Send Me Mail

Oops... My email volume has increased so much that it's cutting into my REAL work. Which I can't have! These web pages went from nothing to over 100,000 hits a month and the email tracked up with it. So I'm having to pull my work email address from here. To those individuals who can find my work address, I still welcome your questions. My work email is checked daily, and my personal email is checked about once a week. My personal home email address is webspace at calweb.com . Sorry it isn't a link or a cut'n'paste address, but listing it this way cuts down on robot email collectors. Meanwhile, read the next two paragraphs.

Are you using NT?
Everything I do (programs, batch files, and scripts) is created under Win95. That means it might work under NT. And it might not! If you have an NT batch question, you might want to send it to Joseph Hayes (JHayes at cbny.com). He's way better at NT than I am. Joseph has very kindly volunteered his time to help out other NT batch programmers. I, on the other hand, have an NT server at home that I only use to watch TV on (gasp!) because I got tired of having to reboot the TV under Win95 every two weeks. So if I'm pressed to come up with a batch solution that works under Win95 and NT (like you already have working NT code and you need help translating to Win9x), I at least have access to both platforms for testing. Other than that, I'm likely to give you Win95 answers to your NT questions. Kind of a waste of your time.

Before you send me mail...
If you have a code problem, I ask that you start at my home page and navigate your way down. I'm hoping a search engine sent you to one of my pages and all you need is to start from the top to find the page that really holds your answer. At least try it! Anyway... Send me whatever files you have (whatever you can) along with a description of what it is you are trying to accomplish. Try to tell me your overall goal as well as the approach you are trying to take. If you get error messages, try to include a screen dump. Lastly, if you copied (you know, copy and paste?) code off one of my web pages and it doesn't work right, go back and make sure you don't have any spaces at the ends of your lines. Spaces may be invisible, but they cause problems!

My philosophy of giving away code
      None of my code is copyrighted. That means you can use it anywhere, any time, guilt-free.  It also means you can recompile any of my stuff, take my name off it, sell it, and keep all the money. I do things this way because people in business have to be very careful not to use the copyrighted work of others. And I give my code away (by posting it on the Internet) expecting it to be used.
      I consider my code to be in the same ballpark as the sample code Microsoft is always giving away. Well, if I'm in the ballpark, maybe Microsoft is on the pitcher's mound and I'm up in the cheap seats eating a hot dog. But I'm still in the ballpark. It's just simple code that anybody could write. It's only real value is that it provides a good "this works" starting point.
      Sheesh! I've actually seen people copyright a single line of code! Like from now on, nobody can use the DIR command in a batch file because some fool put a copyright on it? As if! These kind of people believe every idea they have is an original concept made of gold. Seeing these people reminds me not to end up becoming a fat-head like them.
      Sure, I could copyright my code, then say it's freely redistributable. Lots of people do. Or I could GPL it all. But the simple fact is that all of these are (as broad as they are) still restrictions. And I have no intention of hunting down or prosecuting people who might violate these simple restrictions. I have better things to do with my time. People who don't intend to fight shouldn't draw lines in the sand.