October General Meeting Topic
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At our October meeting the speaker will be Will Schmidt of Cartridge World.
Mr. Schmidt will speak on the use, care and refilling of both
Inkjet and Laser Toner Cartridges. This program should help us
gain confidence in taking the savings offered by refilling cartridges
as opposed to buying them new. The other obvious benefit is
leaving the refilling process to the professionals, avoiding the mess
and problems which can result from doing it ourselves. Mr.
Schmidt will have technicians to assist with questions regarding
the two different cartridge types.
NOTE:
The NOVEMBER general meeting will be entirely devoted to your computer
questions, to be addressed by a panel of our local experts, which has
not yet been finalized. We want your questions IN ADVANCE and IN
WRITING so that we may do research as needed. Questions
from the floor may or may not be taken based on our time constraints. THEREFORE, bring your written questions to the October general meeting and
leave then at the membership table. If you miss the October
general meeting, send your questions by email to Bob Foster at
noclew@hotmail.com
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| Board Meeting |
The
next board meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 9th, at 3 pm
at the Rec. Center. All interested parties are invited to attend.
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President's Notes
by Warren Sanders
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Your Board
of Directors voted to increase the annual family membership dues by $5 per year
effective with 2008. The primary reason
for the increase is to help fund the equipment needed to properly utilize the "Learning Center"
we are establishing at the Rec
Center.
In the
initial phase of this project will be the purchase of 10 laptops with external
keyboards, mice for the instructor's station and for nine student work stations
we plan to have. Also needed are:
various wireless equipment, a net-workable printer, other basic class room equipment
and we may need to acquire software and licenses from time to time in order to
hold classes on certain subjects.
The Board
apologizes for any inconvenience this increase might cause any of our
members, but we felt this step was needed to take immediate advantage of this
space, thereby better supporting the needs and desires of our membership. These initial expenditures will significantly
decrease our bank account and the board felt this dues increase is necessary
for us to be have the funds available to make the maximum use of the facilitate
this opportunity presents us. ________________________
I am very
excited about the work club volunteers are doing to get equipment ready for
sale at the upcoming community garage sale.
Because of their work we will have at least 13 complete systems (CPU,
Monitor, keyboard and mouse - some have a printer) available for sale. As you know, the proceeds from this sale are
distributed through community care organizations.
In
addition, and I am really excited about this!
At last count we will have at least 26 complete systems ready to give
out to deserving families in the area on the upcoming give-away day scheduled
for October 6.
At
last count, our volunteer group has worked on at least 50 computers systems;
cleaning, testing, (and scrapping). My
personal thanks to all the volunteers who have done the work of getting these
systems prepared. I have listed below
the names of people in this group so that you can give them your personal words
of appreciation. Many of them have spent
countless hours in this labor of love - - - and had fun doing it. They are good people doing a good thing. I particularly want to thank Vince Alline who
has spent immeasurable hours on this project functioning as workman, foreman,
technical advisor and all around leader.
He has been a great inspiration and help to us all as we worked through
all this equipment. Also, special thanks
to Dale Noll for his organization skills. The names of the group are:
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Vince Aline
Dennis Malcolm Joe Solymossy
Rich Bowman
Bob Mugge Ron Uncapher
Jack Chambers
Dale
Noll Warren Sanders
Bob Foster
Mark Peranich
Frank Fritchman
Bill Peterson
Dick Joyner
Jim Peterson
Dick Keihacker
Steve Popovich
Charlene La Rosse
Dick Schmeling
Bob Mugge
Charlie Shubeck
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Computer Education
by Bill Peterson
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There are no classes scheduled for the month of October.
If
you have a subject or interest to you or one you would like to teach,
please contact me by email or see me at the general meeting.
We need your assistance to continue our Education classes. Here is how you can help - answer these questions!
1, What subjects do you recommend we teach?
2. Are You willing to teach a class on a computer subject?
3. Do you know of someone who would teach a class?
4. Overall do you have suggestions for improving our Computer Club educational programs?
Send your answers to Bill Peterson at - lapete@chartertn.net |
Membership
by Bob Kutschera
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Last
month we added fourteen new members to our club. Their names are
listed below so you can look for each of them at our next meeting and
welcome them.
Martin
& Deborah Hulett
David &
Barbara Reuth
Wally & Wanda Snedeker
Will &
Pat Schmidt
John &
Judith Symilas
Art
Spurrier
Otie &
Shirley Thomlinson
Just Wold
Earlier in this newsletter you have read that the Board of Directors for TVCUC have
increased membership dues to $15.00. Every October we began accepting payment of dues for the next year. In conjunction with this change and as is our normal practice, effective October 1st, 2007, TVCUC will be
accepting 2008 dues renewals. In an effort to ease the congestion at the
reception desk for the monthly general meetings, we are requesting you
send your renewal dues to Robert Kutschera, 203 Ootsima Way, Loudon,
TN 37774-2820.
Please make your check out to TVCUC and include your email
address so we can email confirmation of your renewal. Of course, if
you wish to have a hard copy receipt, we can send that to you as well.
We hope that you will take advantage of this method of
payment and we look forward to seeing you in 2008 which should be an exciting
year for TVCUC.
If you need to renew your 2007 membership, you may do that at the registration desk prior to the general meeting.
Thank you for your participation and support of the Tellico
Village Computer Users Club.
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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.
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 at 458-2997)
Music
on the Computer-on summer vacation
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 me at tvdon@chartertn.net, or call me at
458-2142 or see me at the 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, just have an interest in the subject
matter.
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| Public Relations
by Bob Wilson |
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I would like to add a position to this committee which
would help us improve our communications with others in the
village. Remember our club only operates because people like you
volunteer to use their time and talents.
Here is a overview of that position and I am hoping this will be just the job you have been looking for. If so, please call me and we can begin.
"Communications and Collaboration with other
Groups, helps develop program ideas and speakers for the general
meetings and SIGs, participates in joint programs, develops community
outreach as defined in the Charter, and encourages donations and/or
discounts for hardware and software needs of the TVCUC (APCUG, East
Tennessee Computer Society, various trade associations, Tellico Village
Library, Senior Center, etc.)".
Another need we have is for someone to represent the needs and
wishes of our growing membership from Kahite. If you are that
person, please call me so that we can work on developing ways to better
communicate with and serve that part of our community.
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Free Stuff and Helpful Sites
by Frank Fritchman
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Microsoft
released Office 2007 at the same time as Windows Vista. Many users have
upgraded to Vista but many of us have been
slower to adopt Office 2007 because it is said to be significantly different from previous versions of Office.
So,
what do you do if someone sends you a file created in the Office 2007 version of
Word, Excel or PowerPoint and you cannot open it? In a recent note in the Kim Komando Newsletter she
says we can download the Microsoft Office
Compatibility Pack from Microsoft which will allow us to now open
these files. ________________________
GREETING CARDS!
Do all of us know we can easily send greeting cards with the aid our
computer? Yes, I mean send them by Email or prepare them for
sending via the US Post Office or for delivering them in person.
There are many good companies on the Internet who offer greeting
cards. Some offer only cards which must be sent by email (cannot
be printed). Others offer cards which can be sent by email or printed
(along with the necessary envelope) on your computer's printer for
mailing or for delivery. Some are offered free, some companies
will charge you an annual fee, some offer both options, of course the
better cards are only offered with the "for a fee" sites. My
family uses two sites I would recommend. The are:
www.AmericanGreeting.com & www.jacquielawson.com
Using this service can be very convenient and with postage at 41¢
a card, plus the cost of the card, you can get a good return on your
money very quickly. Plus they usually don't get lost, you can
send them at the last minute (when you almost forgot) and you recipient
can share them with others simply by forwarding the card.
Most
office supply stores offer "greeting card" stock paper and
envelops. Of course Hallmark has an offering as do many other
companies. Google "greeting cards" and find all you ever wanted
to know. Try it, you will like it! ________________________ For
our music lovers, check out a new offering from Amazon.com. They
just introduced their widely anticipated digital music store with
nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying.
The
store will allow shoppers to buy and download individual songs or
entire albums. The tracks can be copied to several computers, burned onto
compact discs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices, including
the Apple iPod and Microsoft
Zune.
Songs cost 89 cents to 99
cents each and albums sell for $5.99 to $9.99.
Two major labels, Universal
and EMI, have signed on to sell their music on Amazon, as have thousands of
independent labels.
The store is
intended to compete with Apple's
market-leading iTunes, which is also offering some songs without digital rights
management technology, which prevents unauthorized copies from being played.
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Photography & Cartoons
by Frank Fritchman
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Here are two pictures sent this month by Bob Pfeiffer. It is part of a
set entitled "One In a Billion Shots". It is a set of 8
spectacular photographs. If you want to see the set, send me a note at
fmdixie2@charter.net and I will send them to you.
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September has been another hot month and we can only hope and pray our fall will be much more comfortable.
Don't
forget the Tellico Village Community Church Garage Sale on Saturday,
October 29, 9AM to 1PM. Several of our members will be working
there assisting with the sale of the reconditioned computers.
Remember it is always COOL at our monthly meetings so I will look forward to seeing you there.
Have a great month!
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