Saturday - October 7th, 2006

Welcome to TheGouge^TM, USNA-Net's newest announcement and information service for members of our Parents Network.   It will be published as needed, several times per week (not more than daily) and will pass along news, information and announcements of interest to Parents of Mids.

The first thing you will notice is our new format.  We have long wished for a listserv which would allow us to include photos and graphics in our messages to our members.  On our other lists (Family, Plebe, etc.), we send only plain text messages.  This is done for your safety.

Think of TheGouge as our USNA-Net newsletter.  We'll be using it to make announcements, share interesting information, links to sites on the Internet, Parents Club News, Tailgating Events and many other items of interest to our members.  So if you have something that you want to get out to the members, and it doesn't quite fit our regular List Guidelines, send it to us and we'll consider it for publication in TheGouge.

We will also be using it to re-publish the most recent ads placed in our Classifieds by our members.  We realize that many of you just don't have the time to visit our Classified Ads as often as you'd like or perhaps you forget they're there.   It just might be that you really do need some of the things offered in the Classifieds but if you never see the ad, you miss out on some really great opportunities.  By including the ads in TheGouge as they are posted in the Classifieds, our members who place the ads will be assured of everyone seeing their ad at least once.  And of course, they will stay in the Classifieds for as long as needed.  Not only is this a really great way for our members to advertise but we feel our members will appreciate being FIRST to see all the ads placed by their fellow members.  Remember, only Members may post to our Classifieds. And all members will receive TheGouge with your ad featured when you do.

Are you part of the Problem?

The Academy has joined the City of Annapolis in asking that parents and fans no longer throw candy at the Mids as they parade to the Stadium along Taylor Avenue for each home game's March On.

Unfortunately, most of the candy ends up being dropped and trampled into the street.  The local street department is forced to spend many man-hours each Monday following a game weekend sweeping up the candy, scraping off gum, taffy and other sticky/chewy treats and cleaning up the mess created by well intended spectators at the parade. Many believe tossing the treats is a tradition. It's not! It is a health and safety hazard.  It presents an attractive nuisance to children who try to collect the dropped candy.  It also attracts vermin before it can be cleaned up.

We ask our members to do their part in stopping this dangerous practice.  Instead, pass out the candy in the stadium to the Mids or give the treats to Mids to distribute within their companies or pass it out as the Mids leave after the game.  As Parents of Midshipmen and guests in Annapolis, we have an obligation to set a good example by cheering on our sons and daughters as they pass in parade and to be good citizens by not contributing to this continuing problem for the City of Annapolis.

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Questions? Email ghafer1@houston.rr.com

From time to time TheGouge will feature special articles in the form of Editorials or Letters from the Moderators.  We'll use these to explain our Mission or amplify our Rules of Operation so that members will be better able to make full use of our service.  We look forward to being able to include illustrations along with explanations.  After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

And if you have questions about our Organization or its Operation, our Policies or Netiquette, this is where we can answer them and share those explanations with all our fellow parents.  So send your questions or comments to us at Moderator@USNA.org or use the Feedback Form on the web site to contribute to this section.

Another great feature that will be showing up in future newsletters will be a return of Tech Talk^TM which many of our more senior members may remember from a few years ago.  In this section of the newsletter, we'll be able to explain a lot of the ins and outs of email, using your browser more effectively, installing new software, and a host of other technical things that many of our members need to know to get the most out of our web site, our mailing lists and overall participation in the Internet.  We'll be using screen shots (like this one) of what you should be seeing when you do things, change settings and otherwise learn to be more proficient at the computer.

So for our members who have technical questions that may not be appropriate for our general lists, you'll be able to ask the Moderators and we can help all of our members with a feature in Tech Talk along with illustrations and detailed instructions.  Think of this section as a How To for Navy Parents.

As we find links to things of special interest, we'll be publishing them here, just for you.  And when our members come across a link that they want to share with other members, we can include them in the next issue of TheGouge.

All too often, we all find things on the Internet that don't quite fit with our lists' focus on Navy Parenting but which we just know you'd love to see.   Maybe it's about Veterans or Changes in the Military, or any one of a thousand topics that our fellow parents would find interesting.  Links of all kinds will be considered for publication, so if you have a link that you want to share, just send them to the Moderator.

Below is a small sampling of Ads currently running in the USNA-Net Classifieds at www.USNA.org

As we go along, we'll be using this section to pass along instructions on How To do various things on our web site and on the Internet in general. We'll cover everything from How To set up your email software for optimum performance to How To search the Internet and our web site for information to How To install or update your software.  So those of you who need some help with things that aren't necessarily specific to Navy Parenting, we invite you to send your inquiries to the Moderator and we'll consider them for inclusion in a future issue of The Gouge.