Date:         Mon, 02 Jun 97 21:56:16 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: Statz?? and Syncro front sh

On Sat, 31 May 1997 06:25:14 -0500 Carl Hansen said:
>Ok, I don't know about you, but I can't read the Statz for beans.  It's the
>part about "where you all tell me you are".  I think it's standard
>abreviations for states and countries, but the alphabetic order seems hosed,
>or do we just have a lot of canadian listees???? (Where the heck is
>CAN.ON.OTT, CAN.BC.VAN etc. etc..., anyway??)
>ACTUALLY - I'm hoping there are lots of Canadian vanogoners, in fact, I hope
>most of them have Syncro's.  And do we have anyone in South Africa?? and how
>about the members in Europe/England/the Nordic countries etc???

well ... it's sorta kinda semi-"standard" abbreviations. :) but the hosing
is due to splitting out the "foreign" countries (i.e., other than the u.s.,
where the list is based) by putting a "-" in front. so -CAN.ON.TOR is
Canada, Ontario, Toronto. problems start to crop up because i don't really
have a good set of abbreviations for other countries. like South Africa is
-ZA because that's what their email addresses end with. others are just
whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. :)

ok. so all you non-u.s.'ers are prefixed with a "-" (so it would sort all
together). the u.s. folks are just the two-letter abbreviation of the
state (using the post office's codes). the next .x. thingie is the portion
of the state: north, south, west, east, etc. mostly. CA.BA is california,
but not "big-ass", it's the "Bay Area", around San Francisco/San Jose/etc.
why? cause they were biggest firstest. :) after the .x. portion can be an
abbreviation for city: like CA.S.LA is California, South, Los Angeles. now,
be aware than even though you do NOT live in Los Angeles itself, it's the
nearest "big" city ... so you might get lumped in with others in that area.
as the number of folks in any one "classification" grows over 10 in number,
i try to see if i can split them into smaller groups. sometimes it works,
and sometimes it doesn't (i split, and half of them get off the list!). :)
yes, i know: i didn't exactly do that with Texas. why? cause it's harder
(for me) to figure out that the hell is West Texas, or South Texas. and
besides ... most of the big cities in Texas are too damned far apart. so
each city kinda wound up with its own "classification". cept for Corpus
and Brownsville area. not enough of them. yet. :)

so that's kinda it. if you don't like the abbreviation of your country, let
me know and if enough of you suggest something different, i can change it.
maybe. if i like it. :)

joel