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By Phil Scheier
SENIORS AGAIN
FLOCK TO COMPUTER CLASS REGISTRATION: In
spite of the weather being less than cooperative - heavy rain and wind, in
person registration Tuesday, Nov.12, was very successful, according to Registrar
Louise Flora. More than 40 enthusiastic students were waiting in line when
the opening cursor click sounded at 10 am. at the Crossroads Mall.
The layout of the advisors, registration, final check and cashier tables was
very efficient this year, she said, making for a smooth flow of
registrants. "Harry Shedd and Ray French are to be congratulated for
their expertise in setting the whole thing up."
Hailing the results of the
SeniorNet Computer class registration, Louise reported, "A total of 30 per
cent of classes are filled, with several classes almost at the limit of 12
students. There are still openings in a number of other popular classes,
which will be filled by mail in registration from now until May. New this
session," she added, "is a class to learn how to use the Excel spreadsheet
program. Marge Langley will be offering a class called 'Fun With
Recipes.' You can learn to bid on auction items using E-Bay
on the Internet. Maybe before you sign up for E-Bay though
you should think of taking one of these classes and learn 'Tracking
your Finances with Quicken,' or 'Tracking your Investments
with Quicken.' To receive a catalog or information about
these and any other of our nearly 40 classes, call the voice mail 206-232-5892.
Your call with be promptly answered," she said.
TUESDAY MORNING KAFFEE KLATCH WILL WRAP UP YEAR: Lest you forget amid the bustle of the holiday season, the
monthly informal, no-host SeniorNet Kaffee Klatch Tuesday, Dec. 3rd,
at 11:30 am, will be held at the Crossroads Mall Food Circus. As usual, you'll
find us all pulling up tables for new arrivals for our final social of the year
at the mall.
DECEMBER
MEMBERSHIP MEETING: SeniorNet
holds its final membership meeting of the year Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 10 am in
the Crossroads Mall Community Room. In addition of hearing the report on the SeniorNet
Conference in Connecticut that Helen and Joe Hesketh attended, we will
be enjoying a Christmas social of goodies. If you would like to help Phantom
Lake families, see the next article and bring your support to this meeting. If
you cannot attend the meeting and would still like to help, take it to the
school office and mark it for Debbie Gordon.
PHANTOM LAKE
FAMILIES NEED HELP: We
of SeniorNet supported three families with Fred Meyer gift certificates.
Perhaps you would like to help individually. If so, says Helen, "here is
what you could do: Donate non-perishable food items like pasta, pasta sauce,
canned vegetables, canned fruit, canned soup, stuffing mix, dry cereal, rice,
sugar, powdered drink mixes, macaroni & cheese, etc. Or you could get a
Fred Meyer gift certificate around $30 - $40.
"Of course, for December holidays, gifts are needed. If you want to help
in this way contact Debbie Gordon 425-456-6975 and she will give you
age, gender, particular needs and wants for each family member. They try to
give each person two to five gifts, and frequently what are supplied by Phantom
Lake are all the gifts that the person receives. Or you can adopt an entire
family with food and gift donations. Whatever extra you can do will be
appreciated. Please let Debbie know that you are from SeniorNet,"
Helen urged.
GET WELL MESSAGES
FOR PAST PRES. GENE RAUSCHER: We
learned at press time that the second president of SeniorNet here, who directed
the great growth of our organization in those early days, is ill, and would
appreciate hearing from members. (generaus@aol.com).
Gene took over the then fledgling SeniorNet from founder Jiggs Clark, and
aggressively expanded the operation with additional computers, volunteers,
students and courses. Gene, along with assistant Molly Brackett, was at the
class site at 116th Ave., Bellevue; daily to make sure everything
was operating as it should at the two-room site. The following are excerpts
from the message received from his wife, Verna:
"This is from Verna
Rauscher and I am writing to tell you about Gene's illness. Gene was diagnosed
with cancer in his sixth and seventh vertebra of his neck about six weeks
ago. After ten days in the hospital and search for the source tumor, he
came home and almost immediately had a bowel eruption which demanded emergency
surgery and another ten days in the hospital.
"We are presently at home and trying desperately to control the pain and
make
life reasonably comfortable. ...A prayer or so in his direction will
definitely be appreciated. Thank you for your good thoughts for him. He
speaks of you all quite often
and would love to hear how things are going. Take care....have a good
Thanksgiving."
AN INTERESTING JOB OPPORTUNITY is being offered
by Helen. Read on: "With our excellent, SeniorNet
Online News Editor Phil Scheier stepping down after three years of
turning out our growing monthly online newsletter, plus special issues, we are
in urgent need of someone to step up and continue this key part of SeniorNet
operations. If you could help with this project or in our news releases, or
both, please contact Helen Hesketh at senior@seniornetps.org and mark the email "For: Helen Online
Newsletter or PR interest". In that way, your email will be opened and
responded to. If you have questions about what Phil has been doing and how to
do it, please feel free to contact him directly via his email address at: b26flyer@attbi.com.
GETTING
TO KNOW YOU BETTER: MEET OUR MEMBERS
HARRY SULLY is among the original
pioneers of SeniorNet, active in virtually every facet of our
operations, and who took his first classes after he wound up his long business
career, and his business dealing in church equipment. That early SeniorNet
class, which he learned about from a newspaper article, he recalls fondly, had
just only three computers available, with two for the students and one for the
instructor to demonstrate the hands-on lessons. And in those early days, Sully
with his deep and continuing links to the Bellevue East-Hills Lions Club,
persuaded them to donate a brand new, shiny, state-of-the-art IBM-type personal
computer. The very first new computer for the group. Sully many years ago, also
first advanced the concept of a monthly casual, no-host social gathering the
first Tuesday of the month at 11:30 am, at the Crossroads Mall Food Circus,
which continues to grow each year.
A native of northern
California, where his parents operated a summer resort, he attended the
California College of Agriculture, Davis, and later worked at the U.S. Mint in
San Francisco. And then came Dec. 7th, 1941. He recalls the
fear the Japanese would invade the West Coast, and the government for 10 days
shipped huge amounts of gold bullion and silver to Colorado for safety. Sully
enlisted in the Seabees and was in action in a short time building landing
strips and facilities at various battle sites in the Pacific. He recalls in
particular one battle: "We laid offshore of Eniwetok
Atoll and watched the invasion being carried out. The Marines supported the
Army for this task, and when we landed there was still quite a bit of
mopping-up done to clear out the snipers.
We landed day 2 and we then carried out the building of the airfield for
fleet support. We then were relieved and we went to Saipan, and then to Tinian.
There we built the west and north airfields. Interestingly, the North strip at
Tinian was where the Enola Gay took off to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan."
Sully confides he was lucky to have a patient instructor on Seabee skills.
Sully hails his "very rewarding experience to be in SeniorNet, not only
from the learning, but for the friendships I have made that have made life so pleasurable."
PHILIP R. SCHEIER, another long-time member
of SeniorNet, cherishes his long association with SeniorNet, and "the amazingly interesting people
who are always eager to take on new challenges and learning opportunities,
which is what SeniorNet is all about." Phil, who has been writing the
monthly SeniorNet Online Newsletter since it was created three years at
the persuasive urging of Immediate past Pres. Clif Wuesthoff, and who
also aids with public relations, has spent the bulk of his life in newspaper
work in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and locally. He was executive
editor of three dailies for some 29 years in Massachusetts, and headed up
various professional newspaper organizations in New England. Two of his three
children have also been newspaper editors in various parts of the country,
after working for the AP wire service.
Five
weeks after Pearl Harbor, Phil enlisted in the then Air Corps, later the Air Force,
and was assigned to public relations at a southern Air Base, where he worked on
the base newspaper and created and appeared in two weekly radio programs. After
a few months, he decided to get into the overseas action and volunteered for
flying duty as a member of a bomber crew. He was sent to radio school in
Georgia, and later received some off-the-cuff training in handling 50-calbre
machine guns, the other half of his job aboard his plane. With classes
finished, he was assigned to his permanent unit, a medium bomber B26 group as a
radio operator-gunner. After training, the group flew to England, using
additional bomb bay gas tanks so as not to be embarrassed by running out of
fuel while crossing the North Atlantic to its new base, via stopovers at exotic
Greenland, Iceland and Scotland. In two overseas combat tours, Phil flew 65
missions, and was again sent home, and assigned again to public relations at an
Air Base near Detroit. But with the German surrender, the Air Force offered
discharges first to those eligible under the point-achieved system, combining
years of service, combat time, overseas time, combat decorations and
outstanding personality traits. Based on his earned points, Phil was able to
get out in a flash, to bravely face the realities of a different world. After he retired from work in 1984, an
infatuation with computers led him -naturally-to SeniorNet after a friend told
him about Jiggs Clark and his all-volunteer computer training group. Thus began
an infatuation, which continues to this day. With this 36th monthly
issue of the SeniorNet Online Newsletter, Phil is stepping down as editor and
his public relations posts, but, of course, remains as an active SeniorNet
member. He is also working on a comprehensive history of our SeniorNet group,
starting from Day One when our founder Jiggs became fascinated with a story
about something called a "computer."
A SPECIAL INVITE FOR SENIORNET RAILROADERS??? Yes,
we members of SeniorNet have received a very special invitation from another
member to come play with his toys: a large installation of working model choo
choo, actually electric, trains at his Issaquah home this holiday season. And
ironically the cordial invite comes from a retired career Air Force flyer who
served as a navigator aboard the huge C-130 Hercules globe-girdling planes. Of
course this means Ross Roberts, also an instructor, who has assembled an
intricate train display. Ross and his wife Sandra welcome SeniorNetters
to take the train controls for short driving exercises, but ask they be
contacted first via email to properly schedule visits. Visits will be scheduled
during the regular open house period of Saturday, Dec. 7 (2-5 pm) and Sunday,
Dec 8 (3-6 pm), along with driving directions.
For
those unable to visit during the regular open house, say the Roberts, they can
schedule a solo visit outside of the advertised open house period. And Ross,
who is taking a web design class at SeniorNet, has worked up his own site
showing photos of the model train setup, at http://www.geocities.com/ross_af/index.html. Click on Toy Train Open House. Another
feature of their website is the friendly offer of free technical help on
computer problems, either by phone or email. So if you are interested in
realizing that childhood dream of playing with a real model train set, you can
email Ross and Sandra at roberts2100@attbi.com or call 425-746-2685. Sandy says, "Everyone
can come during the Open House. We'll extend the hours on Saturday if needed.
That way, everyone coming will get cookies and drinks too. We'd love to see
you!"
BE PREPARED FOR
DISASTER: CREATE EMERGENCY REPAIR DISK: There are times in the lives of computer users when
all, well, almost all, seems lost, when you switch on the computer,
and---nothing happens. So do what the smart users do and prepare for that
possibility. If it never happens, be happy. This is the setup for Windows 2000
Professional users, although other versions also have a boot-up disk recovery
capability. Your Win 2000 Emergency Repair Disk (ERD), which will
contain your key Windows 2000 operating programs will allow u to get your
computer running well enough to load in the real stuff. Here's how to create an
ERD:
1. Press START key
2. Click on ACCESSORIES, SYSTEM TOOLS, BACKUP, which
opens submenu SYSTEM TOOLS
3. Insert blank floppy in drive A, click OK,
4. When Files have been copied to floppy, click OK
5.
Carefully label and store the ERD. Suggest storing it with your Win2000 disk.
VETERANS DAY SPEAKERS:
Two veteran SeniorNet members who served in World War 11, wound up addressing a
group of Siemens' Electronics employees at their annual Veterans Day observance
in Issaquah. Harry Sully, a Seabee, who enlisted shortly after
Pearl Harbor, described his work in the construction of airfields in the
various battle areas of the South Pacific, often under enemy fire and adverse
weather conditions. Oftentimes when needed, they would take up their guns and
start shooting at the enemy when they were attacked. Phil Scheier who enlisted in the Army Air Corps,
later known as the Army Air Force, served as a combat crew member flying
aboard the B26 Martin Marauder medium bomber in Europe in two overseas
combat tours. Both SeniorNetters were presented with caps with the words, World
War 11 Veteran, along with a Veterans Day sweater, which Sully modeled with his
usual style.
HANDY COMPUTER TIPS: One of the worst-case happenings for
computer users is when something happens, anything, and you can't start up your
computer. But wait! There is help at hand if you use Windows 2000
Professional, to at least get a better shot at getting the computer running
again. Earlier Window programs also have provisions for similar boot-up help.
Check your manual. This is known as getting ready for hard disk problems. In
the case of Win 2000 Pro, you just insert your earlier-made ERD floppy disk
into the A drive, reboot and watch it come to life so you can then complete repairs.
ERD?? Oh yes. Your Emergency
Repair Disk (ERD) which you cleverly made long before you ever needed it,
if ever. The ERD floppy disk backs up your key data files to get the computer
running.
A FREE EYESIGHT
AID VIA DOWNLOAD: If and when you develop reading problems when the small, and smaller
type shows up, Facilities Coordinator Ken Crandall has found a great and
free program, which can create a magnifying glass on your monitor. After you
have installed it, he said, and want to use it, just click on
the icon and you have a magnifying glass that you can navigate around the
screen to more clearly see items.
The magnification is adjustable from 2x to 16x and is a real boon to
many seniors who may have difficulty easily viewing the monitor. Enter the following URL/ADDRESS on your
Internet browser: http://magnifier.sourceforge.net,
hit Enter, and when the page shows, follows instructions. The tip was passed
along by an enthusiastic Harry Sully who installed it and said it works
fine.
ADD A HIDDEN
COMMENT OR REMINDER TO MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENTS: It certainly pays to read
and browse your computer manuals. The things you learn. For example: If you use
Microsoft Word 2000-02, you can insert a hidden comment on a document,
or have your colleagues insert their comments, without it being errantly
included on the main document. Perhaps some earlier Word versions also have it.
Check it. How it works: You write a Word document, but need a reminder to check
for additional info before sending it out. Or, you work up a document, and pass
it around to your colleagues for their input, without their notes changing your
original version. To insert a
hidden comment, click the cursor at the word or paragraph involved. Click on Insert,
Comment, and a flash of color will appear at the designated spot. And along
the bottom of the document, a space will open for you to type in your comment.
Write your comment. Then click on Close alongside that spot. The bottom
message space disappears. But that splash of color, actually a marker, remains
at the affected word or paragraph. When you, or your colleagues checking your
document, have inserted as many comments as they wish, and return it to you, just
hold your cursor over each color marker. Lo and behold, the full message
will appear in a separate box. Move the cursor away, and the message
disappears.
Greetings Readers:
This is your messenger, Clif Wuesthoff, talking. Before emailing the monthly Newsletter
I attached this personal note. Age
has its privileges even if you get ignored from time to time. I recall way back when each SeniorNet
meeting started with the reading of the minutes for the previous meeting. The minutes were duly corrected and
approved before the business of the meeting could start. One of my early acts, as President was
to email the minutes to every member.
This seemed like the natural thing for a computer group. From that humble beginning we now email
each issue of the newsletter to some four hundred recipients and save all that
postage. Phil has done a great job
in developing this magnificent communication tool. Do not be too hasty to delete this issue, it may be the last
and you will want to preserve it for posterity. With that warning it is my wish that a new team steps
forward and takes over the task of writing, editing and shipping the monthly
newsletter. The talent is out
there just waiting to be discovered.
You are needed to keep this institution going, if at all interested
please call Helen.
By the way, if you
appreciate the work Phil has done these past three years why not send him an
email telling him so. His email is
b26flyer@attbi.com
Thank you,
Clif Wuesthoff,
messenger