Pleasantly Surprised By A Visitor Saturday

Hi All,

I was out working Saturday, making sure my cellar drain was clear before winter starts when a car drove in the yard. I thought it was one of my daughter's friends that had stopped to see her and waved and started to walk away when I heard, "Hi, I'm Larry Ward."

Now in case the name doesn't ring a bell to you, Larry is the young man who has done so much for me, and for you too, by providing me with this web site. It all started back in late 2003 when I got a note from Larry who asked me how I would like a web site with no pop ups and my own domain name.

In case some of you have been with me for a while, you will remember that I used to have my web site on several different servers that were free, which meant you were constantly getting pop up adds that could become quite irritating at times. Geocities, Tripod, 50megs.com to mention a few of them. I also used to send out little newsletters more often than I do now, but with over 600 visits a day to the web site, I now spend most of my time just updating the forum with whatever comes up, putting up things people ask me to and also check out what others put up.

When there are things that I don't think should be on a public forum, but people might like to know, I send out a newsletter. I have my own code of ethics, which is unwritten, and believe it or not, everyone seems to follow my wishes and just seems to know what I find acceptable and what I do not. Larry Ward has created something wonderful for me in my retirement years as each morning with my cup of coffee I read the communications I receive from people all over the country and in turn share with you whatever might be on my mind. Some days there is very little and other days, all Hell seems to break loose. Input from members, who by the way I always question before I activate their accounts, is very important, otherwise just reading what I put up could become pretty dull and boring.

Just to give you an idea of how many individuals try to register on the forum, in the month of August 328 individuals registered, but I only activated 3 as the rest in my estimation were spammers.

Of course, I had to ask Larry if he minded if I took a picture of him with his family - He is a very, very nice young man and agreed to let me take a picture of him with his wife Lisa and little girl Olivia:

Olivia, Lisa & Larry Ward

As you can see, Larry is only in his late twenties and someone I never met until yesterday. Thank you so much Larry for all you have done for me.[/b]