xanadu Beach, walking distance to Princess Casino, golf, shopping and public transit. Each room has a queen bed and 2 twins, as well as a convertible couch if you really want to pack them in.

Diving: although we are still shopping, diving runs approximately 35.00 per single tank dive, shark dive is $85.00, wreck dive(2 tank) $75.00, open ocean dolphin dive $150.00. We have enough divers for our own boat.

Airfare: currently we have a quote for $481.00 but they are changing constantly. We are flying via Fort Lauderdale instead of Miami. Even at that price, with standard 2 tank diving on 5 days, the total cost comes to roughly $960.00.

Chris Rink found a couple of interesting Bahamas web sites. Check out http://www.bahamasdiving.com and http://www.caribbeanmag.com

The Christmas party will be at Shaun McMahon's, Saturday, December 9, at 5:00pm. We'll send out details out in a separate flyer.

Ocean Enterprises is sponsoring the underwater pumpkin carving contest at La Jolla Shores. This has been a lot of fun in the past and I'm sure we're in for another good time.

The rules are simple. You clean out your pumpkin and bring it to the shores. You have to take your pumpkin out, and carve it underwater with a dive knife. No kitchen implements allowed. The lifeguards judge the carved pumpkins, and prizes awarded. Everyone wins something.

OE serves BBQ hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch. The contest costs$10/person, $15 at the beach, or $5 for non-divers. It's a good fun time for all. We'll probably have a few OE people going. Let me know if you need a buddy and I'll try to get you hooked up with someone.

Quick tips: Gut your pumpkin before you dive. Draw the design the night before. Swim out until the water bubbles, and you find chunks of pumpkin floating in the water, then descend. Don't use your Blackie Colins Special; a small dive knife is best. Try not to stick your buddy. Towing them in with a stream of blood behind you is embarrassing, and puts a damper on your future diving activities.

Thanks to everyone who attended an outstanding OES lunch at Onami. Good company, and good food are always a winning combination.

Mark, Brian Kinley and I were treated to some outstanding conditions for the lobster dive on the 20th. Neither Brian or I had fishing licenses, so we went sightseeing out of La Jolla Cove instead. There were no waves, and only a little surge. We saw lots of lobsters, especially in the traps. We also saw some funny little crabs that nobody can seem to identify. Surprisingly, we found neither sharks or morays.

Formal incorporation is our first winter project. We'll be incorporating as a California nonprofit. We'll be adding elections to our busy social calendar. We'll keep you posted with our progress.

As we proceed with our incorporation project, we need 3 or 4 members to act as our initial board of directors. This would entail signing the incorporation papers and approving our initial by-laws. We also need a couple more people to be the officers. If you are interested in helping on any of this effort, please contact Mark, or myself.

OES members can receive discounts on regular OE classes. Members receive $30 off the regular OE price for specialty classes.

Subscriptions to Rodale's Scuba Diving Magazine are available through the club for only $10. See Mark Clausen for details.

Club T-shirts are still available for $13.00.

I've mostly talked about web sites in this column. This is only part of that world we know as the Internet. There are a variety of other ways to communicate via the net, and I will get into those in the coming months. This month's topic is e-mail.

Electronic mail, or e-mail, is one of the most significant means of communication available on the Internet. It has become so pervasive that the US Postal service was required to reduce its revenue estimates to account for all the first class letters that are now traveling the wires instead of the mails.

E-mail has a lot of advantages over paper mail or phone:

• It's faster because you don't need to print it, stamp it, then mail it. You just send it.
• You can send it when you want to.
• The recipient can read it when they want to.
• When you reply to a message, you can include the message with quotes. This allows you to intersperse your responses or comments, and maintain a coherent context.
• You can send the same message to many people with minimal additional effort. [This can actually become a problem, also known as SPAM]
• You can keep a file of both the messages and replies for historical purposes.

I live by e-mail. Those who know me well, and aren't ashamed to admit it, will tell you that it's the best way to get a message to me. If you send me an e-mail, chances are good that I will get it within 48 hours, if not 48 minutes.

[OK, one disclaimer – @Home is having pernicious troubles with their e-mail servers. It's pretty sad because this is one facility which should work with near-total reliability. If you see people wearing bags on their heads at sporting events, you'll know they work for @Home.]

E-mail is one of the simplest services to implement. When you go to send an e-mail, your program contacts another computer known as a mailserver. It hands your message off to the mailserver, does some amount of housekeeping, and declares itself finished with that e-mail. The mailserver takes responsibility for delivering the message to its final destination. This simplicity offers reliability that you won't find in other types of Internet communications. [Serious propellor heads will point out that there are other ways of sending mail, but this is the predominant method.]

The ability to send messages to multiple recipients has a multitude of uses. I use it for our dive club announcements and newsletters. By coupling a forwarding order containing multiple recipients to a mail account, you get an e-mail list.

E-mail lists have been around since before there was an Internet. They used to be one of the few ways a group of people could exchange information with more than one other person. I belong to the MG list which has been around, in various forms, for 12 years.

Mailing lists offer some of the same functions as a newsgroup, but they have a different feel. You find more sense of community in a mailing list than you will ever get in a newsgroup. Flame wars [interminable, childish arguments] are a rarity on mailing lists.

We are very fortunate to have a new mailing list for San Diego SCUBA diving. John Moore of Divebums, one of my favorite web sites, has started a mailing list for SD diving. It's very low traffic and very little noise. He's been kind enough to pass on news of squid runs, and other items of interest to San Diego divers.

I recommend that anyone interested in local diving should send an e-mail at comment@divebums.com and ask him to add you to the mailing list.

Renewal rates are $20 single; $30 for a family. Send your renewal to Mark Clausen; 1862 Willow Way; Vista, CA 92083.

Surf and diving conditions: 619/221-8824

Club events: Mark Clausen at 760/727-6181 or e-mail at mark@oceanexplorers.org.

Newsletter Editor - Dave Ambrose at 858/679-7817 or e-mail stargazer1@cox.net.

SDCD Hotline 619/687-1492

Ocean Enterprises 858/565-6054

Date	Time	Destination	# Tanks
28-Oct	7am-5pm	Coronado Islands	4
29-Oct	7-11am	Yukon	2
29-Oct	11am-5pm	Local Dive Sites (TBA)	2
5-Nov	7am-1:00pm	1 Yukon/2 Kelp dives	3
11-Nov	11:30am-4pm	Yukon	2
12-Nov	7am-5pm	Coronado Islands	4
19-Nov	7-11am	Yukon	2
19-Nov	11am-4pm	Yukon	2
24-Nov	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3
26-Nov	7-11am	Yukon	2
26-Nov	11am-4pm	Yukon/Kelp beds	2
2-Dec	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3
3-Dec	7am-5pm	Coronado Islands	4
9-Dec	7am-5pm	Coronado Islands	4
10-Dec	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3
16-Dec	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3
17-Dec	7am-5pm	Coronado Islands	4
23-Dec	7am-5pm	Coronado Islands	4
24-Dec	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3
26-Dec	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3
28-Dec	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3
30-Dec	7am-5pm	Coronado Islands	4
31-Dec	8am-2pm	Wreck Alley/Kelp beds	3