Firstly, I wish to apologise to those who tried to use my FolkChat Acitve list last night. It was chaotic alhtough after a while, I did find some of the effects of the time lag quite ammusing.

This is the first time that this room has experinced problems and I think the poblem was caused by ICQ crashing on my computer as after the Radio Show, I rebooted my PC and restarted the list and a few of us were able to chat without any problems. ICQ should be able to handle it but the circumstances when the crash occured were unusual as I had 3 chat rooms open not to mention other messages, flicking backwards and forwards to check if a name had appered on the server list...

As I think that the chrash was caused by so much going on, in the future I will not be sending out any invites to join in or answering any help questions during the show. Until Max is able to offer a Mudcat chat facility (can't come quickly enough!) this room will be avilable during the radio show and I will leave it to others to decide if they want to join in and if so how to get in.

I keep the Active List open as much as possible every day of the week. Talking in EST which seems to be the Mudcat time, I start the server shortly after my free internet time starts at 1pm and shut down when I go to bed which in normaly around 1am. There will be short intervals during that period when the service is not available. This is because I have a 3hr time limit on any one conection to the internet. On the day of the Mudcat Radio, I re start my internet connection around 11:30 am in the hope of keeping the room open for the whole show and to cater for some chat after as well as catering for those who might want to come in a little early.

I will happily assist anybody who has problems with FolkChat at any time other than the Mudcat Radio period but I am not prepared to risk a similar crash during the show. Also, one of the benifits of the Active List is that people can let themselves in and out of the room as and when they please and, selfishly, I don't want to be missing the show because somebody does not know how to get in. If in doubt about using it, try it on another day to learn and find out if there are any problems.

Jon