Of everything that is going to be done, the sprinkler system is my favorite. It will save a lot of time watering and it is a new gadget to play with. I love gadgets! I can't wait to water the yard by just pushing a button. I never thought I'd ever hear myself saying that. All of the repairs and improvements will take most of the month of July and Terry I will take most of the next 3 years paying for all of it. Seems like sort of a strange trade off, but it will be well worth the expense and effort.

Terry and I also would like to know what subjects you would like to address in future Cruisin columns. Would you like me to start a series on the basics of HTML? How about the workings of the Netscape newsgroup window? Just let us know and we'll do it. We are writing this for all of you so this is really your column. We do all of the work and you reap the benefits, hopefully.

For those of you that didn't get a chance to read the last issue of Cruisin, our home page, Crystal's Palace is up and running. Take a look at it and let us know what you think. We had a ball putting it together. You really owe it to yourself to check out the "Settlements" area of StarText and see all of the creative work that is going on there. In a future Cruisin, I'll be pointing you to some of my favorite homepages that I've found so far. To pay us a visit at our homepage, point your browser to:

http://www.web-connection.org/crystal/index.htm

I came upon a program the other day that is just what the doctor ordered for all of you "news and information junkies." It is called PointCast. PointCast delivers the news stories you want to right to your PC when you want it! Oh, I forgot to mention that is comes to you free. Does this sound too good to be true? Well, there is one catch, there are advertisements, but I've found them pretty interesting and not too distracting.

As I mentioned, you get the stories and news you want. PointCast is customizable to fit your tastes. You can track up to 25 stocks with a scrolling ticker on a 20 minute delay, get the weather in up to 256 cities, find out the latest sports scores and stories, and all sorts of lifestyle features. One of the features that I really like is the SmartScreen feature. SmartScreen can be set up as your screen saver to deliver current headlines and advertising right to your idle computer's screen.

PointCast can be configured to dial in, get updated, and disconnect on a schedule you decide. Or you can choose to update it when you want. That is what I do. When I log on to check my mail, I usually start PointCast up and start the update process. Depending upon what areas you've selected to update, the process on my computer usually takes around 5 minutes. Here's a sample screen from PointCast.

I really like this service. Visit the PointCast site at:

http://www.pointcast.com

• The St. Louis Arch (630 feet) is 15,120 Oreo cookies high.

• The Golden Gate Bridge (4,200 feet) is 28,000 Oreo cookies long.

• Each Oreo cookie takes 90 minutes to make, and every Oreo cookie contains 90 ridges.

• Since 1912 more than 345 billion Oreo cookies have been consumed. (Eat your heart out McDonalds.)

With those amazing facts, just think how you'll be able to astonish family, friends and coworkers. At the site, you'll be able to trace the history of the Oreo, order Oreo merchandise (of course!), and get some delicious recipes. After reading the history of the Oreo, Terry and I couldn't believe that no one knows for sure how they came up with the name Oreo. So you say you want to learn more, well, just point your browser to:

http://www.nabisco.com/oreo/notables.htp