Email address links...

...at the top of the right column are there for your convenience. But what can you conveniently do with them, you might ask? Well, here's an answer:

• Gary, the president - send him a note about:
• general club questions. Now, he'll probably just refer you to our website (which you're on if you're reading this!), but if you like that nice human voice to explain things to you, then he's our voice.
• feedback about the group meeting. He's the person to tell about whatever impressions you have of the group.
• Mark, the tech - send him a note if you're having specific difficulties with hardware or software. He checks his email multiple times most days, so your not barking up a dead tree. If there's something he can assist with:
• he'll communicate with you by email or phone to solve whatever tech difficulties you might be experiencing.
• he may need to either set a time to meet (at his place or yours) or else advise you to bring your sick system to the next group meeting for a once-over.
• Kris, the demo man - send him a note if you'd like to:
• give a presentation on some PC hardware or software, or perhaps on some tips & tricks you've learned in your computer use that you'd like to pass along.
• see a presentation on some PC hardware or software, or perhaps on some tips & tricks others have learned in their computer use that you'd like to pick up.

They'd love to hear from you!

P.s. - You can check out Mark's tech blog at itsourhobby.blogspot.com

Scopes Trial & Ray the Ripper

It was a busy day today! The heat was on, and the schedule was pressed as we had two demos to get through. With a big group of interested parties well fed on veggies and doughnuts, the demos began.

A captivated audience

His screen and ours....

Kris loaded up his newest acquisition, a USB microscope. I described it as a trial in the title because it took a few minutes to get his laptop to do a mirror presentation (same desktop on both laptop and external video port). Though the wall was a poor screen, he made the best of it to show the great magnification that you can get with the scope, then talked about other uses such as ear wax removal and tooth examination. Thankfully, we were spared pictures of Kris' own ear and mouth inhabitants! Hopefully, our imaginations will soon be purged of mental images of same.

"If I can direct your attention..."

Full house

Ray kept the steam up as he hooked up his laptop, DVD player, and Pinnacle media transfer hardware & software. He showed the process of copying and encoding, then answered questions from the group on various operations and cost. His demo took us right up to the 1:00 hour, which put some of our computer talk into the early-mid afternoon.

It was nice to see some new faces, and Eric decided to join our happy band of computer users.

PDFs and Snoopy Apps

This is so late because I didn't get to it earlier! That's what happens when dependable Diana gives the job of publishing February's Club happenings to memory-challenged Mark.

A couple of honeymooners out on a cheap date.

It was a rare winter day in that it was actually cold, as in REALLY cold - the kind of cold it should be in early-mid February in Kankakee County Illinois. I started the heating systems at the church building about an hour sooner than normal, but the basement hall's floor and wall still leeched a bit of heat, forcing a few of our members to keep their coats on even though they planned to stay awhile.

Tightwad & Mac User

Kris wanted to do a dual demo on electronic archiving/saving of white papers. That is to say, PDF creation and storage. He'd purchase Adobe's fancy smancy Acrobat software and wanted to show off his new toy. He knew that the price might put some folk off (like ME!), but that I'd done some PDF creating and manipulating in Ubuntu, so he asked me to follow his presentation with a small demo of the free/open source solution I'd used. It certainly wasn't as full-featured, but I showed a program I used to combine PDFs for logical storage.

Cool beans

After the two stage hogs had finished, the club's Vice showed off his smartphone's ability (through an app, of course) to receive audio/video from webcam-enabled computers (for those who must check in often on their beloved parakeets, I suppose). One member was suitably impressed (I won't mention Kelly by name), but then he's easily impressed by most everything....


Other things were done and other subjects covered, but, as the old saying goes, "You should have been there."