A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
I’ve been writing this monthly column for almost a year now. 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’ll try to 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 organize all of my pictures and picture albums. I’ve got photo albums in three places on the internet. I’ve got pictures stored on four different hard drives. 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?
This year, I’m going to devote more time to my other hobbies. I haven’t had my telescope pointed at the sky in a long time. My model railroad has been gathering dust for a month or so. Oh well, at least I haven’t missed any SWLACUG meetings.
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 copy my Whatchamacallit articles.
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 forgot 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 the 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. I didn’t sign on to Facebook until it was a meeting topic. Now I spend quite a bit of time using the service. Why don’t you write a one paragraph article letting everyone know how great or lousy the flash drive you just bought is? Why not post a note on the club forum when you’ve found an interesting sale. Maybe the most important contribution you could make is letting the club know what topics you would like to hear about at the monthly meeting. Why not make a suggestion on what you’d like to see articles about in the newsletter?
On a different subject, I’d like to take a paragraph and say how much I enjoyed the 2009 club Christmas meeting. I thought the gifts were all pretty good and I am getting a lot of use out of mine. As always, the food was delicious and the company was better.
That’s all for this month. Thanks for reading.