General List announcements...to all members.

Earlier this summer Bill (List Mom) expressed a desire to slow down
his lifestyle and become more hands-off on the list he created and
watched over for the last several years.

In that time we have seen the membership go from a few hundred to over
10,000. How many are still active is unknown but it's that way with
any list. The purpose and direction of the list has always been clear
and it remains focused on the person building or wanting to build
their own CNC machine or retrofit a machine to use for CNC.

For the last year I have been doing moderator duty and mostly keeping
the spammers and drive-by marketing guys at bay. The list runs pretty
good without a lot of heavy handed moderation of members.

Recently Bill elected to appoint me as a co-owner of the list and to
spend less time on-line and more time seeing the world. I consider
that a great honor and responsibility. He will continue to monitor
the list as time permits and I am sure he will make his presence known.

I can't say enough about how much Bill has done for the Home Shop CNC
crowd and I feel a deep sense of gratitude to him for years of effort.
CCED was the first list I found that encouraged me to move forward
with my dream of building a CNC plasma table (finished in 2001) and
later other CNC machines. It truly has spawned a new hobby and with
it a new industry. This is not to downplay the other pioneers in
hardware, software and information and the other lists out there, but
Bill gave us a place to meet up and exchange ideas.

Moving forward I want to enforce the original intent of the list and
to state that while there may be some changes in the base rules it
will be in the context of attracting the new builders/dreamers. To
the seasoned list members that contribute on a daily basis, I extend a
big THANK YOU! It's your experience and willingness to help the
newby's that adds value to the list.

As one of my first chores I appointed a new moderator to help. He is
a long time contributor: Andy Warner. Welcome Andy to the
(sometimes) thankless job of keeping the list clean of worthless content.

The other moderators and owners are still on board.

Join me in wishing Bill a happy and safe retirement. Feel free to
post your kudos for Bill but any issues you have with management need
to be done to the owners/moderators off list.

Lets make the next year a banner one and welcome in lots of new
members, and encourage the lurkers to participate and to get out their
tools and BUILD THAT MACHINE (:-)

Best regards
Tom Caudle
List Step-Mom