A
Final
Podium

Well, the membership should be happy to know that I am ending my reign as president the same way I started it. This article, like almost every article, is getting sent to Sherry just after the nick-of-time. This month we even had an extra week, but I did not get the article written in the extra time and so late again, the article was thrown together.

To Sherry, I want to express my thanks. You have had every right to get very upset at me about my tardy articles, but you have gently reminded me (well maybe not so gently sometimes) to get my articles to you. I know I have made your job as newsletter editor something less than pleasant.

On that same vein, Mark Meidel deserves thanks for all his work doing both the Web page and SIG director. Most people do not know how much “fun” it is to maintain a web page with a group as dynamic as EPCUG. Mark shrugs it off, but he spends a lot of time to keep the web page as up to date as he can and changing the colors, as we board members complain about something we do not like.

The challenge of the web page is to inject color without making the contrast too close, so people with lower levels of vision can read the print. Mark has accepted my personal complaints without blowing up. Thanks Mark.

I have already thanked Doyle Ramey and Pat Fawley for their efforts. I was not very happy to learn that Pat has another commitment that will prevent her from being on the board next year. Both Doyle and Pat have done a lot of work in the background to keep EPCUG moving forward.

I am sorry to see Chris Fendt leave the board this year, but he has been the advertising chair almost since the job was created. Chris is another one of those behind the scenes people who keeps the ads coming in for the newsletter so we can afford to keep printing it at the high level we have come to expect. You have done a good job, Chris, and I appreciate your efforts.

Thanks to Joanne Patrick, who took the vacant Program Director’s job when Russ Burke had to leave the position when he moved south. Joanne had some frustration in getting going and I must admit that I did not help Joanne as much as I should have. I can only ask Joanne to forgive me for not getting her help sooner.

Brad and Elizabeth are not returning to the board next year, either. Both have their personal reasons. They both have expressed to me that they feel that they did not do their jobs well. Nothing can be further from the truth. Sometimes we all have things that get away from us. Brad was building a new house and that took more time than he expected. Guess what. Things happen and we have to deal with those things as they come. Brad was there in the clutch when I needed him and that is what counts. Everything else is just Mickey Mouse (unimportant).

This is directed to Elizabeth, and I do not care who knows it. You are a loving and caring person who did your job to the best of your abilities. No one can ask more than that. I publicly want to thank you for being there, working hard, and doing your part. So you forgot a tape one time. I would have forgotten the tape recorder itself, and have done so on many occasions. Why do you think Jocelyne has to keep bringing things to me at work all the time?

Members enjoy the August 2000 meeting on home networking.

Over this year, we have had board members who have faced some challenges in performing their jobs with EPCUG. These have been kept out of the general membership’s knowledge. Everyone on the board has picked up the slack and helped cover for them when the chips were down. That is what being a member of the board is really about.

I also want to thank the membership of EPCUG. You had the faith in me to put me in this leadership position. There have been good times, and there have been some not so good times. But I hope that the membership has enjoyed the year.

Jon Slough & Larry VanOsdol Networking in August 2000

Shortcut To Properties
When you want to know all about an icon—file, folder, whatever—you right-click the icon and select Properties. Getting tired of dragging your pointer all the way down to the bottom of that context menu to the Properties command? Next time, hold down the Alt key as you double-click the icon. Properties dialog box, at your service.

Shortcut to Device Manager
Doing some configurating on Windows, and constantly doing the “Right click MyComputer & click the Device Manager tab”? Well,this might make your life a little easier during that time. It won’t necessarily make the configurations happen, but it will make working with them easier.

Right click on your Start Button
Select EXPLORE (this opens Windows Exploring to the Start Menu folder)
Right click in the Right window.
Select New and then Shortcut from the File Menu.
A window pops up.
In the field Command Line, type (all on one line):
C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE Sysdm.cpl, System,1(replace C:\WINDOWS\ with your Windows directory, if different).
Click Next
Type Device Manager for the name of this shortcut
Press Finish when you’re done.
There is now a shortcut directly to Device Manager in your Start Menu.
Note: To change the icon for this shortcut
Right-click on it
Select Properties
Click on the Shortcut tab.
Click Change Icon
Say OK, when Windows tells you that there are no icons, and it will give you a different location in, automatically.
Select an icon you like.
Click OK till you are done.

DUN Bother Me!
Tell Windows 95 & 98 Dial-Up Networking (DUN) to quit asking for input before dialing. No more click and then click again! To fix this annoyance:

Open Windows Exploring
In the left window, slide down to Dial-Up Networking
Single click the icon
Go to CONNECTIONS/SETTINGS... (in the Menu bar between TOOLS & HELP)
Uncheck “Prompt for information before dialing”
(This means you must use the “Save Password” option, if you do not already, as it will not stop for you to enter it.)
Uncheck “Prompt to use Dial-Up Networking” (for those that have a network)
If you like, you can Check REDIAL and configure that section, too.
If you do not see these options, you may not have yet upgraded your DUN to the new version. The choice to uncheck “Prompt for information” became available in DUN 1.3 upgrade.

Icon Size
Too many icons on your desktop that you can't add any more? Or do you have folders with the icon view and find Large Icons to big, but Small Icons too small? Try sizing them yourself!

Right click your desktop
Select APPEARANCE in the drop down window that probably says 'desktop'
Select ICON, the default size for icons is 32.
Change that to 24 (you can do 16 but that may be too much. You can change the size of the name in that screen also.
When you are done there, use the drop down again and
Reduce the ICON SPACING (HORIZONTAL) & (VERTICAL).

We need help with the donated computer program. When someone wants to donate we need to know as much of the following as possible:

Donors name
Donors contact phone number with extension number if appropriate
Time of day to talk to the donor NOT the donor’s voice mail...
Type of equipment: PC?, Apple?, monitor?. printer?. scanner? modem?
How much equipment (can it be moved by car, van, truck, 18 wheeler?)
Is the equipment operating?

Your name
Your phone number
Your e-mail address

The sad facts are that equipment older than a 386 are proving to be of no use to us and the 386s are marginal at best. Using them for parts is a nice thought, but the realities are that we are not able to salvage much more than mounting screws, motherboard standoffs, and jumpers from them. Getting the above information up front would go a long way towards determining which donation would be appropriate and which ones would not.

If the members that hear about these possible donations would make the effort to get more information at the outset, it would help enormously. Our resources to transport, store and then sort through the really old material is presently consuming much of our time. As a result, our progress toward getting the updated machines to the organizations requesting them is lagging.

A very interesting program came across my desk recently. Reading the intro about Enfish Onespace was quite entriguing, as it professes to be able to help me track all my important emails and files for the newsletter, schedule my reminders, maintain my calendar, and all from one window on my computer! This sounds more exciting by the minute!

As the month goes along in preparation for the newsletter, I get new ads, new articles, suggestions and tips from members, and other things to keep track of. Then I have reminders to send out, need to remember who is sending a new item to watch for, and remember where I put all these things when they come in. I get all this through three different email accounts to boot!

On top of tracking all this, I have a *very* busy high school senior daughter who works a flexible schedule, plays in the marching band, is active in her church youth group, and seems to want to do other things besides! Throw in my EPCUG meetings and other activities, and the occasional event with my husband! Do I ever need something to help control some of this!

That’s why the following really caught my attention:

“Enfish Onespace is a personal desktop service that integrates information from the Internet with data in your own files (e-mail, document files, and other application files) — so users can have one convenient place to work with everything. Now you can click on a contact in your address book and instantly see all the information from the web and your own hard drives that are related. Pick a topic and Onespace brings up your bookmarked web pages and your related files. No more searching through bookmarks, mysterious file names, and e-mail folders. Create your own special searches to track information relative to your current project. Open your Enfish page and everything is always up-to-date.”

Enfish Onespace is a browser, portal, contact manager, file viewer, and organizer all rolled up into one window. There are literally hundreds of examples of ways to use Onespace that have been collected and sorted by Enfish. Log onto their website, and get ideas for ways to customize your own Enfish Onespace!

This program is designed to work with the following email applications: AOL Mail 2.5, Netscape Communicator Mail, Microsoft Outlook (Email functions and PIM functions 97, 98 & 2000, Microsoft Outlook Express. Send an email to support if you would like to be notified when support becomes available for Eudora. It is in the works and should be coming soon.

It works with the following browsers: Netscape Navigator, Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, 5.

While Onespace is not very versital in its spreadsheet formats: Microsoft Excel, Excel Chart, and Novel PerfectWorks spreadsheets; it is quite adequate in it’s wordprocessor formats: Ami Pro, Ami, Professional Write Plus, Microsoft Word, Novell PerfectWorks 2.0, Macintosh, Unicode character sets; Uuencode; Text DOS, ANSI, Mail (MIME), and WordPerfect.

Onespace also recognizes Microsoft PowerPoint 7.0, 97, and 2000 and graphic formats: Windows bitmap, Compuserve GIF, JPEG, Novell PerfectWorks 2.0, and Adobe Acrobat.

Use the customize tabs to configure your own space. With Enfish Onespace, you can track gifts that need to be sent, show the local time, track and view files, update your contacts, filter your email, add notes to people or events, sort and keep track of friends and appointments, and even check the current weather reports when you are online!

If you use any of the above email programs, and have stuff you’d like to keep track of (like your life!) check out Enfish Onespace. The price is right, and I think you will like it!

System Recommendations:
Windows 95/98/2000/NT 4.0, sp 3.0+
Pentium 200Mhz or higher computer
64 MB RAM recommended
VGA 16 bit color or + (800x600 min.)
Internet connectivity recommended

Hard disk space required - The program and associated indexes requires approximately 50 MB of free disk space (on an average 1 Gigabyte drive)

How many of you carried forward your old Windows 3.x games when you upgraded to Windows 95/98? I know I’ve had enough troubles with older products, that I’m often hesitant to bring them forward if they do not specify that they are built for the current version I’m running. This unfortunately has caused me to leave behind some programs that I rather enjoyed. One of those is the original Microsoft Tetris! I tried it once with Windows 95, and for whatever reason, it did not work well, so I uninstalled it and left it off the next time I reinstalled. And I’ve missed it ever since.

When it came time to pick something for a review this month, I decided I would try the old Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack again. Afterall, what did I have to lose, but time invested in a reinstall, which is due on the game computer anyway. I’ve not had a single problem since installing the pack, and we sure have enjoyed the games.

So, take a tip, and remember the ‘oldies but goodies’ games. They don’t have blood and guts, and they’re not shoot ‘em up excitement. But if you are looking for some good wholesome fun, remember that just because it doesn’t say “95/98” on the box, doesn’t mean it won’t work! In this case, I highly recommend this pack of games for kids of all ages!

A total of 13 games in all:

TETRIS - The international favorite from Russia! Manipulate the blocks with masterful maneuvers to win!

Golf - A solitaire variation of matching suits.

Taipei - Match the tiles in this ancient favorite.

Pipe Dream - It gushes with fast-paced excitement - you’ve got to act quickly and decisively to keep from getting wet.

FreeCell - Even with all the cards on the table, it takes skill and practice to win.

Tut’s Tomb - Your lucky number is 13 in this fascinating solitaire card game.

Rodent’s Revenge - To trap the cat and win the cheese, you’ve got to move fast.

TriPeaks - With skill and luck, you’ll scale the heights and win.

Ski Free - Pick your course —slalom, tree-slolom, or freestyle— and go for it!

Chip’s Challenge - Brave level after level of puzzles, mazes and obstacles! Use blocks and teleporters to help you along, but beware of monsters, ice, swamps, bombs, and balls!

Jessball - A lightening-fast arcade-style game —trap the balls and beat the clock.

Dr. Black Jack - Test your card-sense and luck at the classic casino game.

Anticipating that electronic bytes will take bigger and bigger bites out of first-class mail in future, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is readying new and varied electronic mail services for Americans. A major one would assign e-mail addresses to most people.

One of the new services could notify customers by e-mail about an incoming bill or package, which they could then reroute to another address. Another proposal, set to begin a three-year consumer test in September, would allow customers to send e-mails to a post office to be printed and delivered as first-class mail. A third program, already available, lets customers pay bills online through the Postal Service’s Web site.

Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan called the e-projects “a way for customers to choose how they want to get their correspondence.”

The new services will be added to Internet-oriented offerings the Postal Service already has in place. It began testing a kind of certified e-mail service in 1998. Called PostECS, it sends electronic receipts for contracts and other important documents transmitted over the Internet.

Online Stamps Popular

Last year, USPS rolled out its heralded system that makes postage available online. The Postal Service says 280,000 customers have printed $22.6 million worth of “online stamps” since July 1999, but the service has yet to deliver a profit.

Both of these existing services do show promise for future growth, however, which may be critical to the USPS is coming years.

Considering that e-mail will soon take huge bites out of USPS first-class business, these moves, and more, are needed to move postal service into the 21st century. The post office itself predicts that in 2003, first-class mail service, now a $35 billion business and its top revenue producer, will begin an unprecedented decline at the hands of booming e-mail and online billing services.

Benjamin Franklin, our first postmaster and a great innovator himself, would surely applaud these new efforts, but probably would be critical of the Postal Service’s slowness in facing up to challenges of new technologies. Banks, credit unions and many other private services already offer bill-paying services, and have for some time. Is it too late for the USPS to capture a piece of this pie? Judge for yourself.

Under its own online billing system, the Postal Service charges customers $6 per month to send 20 electronic transactions, or $2 per month and 40 cents apiece for unlimited transactions. How does that compare with bill-paying services already available to you?

The e-mail-to-paper system would cost about 41 cents per message - eight cents more than current 33-cent postage. Is it worth it? My personal opinion is that it might be in some instances, but it would depend on how much faster the Postal Service can get time-critical correspondence to recipients than would be the case with normal first-class mail.

(Mail2000, a Bethesda, Md., company (mail2kinc.com) already offers a service that translates e-mail messages into first-class mail, plus a variety of other mail-related services. Aimed more at businesses and other volume mailers than individuals, it claims it can save time and money, compared to the USPS.

Your Own ‘Mailbox’

The e-mailbox proposal, whereby virtually every American would be assigned a free e-mail address corresponding to his or her street address shows more promise.

Under this system, customers could simply link the service to any present e-mail address they have, or opt for a special online postal box. Customers could then get an e-mail address using their initials, followed by their nine-digit ZIP code and the last two numbers of their street address - with “usps.com” tacked at the end.

For instance, John Doe, 1234 Main St., Los Angeles, CA 91365-4004 would get the e-mail address: jd91365400434usps.com. I know, it’s cumbersome and tough to rattle off from the top of your head! But it also is unique enough to minimize duplication problems. This would eliminate the need to change addresses when you change Internet Service Providers, but using e-mail services such as Bigfoot, Hotmail or Altavista mail provide a similar benefit.

It’s no news that Americans are avid e-mailers. A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than 90 million people have Internet access. Of those, about 84 million use e-mail regularly, while 16 million have used some sort of online banking service.

E-commerce gurus have mixed feelings postal e-mail proposal. “They’re in catch-up mode,” was a typical reaction. Several experts I talked to pointed out that most people apt to use the service already have e-mail - and that many of the rest probably wouldn’t log on for the tracking service.

“As schemes go, this one isn’t bad,” said one representative of a Santa Monica, Calif.-based technology research firm. “It absolutely makes sense - the Postal Service’s business, and expertise, is mail delivery, and e-mail is just another form of mail. If the USPS ignored this new mailing technology it would insure that it would become obsolete eventually. Any steps it can take to work within the new framework should help it survive.”

Let’s say it’s 6:15 p.m. and you’re driving home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated.

Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home; unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far.

What can you do? You’ve been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself.

(Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article seemed in order.)

Without help, the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm.

In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.

Tell as many other people as possible about this, it could save their lives!

From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240’s newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON ... (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response)

The YOURDON Report www.yourdon.com/tyr

This is Ed Yourdon’s weekly report on what’s new in the Internet world. News, gadgets, book reports, etc.

Clinton Administration’s Digital Divide Web www.digitaldivide.gov

This is the White House’s official website about the digital divide—it could be useful to anybody working with schools and underprivileged groups and trying to get them wired.

Spinwave - Graphics File Optimization http://www.spinwave.com/

If you work with graphics, whether they are for the web or otherwise, it’s nice to save space by optimizing them. In addition, you will find tips and tutorials for working with graphics. Sign up for their newsletter and bring the help right to your desktop. Do a LOT of graphics? Consider their pro version, it would be well worth the money spent!

Blue Mountain http://www.bluemountain.com/

More reasons for sending cards than you could ever imagine. More goofy, wacky holidays and excuses than you will beleive. Check out the additional holidays for September and the list of card type categories that follows. And those are just the categories. Under each you will find a wide range of subcategories ranging from the expected to the totally unique!

They fill in some days with countries which you can honor by sending a card with their flag. August was a fun month, there was a day set aside for the Tooth Fairy and couples had a dedicated ‘Kiss and Make Up Day’. I’m gonna go look at October and see if it’s more fun than September.

You can also get serious and send some flowers from this site, although I did not check out the prices. Hey, you could even send me a card! Enjoy!

September is Subliminal Advertising Month & Fall Hat Month. Card Categories: Just for Fun!, Birthday, Encouragement, Events & Milestones, Comfort & Support, Kids, Teens, Love, Family, Living, Animals & Nature, Arts & Literature, Professional, Seasonal, Nations, Ethnic and Regional, Religions, Other Languages

These astology links are excerpted from The WorldVillage Family First Newsletter, a free publication of InfoMedia, Inc. Subscribe at http://www.familyfirst.com or http://www.worldvillage.com

* Astronomers * http://www.allaboutspace.com/subjects/astronomy/glossary/Astronomers.shtml

Let’s begin with a salute to those who have dedicated their lives to studying the skies. This site provides bios of some of our greatest astronomers, as well as mention of minds more famous for their other discoveries. Hawking, Hubble, Halley, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Einstein, they’re all here.

* Auroras * http://www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/auroras/

If you live far enough north (or south), then perhaps you’ve been entertained by auroras. These beautiful sheets of light are produced by intense electrical activity near earth’s poles. Check out Auroras: Paintings in the Sky. Take the self-guided tour, loaded with RealAudio and QT movies.

* Pics from Hubble * http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html

We taxpayers have sunk lots of megabucks into the Hubble Space Telescope, and you know what? It’s money well spent, IMHO. Check out this site, Hubble Space Telescope Public Pictures. This site has hundreds of amazing photos in resolutions for all download speeds. Keep it book-marked, new ones are added almost daily.

* Planets Outside the Solar System * http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~gmarcy/planetsearch/planetsearch.html

One of the most exciting astronomical discoveries to be made in my lifetime is the confirmed existence of planets circling other stars. This technical site, Extrasolar Planet Search, gives the hard data concerning star wobble, the telltale sign of the existence of planets. It’s deep, but fascinating.

* Eclipse Chaser * http://eclipse.span.ch/

A stellar event that captures the imagination of the general public is the phenomenon of eclipses. Check out High Moon, a site by an eclipse chaser. Did you make it to northernmost Scandinavia for the partial solar eclipse on July 31? No problem, pictures are available here. In fact, you can get live webcasts of eclipses! Come back for the next one.

* Constellations * http://www.dibonsmith.com/stars.htm

Constellations have been our night companions since man began to exist. Orion and Cassiopeia are mentioned in the book of Job. Hey, if Moses knew his constellations, shouldn’t you know yours? Check out The Constellation Web Page. This site will familiarize you with all of the familiar star patterns, along with where they are. Impress your girlfriends, guys, by pointing out Eridanus.

* Astronomy for Dummies * http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764551558/WORLDVILLAGE

Let anybody tell you it is easy to home network two computers, and you can probably question their sanity. Let them tell you it is impossible for the novice, and again you should question them. Jon Slough showed those who were willing to wait a few minutes after the meeting that neither of those statements is true. While not always a piece of cake, you will run into problems in many cases, it is also not impossible even under difficult circumstances.

While most people are probably going to purchase matching network interface cards, you can still do it with different cards. While most people will probably even purchase a complete kit, Jon proved you can even do it with mix and match pieces.

Jon’s handout was full of helpful information for the novice networker, and even had tips that will probably be helpful for those that have a few clues! Thanks, Jon, for an entertaining, informative meeting. If you missed the meeting, but would like to get a copy of Jon’s handout, please let me know. If there are enough requests, maybe we can get it uploaded to a webpage.

The Q&A time was quite informative as usual, and probably too short for some! Remember anytime you ever have a question to lengthy for the Q&A time, or that you would like to repeat because there was no answers, be sure to remember that we can always print them here.

Conversations at breaktime.

We will begin the September meeting with any additional nominations from the floor for the Board of Director positions, and then move right into the elections. If you are interested in any of these positions, please be sure to attend the September meeting. Notice there are a couple positions that do not have any nominations. Please consider taking one, if you can.

Each of these positions require you to attend the Officers’ meetings on the second Thursday, and the General meetings on the fourth Thursday of each month.

If you have any questions regarding any of these positions, please do not hesitate to contact any of the current officers. If you think you are interested in a position, but are not sure if you can do the job, please let someone know we will help you any way we can.

Elected Positions:

Vice President/President - A 2-Year term. The first year as Vice President. To represent the President, if for any reason, he is unavailable, and help with the various programs, then the 2nd year as President to guide the group.

Nominations:	Bill Roberts
	Bob Brown

Secretary - Keep minutes of officers’ meetings held on the 2nd Thursday of the month. Maintain history book.

Nominations:

Linda Corwin

Program Director - Contact vendors by email, phone, or postal mail to arrange for presentations.

Nominations:	Bill Roberts
	Bob Brown

Membership Director - Maintain membership database. Print labels for mailed newsletters, & sign-in sheets general meeting. Be responsible for the sign-in table and door prize ticket donations.

Nominations:

Larry VanOsdol

(2) Directors-at-Large - Attend general mtg to listen for needs & feelings of members and represent thom to the board.

Nominations:	Paul Boggs
	Ora Troyer
	Ken Kendall

SIG Director - Promote and oversee SIG groups. Recruit and assist leaders.

Nominations:

None

Appointed Positions:

Treasurer - Cash management of group assets. Process bills for payment & prepare invoices. Report information to membership on monthly basis. Prepare annual budget & review at boards request.

Nominations:

Marty Mielke

Web Director - Edit & maintain EPCUG web site. Transfer the newsletter into html and publish onto website.

Nominations:

Mark Meidel

Public Relations - Send press releases on general meetings, work with area media to increase public awareness.

Nominations:

Doyle Ramey

Advertising - Contact regular advertisers monthly to verify continuation of current ads. Contact other area businesses to increase advertisers.

Nominations:

None

Resource Center Director - Maintain any shareware, disks, books, or other media that the group may have.

Nominations:

Bob Brown

Newsletter Editor - Publish newsletter.

Nominations:

Sherry Nisly

A reminder that we will hold our September and October meetings in NIBCO’s corporate office, at 1516 Middlebury St., Elkhart.

The drive to NIBCO is off Simpson, NOT Middlebury. It is actually behind the KeyBank building.

There is a small parking lot straight in the drive, this should be left to handicapped and those with materials & equipment to unload. Others should turn left at the fork and park in the main lot.