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SENIORNET  COMPUTER  LEARNING  CENTER  NEWS
Dec. 1, 2000; Issue #12;

Mail Address: PMB 309  4038 Factoria Blvd. SE, Bellevue, WA 98006-5236

Voice Mail: 206-232-5892;

Classroom: Phantom Lake Elementary School, Bellevue

For Detailed Information, Class Schedules:  www.seniornetps.org

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By Phil Scheier

BIG SENIORNET REGISTRATION THURSDAY, DEC. 7-By this time, all of you on the SeniorNet mailing list should have received the print edition of our class catalogue and newsletter, edited by Clair and Jo Hugh in preparation for the upcoming Thursday, Dec. 7th Open Registration for computer classes starting in January. Roger Dalton heads up the committee conducting registration starting at 10 am, to 12 Noon, in the southern portion of the Crossroads Mall lobby. Volunteers are scheduled to report at 8:30 am. There will be a desk also for those seeking general information. IMPORTANT: Please bring your mailed catalogue with you, which lists all available courses for hands-on computer training.

HAPPY FIRST ANNIVERSARY-Yup, this is the 12th monthly issue of your online SeniorNet Computer Learning Center News.  Editor Phil Scheier wants to -and indeed will--thank Pres. Helen Hesketh, Immediate Past Pres. Clif Wuestoff for their ongoing help and encouragement, particularly Clif's role in getting the Newsletter onto the wires for the monthly distribution and maintaining the email list, along with coordinators who provided key news reports on their activities. The newsletter is designed to provide a central meeting spot for our approximate  400 members, students, past and present, and others seeking information on computer learning opportunities. And personal news items are always welcome. Send your brief item to:  b26flyer2@juno.com.

THAT TIME AGAIN-The monthly Kaffee Klatch,  our famed no-host, laid-back social interchange of views, computer ideas, questions and whatever, takes place as usual the first Tuesday of the month, which in this case is Tuesday, Dec. 5th, from 11 am, at the Crossroads Mall Food Circus. For the record, this is located at 156th Ave. NE, at NE 8th St.

INSTRUCTOR CREATES OWN MINI-TRAINING BOOK-Students taking the Windows95/98 Overview class taught by  Vice Pres. Bill Bumpas  (Yeah, even our top officers work), speed up their hands-on learning using the special printed guide material written by Bill, and distributed to his students. His Day 1 eight-page guide provides an excellent reference, and includes hands-on exercises. Under Classroom Policies he notes there will be a short break after the first hour of the typical two-hour class. "You may have coffee if someone makes it," he notes, and reminds all students coffee or other liquids must be imbibed in the rear of the classroom, away from the computers. And positively, no food or drinks at the computer tables, he writes in bold type to drive the message home.

BACKSLASH?  FORWARD SLASH?--What difference does a back slash make versus a forward slash? Ray Hansen invites answers.  Why do some URLs (Uniform Resources Locator, also known as just plain Internet address) end with a backslash and some don't? (Tip: Is the top of the slash leaning forward or backwards?) We ran this question by some of our very expert members, and there was some brow wrinkling, some guesses. No, it's not a Million Dollar question. Just curious to learn, including this writer.

OUR GLOBETROTTING LEADER---Recently returned from a few very busy travel weeks are PRES HELEN HESKETH and husband JOE. Helen writes: "Yes I'm back home after a very busy week and a half - first Hawaii to a wedding and then on (flying all day and night) to our grandson’s graduation from Army Basic Training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C., and then drove him to Augusta, Georgia to Fort Gordon for his six months of school. Needless to say I came home exhausted."

UNDERWATER IN NEW GUINEA - Just returned from a journey to Papua New Guinea (PNG), which was one of the last areas of the world to abandon cannibalism and headhunting, is HAL MOZER and SUE. He writes, "PNG is probably one of the most recent to get on the Internet.  I just spent three weeks in PNG for some most interesting sightseeing and world-class scuba diving.  Electricity and Internet cafes are features not found in the PNG bush villages I visited.  But, for about $10 in US dollars, I was able to use the Internet connection on the computer at the scuba diving resort to check my e-mail and send a few messages.  The Internet connection was at about 12,000 bps, even with a 56k modem, because of some very tenuous combinations of land line, radio and satellite links to the outside Internet world -- PNG goes through these links to reach Australia before it actually is connected to the Internet.  They are expecting improvements in this service in the near future.  The PNG Internet users I met could surely use improvements!"

MINIMIZE STARTUP APPLICATIONS AT OPENING---You may already know how to start an application when Windows 95 starts:  Place its shortcut in your Startup folder. (To access this folder, right-click the Start button, select Open, and double-click Programs.) But did you also know that you could start any startup  application minimized? That way, the application will open and then shrink to the Taskbar, ready and waiting. It's a great way to keep those windows from hogging valuable screen space. Assuming that you've already placed a shortcut in the Startup folder, right-click the shortcut and select Properties. Click the Shortcut tab, click the down arrow next to Run, and select Minimized. Click OK, and from now on, starting Windows will launch that application and turn it into an itty-bitty Taskbar item.      

Are the buttons on your windows' scrollbars too small to grab? (Scrollbars are the bars on the right and bottom edges of windows that allow you to scroll through the current window.) Then make them bigger!

Right-click the desktop and select Properties to open the Display Properties dialog box. Select the Appearance tab, and in the dropdown list under Item, select Scrollbar. Adjust the Size (just to the right of the Item field), and watch the preview area until you like what you see. Click OK to keep the change. (Tip-in-a-tip: To make the change permanent part of a desktop scheme, click Save As, type the name of the scheme, and click OK.)    ARE YOU OPERATING FAST ENOUGH? --Want to know how fast your connection to the Internet is going? Or how much CPU  (Central Processing Unit)processing is taking place? Windows 98 has a neat, seldom used tool in the Accessories/System Tools menu with the Programs menu. The utility is called 'System Monitor.' Open it, then select the edit menu. This allows you to add and delete items. Now you can have a real-time display of how fast your modem is actually bringing down information.

ADD FOLDER TOOLBAR TO TASKBAR---Is there a folder you access all the time? Consider adding it to your  taskbar as a toolbar, so you'll have that folder's contents at your fingertips--no Start menu or desktop necessary. Right-click a blank area of the Taskbar and select Toolbars, New Toolbar. Navigate your way to the folder you have in mind, and then click OK. The folder's name and first item will appear on the Taskbar to the left of the tray. To resize the toolbar, hold your mouse pointer over the vertical line at its left edge, and when the cursor changes to a double-pointed arrow, click and drag in either direction. (Follow these same steps to resize any other toolbars, if necessary.)

Now let's suppose you need to access a file in the folder. Click the double-arrow at the right edge of the new toolbar, and the folder’s contents appear in a pop-up menu. Select the file after, and it appears on screen,

HANDY  ONLINE FINANCIAL CALCULATOR ---This free service in the Seattle P-I website is designed  for those with a special interest in buying and selling stocks, and, with  actual examples to calculate a needed price to achieve a specific rate of return after figuring in buy-sell costs and taxes. You can fill in your own numbers, plus many other helpful financial calculations in a simple, easy-to-understand format.  When you’re online, enter the following URL (Uniform Resources Locator) into the browser's address space and press Enter.http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/money/fincalc.asp This is actually the Business Page of the P-I website. So even if you lose this URL, you can always go to the Seattle P-I home web page: http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/   to get started.  A great service for those wishing to sharpen up their math skills, or it will do it all for you.

CONVERTING WORKS FILES TO WORD 2000--Microsoft has issued a converter for Works 2000 documents.  HAL MOZER says you can find it on the following web: http://works.msn.com/HomePages/Offers_Downloads.asp  And It works, he says. "! just download the file.  Run the downloaded file and it will automatically install the converter into Word 2000.  Now I can read the files I downloaded from SeniorNet Leadership Exchange that I couldn't read without Works 2000!" Hal adds, "The converter also is supposed to work with several other word processing programs, per the information on the web site."

HANDY PHONE DIRECTORIES, MAPS ETC-The Seattle Times  provides a helpful free directory service to find phone numbers just about anywhere you want, PLUS a dandy free map service to help you find a destination just about anyplace you wish. Either you can go to The Times home web site at  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/ or you can directly to the resource page with all the links for the Yellow Pages for business, the White Pages for home phone numbers, plus International phone numbers, and also Government phone numbers. You will find all these links on the left side of this page, including the Map Directory, where you fill in the address to get the map of that area. You can even zoom the map to a larger size. You can directly reach the Resource page with this URL: http://www.nwsource.com/nwsrc/redirs_all.htm?pgtarg=ylwi

HOW TO CREATE A WINDOWS 98 BOOT DISK--A bootable floppy disk is the most important piece of your Windows Emergency Kit. This disk can often help your stalled/crashed computer return to normal. Follow these instructions to create a workable boot disk for Windows 98.   Here's How: 1. Click the Start button. 2. Choose Settings. 3. Click Control Panel. 4. In the Control Panel window, double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon. 5. Click the Startup Disk tab. 6. Place a blank disk in the floppy drive (A:).7. Click the Create Disk button and click OK. 8. When prompted, remove the disk from the drive.  9. Label the disk and put it in a safe place. Tips: 1. A Windows 98 boot disk includes drivers that allow you to access your CD-ROM. This feature is crucial if you ever need to reinstall Windows from scratch using the original CD.     2. After creating the boot disk, be sure to test it by placing it in the A: drive and restarting your computer. Use the DIR command to make sure you can read your hard drive and CD-ROM drive. 3. To prevent your boot disk from being infected by a virus, slide the write-protect tab to the "on" position after creating the disk.

FREE  LONG-DISTANCE PHONE SERVICE?-Want to use your IBM-type PC (Personal Computer) to make free, long-distance telephone calls across the 48-contiguous states? Well, we haven't got the phone bill yet, but Net2Phone offers this free service, and free download..AND IT WORKS! You need a sound card, of course, plus a microphone. Best is one of those inexpensive head sets which includes a mike. This writer had tried these computer-generated phone calls before, but the messages usually broke up because of the buffering factor. In the earlier versions with other companies, speech is interrupted while the ongoing talking piles up and then-whoosh-it comes racing thru. Note: While long-distance calls in our 48 states are free, calls to other countries incur a small toll, but far under the regular rate. The rates are posted, and a friend who called a relative in New Zealand, said for$10, he could have talked to New Zealand for some 240 minutes. He talks slowly. This writer, as a test, downloaded via  http://www.net2phone.com/. Then after clicking on Download, and filling out those long overly-nosy forms (Hey, after all, it's free), the program came to life, with an efficient dial setup. We tried a local call first. That worked out fine. Then we tried two long-distance calls; one to Massachusetts, and the other to Florida. The friends there said my voice came through clearly. And in turn, their voices came through in fine form. To work the program, you must be online. And of course, this writer will be checking his phone bill when it arrives. just to make sure it is indeed free. REMINDER: If you receive more than one copy of our Online Newsletter, there is no extra charge. But to help keep our lists accurate, just please drop a message to the editor at  b26flyer2@juno.com and include your e-mail address. Also, feel free to forward this along to anyone (over 50?  Ah, who's counting.) who is interested in computers. And of course we welcome your personal news items, whether it is sky diving, parachuting, drag racing, crocodile wrestling or learning a new way to work your computer. Please include your full name and email address.

MORE FREE STUFF:--There are several free Internet Access Providers, which also work fairly well, BUT do include some annoying blocks of ads which may make work a bit difficult. But manageable. These include No Charge, which may be downloaded from www.nocharge.com; Blue Light, which is available on a free CD disk at K-Mart; Costco, which is available also on a free CD disk at Costco; and Barnes & Noble Books, where you can also pick up the CD. Loading from a CD disk is always preferred. But downloading usually works just fine.

AND TO ALL  OF YOU THE HAPPIEST OF HOLIDAYS AND BEST WISHES FOR A GREAT, HEALTHFUL AND PEACEFUL NEW YEAR.

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Pres.> Helen Hesketh;  Past Pres.>Clif Wuesthoff;  Vice Pres.>Bill Bumpas;  Secy>Dave Lewis;  Treas.>Bob Swenson;  Registrar<Louise Flora;  Curriculum. Coordinator> John Wise; Facilities Coordinator> Ken Crandall; Member-at-Large>Delores Davis;  Volunteers Coordinator> Delores Davis; Online Newsletter Editor> Phil Scheier;  Publicity>Jo Hugh;  Public Relations>Bill Flick    ==========================================================================