Happy Turkey Month

It was a kind of blistery day, which is typical of November.  It was Sunny but cold.  We stayed nice and warm in the church for the club meeting.

We had a nice turn out for the meeting today.  Kris came in late but he had some unusual items to show.  He showed a hard drive that had been taken apart and that had a battery in it.  he said that on laptops it is usually the battery that catches fire.  So make sure when using your Laptop make sure you are allowing plenty space for the computer when you are using it.

Mark and Gary were discussing on-line games and how you can keep coming back to life. He helped Dale with a problem he had with windows trying to download a program he didn't want and mark also helped Jim with a program he was having a problem with.

Diana helped Ruby with a file of pictures she was having problems with.

All in All it was a very pleasant and busy meeting.

Halloween Month

Although there weren't any ghouls or goblins we still had a nice time at the meeting.  There was the usual fanfare of food and drinks.

Kelly came in today and was trying to figure out Bing - Microsoft's search engine.  Gary brought in both his desktop computers.  For the one desktop all Mark did was hook it up and it worked.  On the second desktop there was a problem with the video card.  It didn't like the color red.  After checking it out the card he found out the 15 pin connection wasn't working and it had to be hooked up to the digital connection.

Fran brought in Byron and Gary showed him the basics on learning the computer and had him playing a few games of Solitaire.

Paul brought in a system that he acquired and Mark checked it out and took it off his hands.

Annual Picnic

We had a great day for the Annual Club Picnic.  Even though it was a little cool in the shade the sun was warm.

Mark was the Chef of the day.  Even though the grill was a bit finicky by going out several times, but Mark kept on it. He fixed the Burgers and Italian Sausage.

There was a lot of food brought by everyone.  We had soda, coffee, water and juice for drinks. There was dips and chips, veggies, three-bean salad, potato salad, cucumber and tomato salad, and pies for desert.

There was a lot of stimulating conversations going on from computer problems to politics.  Fran had a problem with her laptop but we got that figured out and fixed.  Frank brought his desk top in and Mark checked it out.

All in all it was a very pleasant day.

August Meeting

Today was rather light on people and Mark was feeling under the weather with a summer cold but it was still a nice day.  The weather outside was really nice.


Frank was having problems with his Virus Scan.  He had a few Trojans and was having a problem getting his updates.  Fran celebrated her birthday today.  Paul showed Gary an audio file program for Linux.  And they discussed the difference between the Windows programs and this one for Linux.


Kris came a little late but he brought several items he picked up at a couple Ham Shows he had gone to.  One of the items he had gotten was a keyboard with a built in scanner.   You can scan anything from documents to pictures to hard plastic cards.  We looked it up online and it runs any where from $120 to $150.  He got it at a very good price of less than $10.  There are several videos on You Tube that shows  how they work.

A Beautiful July Day

Today was a beautiful day outside, with the sun shining bright and not too hot.  Inside we stayed cool with a lot of good conversations going on and we had the usual refreshments of veggies, juice, milk, and donuts.

Just a reminder that the August meeting will be on the 3rd Saturday instead of the 2nd Saturday. The church is having a wedding on the 2nd Saturday.

Mark was helping Frank with his printer, then he helped Gary with his computer.  He was having problems with his video card.  He also helped Rudy to save a web page as a PDF file so she could bring it up even when off line.

June Bugs

Well we didn't have any bugs but we had a nice meeting day.

Fran learned how to check prices on e-bay for her Avon.  Kelly found out how to download and fill out forms to resend to vendors on-line.  Gary showed Kris the external speaker for his laptop.  Mark and Don were trying to figure out what the conflict was on a laptop to get it on-line. Ruby was checking out recipes and Jim was trouble-shooting a problem with utilities.  There was a lot of interesting conversations going on every where.

Just a sad note...

...to inform the membership that Ray Noble died early Sunday morning (May 19, 2013).

He was a faithful and active part of the club for many years, never afraid of newer tech and maximizing its usage. Whether it was upgrading memory, switching out a motherboard, or trying out new software, Ray was ready to give it a go. He would speak of the heady Commodore days and his beloved Amiga systems, but could also talk of video capture and editing on his latest home-built Windows box. He enjoyed and utilized the things personal computers afforded the common man.

More info is available here:  http://www.lifestorynet.com/memories/91015

May Flowers

Well it is Mothers Day weekend and everyone had a good time at the meeting.  There was the usual fanfare of food, donuts, cookies and a veggie tray.

Ray and Mary were unable to make it to the meeting due to Ray being in the Hospital.  Please send your prayers their way for his recovery.

We had a visitor today that was having a problem with Quick Books and how to install the backup on to her computer.  Diana showed her how to put it on her computer and how to clean up her start up menu.

For the meeting portion the current officers were re-elected.  We had a few people volunteer to take turns at the strawberry fest on June 2nd -  Don, Dale, Ruby, and John.

Dale talked about Hauppauger 950Q, where you can go to record tv programs. And Jim said there is TitanTV.com where you can go to record TV and you can find any TV Program.  You can put in Any Program or Sports Program that you can get.  It has a guide with any program you could want and it is color-coded so you can tell the difference from Sports, Kids programs, and regular programs.

Gary had his Mom here to keep everyone in line.

Kris talked about a procrastination flow chart. It was very interesting.  You can find it at ehdom.com//flowchart . Check it out.

April Showers - Not so wet... yet

While it didn't rain today, it was a little cool outside.  Inside we were nice and warm.  There was a large turnout today.  We had nominations of Officers and it was nominated that we retain the same officers as before.  Elections are in May.

There was a demonstration on a Raspberry Pi for computers.  The Raspberry Pi (short: RPi or RasPi) is an ultra-low-cost credit-card sized Linux computer which was conceived with the primary goal of teaching computer programming to children. It was developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409). The foundation exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.

We have renewed our membership to the Arts Council and we will be having a table again at the Strawberry Fest.  We made more business cards and handed them out to the members to give out.

Fran's laptop was running real slow so we went through and pulled a lot of trash off the hard drive that installed itself.  Ruby was working on her computer and entertaining Bridgette (Gary & Diana's Great Granddaughter) with her IPad.

March Madness...Not So Mad

Mary gave her demo for good areas to check out on the web. She gave a site called “The wonderful World of Crowdfunding” (www.crowdfunding.com) where you can go to get funding for almost anything, and another world funding site is Indie go go (www.indiegogo.com) . Another place to go to is Daily Steal, where you can get great “stuff” at a discount price. One of the “Daily Deals” she showed was a mini camcorder that is about the size of your finger and uses a microSD memory card and has a rechargeable Battery for only $18.

There was a discussion on whether or not to renew our membership to the Arts Council. We are in need of volunteers to man the table, if we renew, at the Strawberry festival. Gary and Diana did it last year all day and this year we would like more people to participate so we can trade off. Next meeting there will be more of a discussion on this.

Mark and Diana was trying to get the laser printer going to get the business cards printed. Mark is going to continue to try on the laser printer and Diana is going to print some up on her Inkjet printer.

We also installed AVG 2013 on to Jim's laptop.  He had a few problems but we figured them out and got it working for him.

February Meeting

Today we had the usual fanfare of Veggies, donuts, coffee and juice.  It was a cool overcast day outside but we had a lot of interesting conversations.

Kris brought in a cooler with a CD/MP3 player built in.  You can have a 9volt adaptor or 6 batteries to make it work.  He hasn't figured out how to use it yet but it is rather interesting.  To have a cooler and Boom box  all in one is really unique. 

We had a business section of the meeting where Gary and Kris discussed how to increase membership.  We are going to get more business cards and Kris suggested places to hang some fliers.  Also utilizing our web page, www.krvcug.org , to refer people to check us out.

Mark and Mary were discussing movies and how to put them on the computer and some of the different series he has on the computer that he watches without getting on TV.

Jim gave a list of some of the places he goes on-line.  He likes sites of movies, recipes, books and more.  You can access them here.

Saturday Meeting

Today was really nice outside for a January and we had a nice time inside at the meeting.  It was kind of quiet but we had a nice turn out.

Glen helped Gary with installing a newer version of Linux Mint.  After installing he had over 400 updated but luckily on Linux it doesn't take that long.  We helped Jim install an interior design program on to his Windows.  It wouldn't install at first.  We had to shut down his virus protection program because it thought it was a virus we were trying to install.

Diana and Fran were doing Words with friends back and forth on Facebook....of course Fran won.