A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
I’ve been writing this monthly column since February of 2009. One of the things I’ve learned is that it is usually pretty hard to decide what topic to write on each month. January is almost a gimmee topic. Technological New Year’s Resolutions that I’m going to try and keep.
This year I’m going to try to be better at doing my data backups. I’ve got a backup schedule, but sometimes put it off to do other things. I know it’s not wise to do that, but sometimes I accidentally eat a stupid pill.
This year I’m going to try harder to write a monthly column for the newsletter and actually submit it in a timely manner. I know that waiting until the last minute just makes it harder for the editor to complete the monthly bulletin.
This year, I’m going to finally finish organizing all of my electronic media. I’ve got photo albums and pictures stored on several different hard drives. I’m slowly getting them transferred to my big network hard drive. I can probably delete a few thousand pictures and still have plenty left. Do I really need more than one picture of the same scene?
I’m going to do the same thing with my music. I’ve got a lot of CD’s. I think that I’ve ripped some of them four or five times. Eventually, I hope to have them all located in one place.
This year, I’m going to update my website more often. I think I’ll steal some of Tom’s ideas and add some technical columns. I could at least upload my Whatchamacallit and Lagniappe articles. I’ve had WordPress set up for some time, so it is only a matter of doing it.
This year I’m going to quit downloading and installing software that I’ll probably never use. Do I really need another digital photo editor? Will a different media player make my mp3’s sound better? How many file cleaners do I really need? Then of course, there are the games I’ve downloaded, played once and forgotten about.
This year, I’m going to frequently remind all club members to help make our club a little better. It doesn’t take much to do. Just share your experiences with software or hardware you use. You’d be surprised at what you know that someone else doesn’t. Some of my favorite web sites were recommended to me by someone else. This year, we had a presentation on Dropbox. That convinced me to give it a try. Now I use it all of the time.
Why don’t you write a one paragraph article for the Newsletter or Club Web Site. Let everyone know how great or lousy that electronic device you just bought is? Why not post a note on the club forum when you’ve found a sale where all our club members can save a few dollars? Maybe the most important contribution you could make is letting the Club Officers know what topics you would like to hear about at the monthly meeting. Why not make a suggestion on what you’d like to read about in the newsletter?
On a different subject, I’d like to take a paragraph and say how much I enjoyed the 2011 club Christmas meeting. I thought the gifts were all pretty good and my wife is getting a lot of use out of mine. I can’t believe I actually traded for a candle. Can you tell who makes the decisions at my house? As always, the food was delicious and the company was better. The small crowd size was somewhat disappointing.
That’s all for this month. Thanks for reading.