General Meeting and Topic
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Our program
for the August 7th meeting will be presented by Elliott Domans & Channel 3 and will be
highlighted with a presentation on the workings of our local channel. There
will be video clips showing how they set up their programs and the hardware
involved.
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| Board Meeting |
The
next board meeting will be held on Tuesday August 14th , at 3pm at the
Rec. Center. All interested parties are invited to attend.
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Presidents' Notes
by Warren Sanders
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As
most of you know on July 24th the new Rec. Center was officially opened
to the public and you will be pleased that your club was represented at
that event. Bob Wilson prepared a very nice PowerPoint
presentation on important elements of our club and what the club had to
offer to our neighbors. Bob, assisted by Frank Fritchman, manned
an information table which included Bob's PowerPoint presentation
running on a laptop and displayed on a nice 19 inch monitor (supplied
by Vince Alline). Many questions were asked and answered and
there was a high level of interest in what the Computer Club is
doing. Bob and Frank also handed out brochures about club
activities as well as many membership applications.
The dedication was well attended despite the "best rain" of the year as you will see in the picture below. See you soon!
 
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Community Need
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We
have been contacted by the Loudon County Animal Shelter asking for our
help. Sammie Shanks is the new Volunteer Coordinator for the Loudon
County Animal Shelter and is hoping to find a few, kind, computer savvy
members of our club who might be willing to donate some time and
expertise to help them.
The former Loudon County Animal Shelter was tragically
destroyed by arson in September 2001.
The Shelter was then forced to operate out of four temporary
construction trailers and part of a burned out building.
In January 2006. The
City of Loudon and Loudon
County donated a jointly owned 6-acre
track of land in the Sugar
Limb Industrial
Park for construction of the new animal
shelter. Loudon County
funded $200,000 toward the facility that is valued above $750,000. The Loudon County Humane Society raised the
remainder of the funds.
The temporary construction trailers had a capacity of roughly
40 animals, the new 7,000-square-foot facility can house approximately 150
animals. The larger space and more
efficient amenities enabled the Shelter to take in 3,306 animals in 2006. Of those, 1,106 were adopted, rescued or
reclaimed for a save rate of 37%, the second best in East
Tennessee.
How You and/or Computer Club Members Can
Help
A new desktop computer, 2 new laptops and new printer are already on
order. They need help transferring Shelter
software and data from the old to the new. They also anticipate ordering software updates in the near future and
would appreciate having someone assist with that upgrade if they find the task
daunting once the package arrives.
An updated Loudon County Animal Shelter web site is sorely
needed. Help in designing and
establishing a site would be wonderful.
The Shelter has never before had a newsletter, and Sammie would
like to see a periodic newsletter published in print as well as a link from the
Shelter web site. Advice on how to set
up a newsletter, formatting, merging mail addresses, etc., would be very much
appreciated.
Sammie can be reached by phone at 458-5593 or via e-mail at the
Shelter community e-mail address. She would also enjoy the
opportunity to show off their facilities here if you have a chance to
drop in.
Contact Sammie if you would offer your help or if you have any questions. Contact information is:
Sammie Shanks
Volunteer Coordinator
Loudon County Animal Shelter
250 Jamie Drive
Loudon, Tennessee 37774
Tel: 458-5593
Fax: 458-9315
E-mail: shelter@bellsouth.net
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Computer Education
by Bill Peterson
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There is no meeting scheduled for the month of August. Should a class become available, you will be notified by e-mail.
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Membership
by Bob Kutschera
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There
were no new members during the month of July. If you need to
renew your membership, you may do that at the registration desk prior
to the general meeting.
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Special Interest Groups
by Don Stieghan
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Three
SIGs are now meeting each month at the Chota Rec Center, and one meets there twice a
month. The meetings last for about an
hour and half.
Genealogy-first
Thursday at 3:00 PM
(contact Don Stieghan at 458-2142)
Digital
Photography-second Thursday at 3:00
PM (contact Jim Noonan at 458-9940))
Computer
Hardware-third Monday at 3:00 PM
(contact Bill Peterson 458-2997)
Music
on the Computer-on summer vacation
For
more information about these SIGs, contact Don Stieghan.
Your
name can be added to the start-up list for a Home Movies SIG. If you are
interested in either of these SIGs, contact Don Stieghan
Do
you want to be a part of these exciting programs or just ask questions about
SIGs? You can receive meeting
announcements and organization information.
Just send your e-mail address to Don Stieghan at tvdon@chartertn.net,
call him at 458-2142 or see him at the TVCUC general meeting. Also, help is available to start additional
SIGs by expressing your special interest.
You do not have to be the expert to lead a SIG to propose the
organization of one.
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Free Stuff and Helpful Sites
by Frank Fritchman
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This
month I had a friend who moved from AOL to Cable and in the process
lost all of their address book information. As many of you know,
the Internet Service Providers do not make the transferring of address
information easy. Why? Because they do not want to lose you
as a customer. Dick Schmeling came to my friend's rescue by
suggesting a program by the name of "ePreserver". You can Goggle
and find it if you have a need. Here is some of what Dick had to say.
"Attached is the "ePreserver" program I told you
about. It's only about 377K in size and can easily be carried in a
floppy disk, CD or flash drive. It works with either "AOL" or
"CompuServe". After downloading, the user must change
the extension "old" back to "exe", because it is a
self-executing ZIP file. After changing the extension to "exe",
just double click the file to install in a PC and follow all the simple
instructions. At one point it will ask for the AOL (or CompuServe)
password for the "Screen Name" info being transferred/copied.
The whole process is very fast and does the following (- separately or collectively
as the user decides) for each "AOL" (or "CompuServe")
Screen Name". ----------------------------------
Here
is some helpful advice from a newsletter written by Clark Howard.
You can read and sign up for Clark's newsletter at: Clarkhoward.com.
Free Directory Assistance!
"As he's been traveling around on the
Clark Smart Real Estate book tour, Clark keeps getting asked something that has
nothing to with real estate, but has proven to be of real interest to everyone:
free directory assistance. People pay ridiculous amounts, up to $2 per call, to
get what *might* be the right number...maybe! The good news is there's a
number, 1-800-FREE411, where you
can call, listen to a short ad, and get the number you want for free. The phone
companies hate this, because directory assistance. is such a revenue generator
for them. Google has also started a free directory assistance, but for
businesses only: 1-800-GOOG-411.
As of now its still in beta testing, so you don't even have to listen to an ad.
So why pay for something you can get for free so easily?" ------------------------------------
If you want to "jazz up" your email, below is a fun site sent in by Vince
Alline. For those of you that don't
know, Eudora, Outlook, and many other mail programs allow you to associate (add to their program) a
"wav file" which then plays whenever you receive new mail. This site has collected a few
of these, and digitized many.
Check out:
http://www.clayloomis.com/mailcall.html
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Photography & Cartoons
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This
pictures was taken at 11 pm, at sunset, in
St. Petersburg, Russia by our Joyce Knouse. As some of you know,
Joyce works as an instructor on a cruise ships teaching computer
classes (tough work!). Joyce says "St.Petersburg is about the same latitude as Anchorage Alaska so you can read a newspaper outside at 10:30
pm. It never really gets dark and that
is why they call it the "white nights"."
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July
has been a hot and a busy month for all of us. Bring a friend to
the next meeting and introduce them to the frustrations and joys of
"computing".
See you at the meeting. Have a great month!
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