Christmas party

Today was our annual Christmas Party.  We had a good turnout with a lot of members and visitors.  Santa made his usual appearance and made his rounds with every one.
  There was some  great food for the potluck.  Everything from donuts, green beans, to Brownies and pie.

Spooky Month

This was a pretty cool day. We had a nice turnout for the meeting.  We had a few new people come in. Welcome to Mike, Jean, and Michelle.

Mark had a busy day...he said he was cramming 3 days in to 1.  He helped Mike with his laptop for Windows 10.  Diana was trying to find a way to bypass the password or find out how to find the password for her daughter Michelle's computer.

Diana also helped Fran with her computer in cleaning out her contacts in Yahoo and what she was doing wrong in sending out e-mails.

Kris brought in several books and described what they were.  One of the books was a National Lampoon book on true facts.  It showed different articles and ads that was in the paper that they might have rethought how it was put in the paper or advertised.

Dale brought in a little gadget that you can put in your slides or negatives and transfer them to your computer.

September Meeting

Today was a bit chilly, especially compared to the last few weeks.  It started out rainy but the sun did finally break through.

We had our annual club cook out and picnic.  We had to move it inside but all in all it was a nice gathering. Mark manned the grill and did a great job. We had everything from burgers, brats, baked beans, cake, coleslaw, cake, and watermelon, and more.  All the food was delicious.

There was  lot of things going on today.  Also a lot of conversations about the start of the club in 1982 when all we had was a Commodore 64 and how far we have come with the windows and Linux.  We started out at the old Bradley Ropers, then went to the Carriage Lane mall, the old Hoover Building, the Bourbonnais Municipal Center, the Park District building to where we are now at the Friendswood  Christian Church in Bourbonnais.  We have come a long way since 1982.  When I got my first PC I had 1.2 gig hard drive and they said I would never fill it.  Now most of the programs you use are larger than that.

A Beautiful August

Today is a beautiful day.  We had a nice turnout for the club meeting even though the Gladiola festival was going on in Momence today.

Dale brought in his Raspberry and showed how to play movies on the TV from a flash drives and the program is on an Sd Card.  There are connections on it for just about any type of media you want to use to connect up to it. He also brought in a negative reader that he got from Amazon.  You can put your negatives in it and upload the pictures to your computer.

Mark talked about Windows 10.  You can get the program free but you have to pay for the service updates. Also if you download the games like Solitaire then you have to watch a commercial between games.

We will be having our Annual Picnic in September.  The club will provide the Burgers and Brats and Gary & Diana will supply the drinks.  So everyone else can bring salads, chips, and desserts.

July

It turned out to be a terrific day outside today.  For once it wasn't raining.  But it decided to start just as the meeting let out.

We had a lot of different conversations going on.   We were going around the room as to what people did with their computers when they weren't at the computer club.  Gary said he did music, Dale said he worked with spreadsheets, and Diana said she paid bills and surfed the web.  Fran and Byron said they played games on theirs.

Mark had a new toy.  A speaker that he could talk to through his cell phone. An Amazon Echo. He asked her, Alexa, for the time, the temperature and several things she couldn't do just to see what she would say.  He also had some music playing and told her to skip ad she went to the next song.

Spring is in the air

Today was a gorgeous day outside.  There were several things going on today.  Gary and Diana brought in two systems that were old.  Mark is scrapping one because it is too old and the parts are bad, and Guy took one home with him to see if there was something he could do with it.  They also brought in several games and programs for anyone that wanted them.

Mark worked on a computer that was Gary's neighbors.  but there was a password on it so he had to go in through Linux to check it out.  He found it had a Vista operating system on it.

Diana helped Fran clean up her desktop and documents.

May Elections

This month was elections for the club.  Nominated and elected was: Dale for President, Kris for Vice-President, and Diana for Treasurer.

Guy stopped by to find out how to set up a server in his home.  Gary had a problem with his laptop.  Somehow the sound got lost.  Mark was able to restore the computer to a date before the sound was lost and that worked.  He now has sound.

The weather today was overcast and you couldn't do much outside so we had a nice turnout for the meeting.

No April Showers

There were no April Showers this  month but we still had a great turn out for the meeting.

We had a new person that came to have his computer checked out.  It was running slow on the internet and had to have a malware program run on it.  When Malware Bites was run on it there were 12 objects that needed to be removed.

Another member was having problems with a couple of programs ans Mark figured them out for her.

During the meeting we had nominations for officers.  Nominations were: for president - Dale Varboncoeur, For Vice-President - Kris Mathers, For Treasurer - Diana Johnson.  We will be having Elections in May.

March Madness

Today started out a little chilly but was starting to turn warmer.  There was the usual fanfare of food. With plenty of donuts, juices, coffee and juices.

Diana brought in a picture scanner.  It runs wireless and scans directly in to the computer.  It makes gathering pictures and sharing them extremely easy.  She will do a brief demo on it in April.

Jane told us about how you can go to Ancestry.Com and get a DNA test and they can tell you where your ancestors are from.  She is 75% English and only 9% German.

Kris brought in several items that he is trying to put on-line for sale and Mark showed him several locations he could go to for this.

Valentine's Meeting

Today was very blistery outside but we stayed warm inside with Coffee and Hot Chocolate.  There was Coffee Cakes, Cookies, and mini-cupcakes.

There was a good turnout and  lot of different conversations going on.  Everything from Face book to Religion to watching some old Cosby shows.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRR......

With a forecast temperature for 10am Saturday of 0 degrees F and a windchill of -15 degrees, President Johnson (after conferring with his cabinet) has made an executive decision to cancel the January meeting.

Coffee, small talk, solitaire, and computer trouble-shooting should resume at the February meeting!