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History of the IFSJA webpage & FSJ-List
In the Beginning...
In late 1995, we were members of the fine JEEP-L list. Kevin Highsmith, our first administrator, had noticed those of us who were always bragging, er, talking, about our SJs, and he came up with the idea of a separate list just for us. It started with, oh, six or so of us, with direct mailings. We grew to about thirteen members, then Kevin got us a listserv.
Our First Listserv
Our first listserv was on Zynet, which worked fine for about a month.
We had digest archives, a smooth running list, and a lovely web site, thanks
to Kevin Highsmith. Then they changed our software to Majordomo.
The First Listserv, Part Two
About a month or two into our first listserv, someone at Zynet decided to
change our software from Listserv to Majordomo. Our digest mode didn't work,
our archives were gone, the list was down half the time, then right about the
time it all got straightened out.....
Zynet Dies
Just about the time we all got used to Majordomo, Kevin told us that he had
gotten married! Congrats and all that, we wished him. Then he disappeared.
Guess the wifey told him he couldn't come out and play with us anymore...
I guess it was a couple of weeks after Kevin's disappearance, that the
listserver went down. For a long time. We kinda sorta automatically went
into Emergency Holographic Substitute Listserv mode, which entailed going back
to the direct mailings. At this time, we still weren't very big, so it wasn't
too bad. We weren't getting any response at all from Kevin (to this day none
of us have heard from him at all), and the web site was starting to stagnate
(Kevin had previously been changing things almost daily, adding, tweaking,
improving, etc.), and some of us were beginning to realize that perhaps he had
lost interest in us, so one of us snagged everything, captured it, modified
it, stole it, and transferred it to its present site. Approximately 95 percent
of the way through snagging stuff, Zynet went down. For about six months!
So, we had our web site almost intact, and we still had our direct
mailing procedure, whilst we searched and searched and searched for a home
for our mailing list. While all this was going on, the list was still growing,
even without a viable link to the web site through Yahoo, etc. With more
members came a longer address list, which soon grew into....
The Address List From Hell!
Well, as time went on, and we collected more and more members, the address
list got longer.... and longer... and longer.... We were getting duplicate
, triplicate, even quadruplicate messages from some members, many many many
bounced messages from disappeared people, folks who had changed addresses,
bad addresses, etc. It got so bad that some of us couldn't send messages
because our SMTP server choked on the length of the address list! We were
indeed desperate... we were considering List-o-cide, even... I had been
pestering my sysadmin for months, but I must say, to his credit, that he really
really is a very busy man, we were begging anybody and everybody to try to get
us a listserver! Then, one day, someone new showed up on the list...
Wagoneer Sam
Along came Mr. Sam Lewis, now forever known as Wagoneer Sam. He was only on
the list a day or two, near as we can figure, when he says, "Oh, y'all need
a listserv? Let me see what I can do". Well, we'd been hearing promises for
months, so we weren't too excited. But.... a matter of HOURS later, we were
up and running! We had originally been Jeep-Fullsize@zynet.com, which worked
out rather well on the web site, but Sam named us
FSJ-List@listserver.tehabi.com. Try and try as we might, it just didn't look
right on the web site, so....
The IFSJA is Born!
Welp, here we are... hope y'all like the changes!
The Offroad Web Site Gets an FSJ Presence
Ah, we've finally been noticed... John Meister, as of about the 10th
of January 1997, has become the editor of the
FSJ section of the Offroad Web Site! It should be up and running around
the end of January. Come check out John's handiwork!
New England Chapter of IFSJA Formed!
Now we have ten members and here are the e-mail addresses. This is as of 13 March 1997. So, here are the Charter Members
of the New England Chapter of the IFSJA:
The Migration to Off-Road.Com
Ed. Note: The History page is now getting a
long overdue update (Oct. 25, 1997), so some of this is from memory. Jeff
At the end of July, things were running along smoothly with the Tehabi
server (except for the fact that it liked to take the weekends off) when
it died a horrible death. We were listless... _again_.
It was our own John Meister that saved us this time, by getting the list
set up on Off-Road.Com.
The list was only off-line for a few days and the first digest was issued
on August 6, 1997.
The Migration to Off-Road.Com continues
Tuesday, 24 March 1998, the IFSJA web site, due to the sale of our previous ISP, moved lock, stock, and barrel to Off-Road.com's server. Also, as of this date, the IFSJA Webmaster Staff is also now responsible for Off-Road.com's Full Size Jeep Section.
The Migration to Off-Road.Com Ends, a New Era for the IFSJA webpage
July 2000
Some big changes have happend since this page was last updated for both the IFSJA webpage and the FSJ-List. Lets see... where to start.
I guess the first place is to start is that Doc, who ran this webpage, the FSJ-List, and ORC's FSJ section for a long time
is passed the torch. Around May or June of 1999 (cant even remember exactly anymore), I (Adam Zeimet) took over web page
duties and Len Sulliven took over FSJ-List administration duties. Doc continued to edit ORC's FSJ section. Outside of a move
of the IFSJA page between ORC servers, things stayed pretty quiet until Feburary of 2000 when everything blew up. I am not going to
go into specifics on what exactly happend, but the results were a group of angry people left the FSJ-List and started a new
Full Size Jeep mailing list called 1FSJ over on Egroups. Len Sullivan quit as FSJ-List administrator and Doc took the reigns
as list admin once more. This takes us up to now (July 2000). The IFSJA webpage is on the move once again (hopefully for good
this time!). While the FSJ-List is remaining at ORC, the IFSJA webpage is moving to a new server and it now finally has its own
domain name (www.ifsja.org)! All donated by a member of the Colorado Full Size Jeep Association (now the largest regional chapter with a
mailing list of its own). Along with the move off of Off-Road.com, the webpage recieved an overhaul, a body off restoration
if you will. Well... I think that about catches us up... for now.
Goodbye OffRoad.com, the FSJ-List packs up and moves
January 2001
This update is a little past due (I'm writing it in October). The IFSJA/FSJ-List community has broken all ties
to OffRoad.com. Doc pulled up stakes and moved the entire FSJ-List over to the Yahoo! groups (formerly eGroups). This
created a mess for a few days as people that used to be on digest got bumped to individual emails but the dust has now settled
and the Yahoo! list server seems to be working out very well so far. The FSJ-List now has a slew of moderators: Dennis 'Doc' Fariello,
JC Jones, Landen Schooler, Len Sullivan, and me, Adam Zeimet.
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