That’s right folks, history was made right here in the shop of Chapter 582’s hangar.  It seems as though Carter Riggs, son of member Scott Riggs, was in need of a gram scale.  His dad called me and asked if we had one.  I told him that I wasn’t sure if we did but that he could check on the website.
    Actually I knew darn well that we had one but I wanted them to learn about the new way we have of keeping track of what we do have.  You see in the past nobody was quite sure who had what, when, and so just about all of the tools we had, or at least we thought we had, have disappeared never to be seen again.  
    It’s too much to ask somebody to try to keep track of all of this so in the process of developing the new web site we had a custom program, written by a professional computer programer, made for us that does all the work we should have been doing in the past.  
    Here is how it works, let’s say you need a, well....gram scale and it’s midnight.  In the past you would have to call somebody.  I hope you have enough brains to wait till the morning but, what if the tool keeper leaves for work?  Yea, you are right, he probably won’t mind if you call him...right.
    With the new website you don’t have to call anybody.  You just log in, go to the home page, go to the “members,” pull down menu, it has a little lock icon on it because access is limited to members only.  Click on the “tools & equipment,”  menu and scroll through the inventory and, “walla!”  Listed there among all the stuff is a six pound scale with a short description of what it is.
    When you click on the link it opens up to a list of details about the item.  It tells you what it does and other details.   One thing it does is it shows how we got it.  In this case it was donated by Andre Abreu.  What is nice about this is that not only does he get credit for doing so it opens a whole new world of keeping track of our stuff, and yours.
    That’s right.  Lets say you have a hole punch set that you very seldom use and wouldn’t mind if member borrowed it for their projects.  All you would have to do is submit the information for the item and indicated that it will be picked up and dropped off at you house.  Only a member can sign it out and the program will automatically announce to the whole world (literally) when it needs to be returned.  You will have all of the members contact information at you disposal because it is maintained by the website as well, automatically.  Nobody has to keep track of anything, the computer does that for us 24/7/365, and it keeps a log for several years on all the transactions.
    I borrowed an item and neglected to return it during the borrowing period of 7 days.  What happened is my name popped up on the home page in the bottom right hand corner in a box titled, “Chapter Tools and Equipment.”  In this box it showed what tool I had and that it was overdue.  Here is the kicker, it put my email link up there too.  Some gut that need what I had emailed me a nasty note stating that he needed it and it was his turn to use it.  The beauty of it was that I signed it back in and he picked it up at my house and he signed it out again on my computer.  How sweet is that?
    Of course Carter Riggs is a bit more responsible than me and he returned the scale before it was due back.  Thats the good news, the bad news was that despite his ability to accurately determine the weight of his car, he still lost the race.  Oh well Carter, there is always next year.  Keep up the good work!