[fitsbits] New owner/moderator for

Dear friends of FITS,

I retired from NRAO four months ago, after 40 years on astronomy
payrolls. I still have a small office space at NRAO, and I still have
my account, but I am definitely in the process of
reducing my professional activity level, slowly but steadily.

I have operated the mailing list (exploder) for
the past 17 years. The time has come for me to begin transferring
that responsibility to someone else. I have asked Bill Pence to join
me as co-owner/co-moderator of fitsbits, and he has accepted. The
suffix line on traffic and on the web pages associated with fitsbits
now reads 'fitsbits list run by William.D.Pence at nasa.gov, dwells at
nrao.edu'.

I am grateful to Bill for his willingness to take on this duty.

Regards,
Don Wells

PS: The Mailman software which operates fitsbits was upgraded on
Sunday 10-19 (8 days ago). The new version 2.1.5 has new features
to assist with management of mailing lists. I am especially
pleased by a new button which enables bulk deletion of spam
traffic held for moderation. However, the moderation policies
associated with exploder--newsgroup gateways were changed in an
unfortunate way which allowed several pieces of spam traffic to
'leak' from sci.astro.fits to fitsbits unmoderated. The first
such traffic was titled '[fitsbits] RTGUI now has Scripting for
Telescope Automation, & Double Star catalogs' and dated 'Mon, 20
Sep 2004 18:54:05 GMT' (one week ago). The goal of my test
messages on Friday 10-24 was to develop a new combination of
configuration settings which would return fitsbits to the mode
of operation which it had with the previous version of Mailman.
Please report any problems with fitsbits to Bill and/or me.

--
Donald C. Wells Scientist (retired)
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
Charlottesville, Virginia USA +1-434-962-3363

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 10:56, Don Wells wrote:
Dear friends of FITS,

I retired from NRAO four months ago, after 40 years on astronomy
payrolls.

I am sure that I speak for everyone in my appreciation for all that Don
has done for FITS over the years.

Enjoy your retirement!

--
Stephen Walton
Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Cal State Northridge

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Stephen Walton wrote:

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 10:56, Don Wells wrote:
Dear friends of FITS,

I retired from NRAO four months ago, after 40 years on astronomy
payrolls.

I am sure that I speak for everyone in my appreciation for all that Don
has done for FITS over the years.


I'll second that! Enjoy the retirement, but we do hope to see you
around here and there.

- peter

Don,

Let me add my own words of appreciation, gratitude, and, yes,
congratulations. Your contributions, the nudging and poking, much of
it invisible to most of us, have made a world of difference to the
FITS world.
Thank you and enjoy your well-deserved retirement!

- Arnold

Don Wells wrote:
Dear friends of FITS,

I retired from NRAO four months ago, after 40 years on astronomy
payrolls. I still have a small office space at NRAO, and I still have
my account, but I am definitely in the process of
reducing my professional activity level, slowly but steadily.

...
--
Donald C. Wells Scientist (retired)
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
Charlottesville, Virginia USA +1-434-962-3363

_______________________________________________
fitsbits mailing list

http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arnold H. Rots Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory tel: +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67 fax: +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ditto from here. I'm one of the silent followers of fitsbits,
who knows how much you have contributed.

Mike Davis
now at:
Allen Telescope Array
Hat Creek Observatory

Arnold Rots wrote:

Don,

Let me add my own words of appreciation, gratitude, and, yes,
congratulations. Your contributions, the nudging and poking, much of
it invisible to most of us, have made a world of difference to the
FITS world.
Thank you and enjoy your well-deserved retirement!

- Arnold

Don Wells wrote:

Dear friends of FITS,

I retired from NRAO four months ago, after 40 years on astronomy
payrolls. I still have a small office space at NRAO, and I still have
my account, but I am definitely in the process of
reducing my professional activity level, slowly but steadily.

...
--
Donald C. Wells Scientist (retired)
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
Charlottesville, Virginia USA +1-434-962-3363

______________________________________________ _
fitsbits mailing list

http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arnold H. Rots Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory tel: +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67 fax: +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
fitsbits mailing list

http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits

On Monday 27 September 2004 19:56, Don Wells wrote:
I retired from NRAO four months ago, after 40 years on astronomy
payrolls.
Don,
Thank you for all you have done for FITS over the years. I have always
enjoyed working with you and hope we still can look forward to your
advice in many years to come. Astronomy have surely benefitted much
by your foresight in promoting a common data format.

Thanks,
Preben

On Mon 2004-09-27T13:56:34 -0400, Don Wells hath writ:
I retired from NRAO four months ago, after 40 years on astronomy
payrolls.

Beyond the lauds there does remain one hoop through which Don Wells
will have to jump with alacrity. With me Don is co-author of the FITS
MIME Internet-Draft which is now in a 4-week period of evaluation by
the Internet Engineering Steering Group. For full details, see
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/fits/mime/

There has been no reason so far to believe that the document will not
be approved and handed to the RFC-Editor to become an RFC.
The evaluation period will expire during ADASS. Some time after
that the RFC Editor will place the document into "Final Review",
also known as AUTH48. Both Don and I will have 48 hours to
respond to give approval to the final form.

Fortunately, I have Don's cell phone number 8-)

--
Steve Allen UCO/Lick Observatory Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Voice: +1 831 459 3046 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla
PGP: 1024/E46978C5 F6 78 D1 10 62 94 8F 2E 49 89 0E FE 26 B4 14 93