Hi everyone, and a very Happy New Year to all of you! I hope you’ve all had a great holiday. As mentioned before our break, we had a number of people emailing me privately about restoring the old vidchat format or at least doing one vidchat per month on that format, and I’ve decided to do precisely that, beginning with the vidchat of Friday Jan 16 2026, which will start at 4PM US Central time.
For those of you who are so new to the vidchats that you do not remember the old format, the chief difference between the two is that in the old format you submitted your questions and comments directly to me, and did not post them as comments on the vidchat post. In fact, the vidchat post itself only went up on the day of the vidchat. Rather, you emailed your questions and comments directly to me, and I printed them out and read them in an order that I tried to arrange more or less topically. Thus, no one knew what anyone else was talking about, nor when their comments and questions would be read. I suspect the anonymity and “surprise” factor are one reason people liked the old format. So you will need to stay abreast of the schedule to see what kind of format the vidchat will be. We will still have our typical two vidchats per month, and we’re still trying to stay within a time duration of about 3 hours per vidchat. So here’s the rule for the OLD format:
- All submissions are emailed directly to Joseph, and not posted as comments (for the old format only).
- Questions and comments are still to remain more or less one page in length when printed on normal 8 1/2 x 11 paper.
- When emailing questions, ALWAYS put the SUBJECT HEADER in ALL CAPS and specifically mention it’s for VIDCHAT, something like this: “VIDCHAT COMMENTS/QUESTIONS”/ As I receive hundreds of emails this helps me immediately spot questions to slot them into the folder.
- Submissions may begin no earlier that the Sunday before the scheduled vidchat, and the window closes by 10PM US Central time of the Thursday evening before the chat.
- My email contact is Vardas3@hotmail.com.
We are still retaining our new format vidchat as well, and we will be alternating the late afternoon/evening vidchats and early afternoon vidchats between the two formats.
Anyway, once again, Happy New Year everyone!