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February 15 2012
Joys of LibreOffice and Life-long Learning
Joys of LibreOffice and Life-long Learning
Although I usually write with WordPerfect, this post is being written with LibreOffice text document. There is a good reason. In a little over a week, I will start teaching my new class on downloading major applications for free (and safely) from the Internet. Among the applications I will feature is, of course, the LibreOffice [...]
by Sherman E. Deforest for LockerGnome.
February 09 2012
Are Seniors (This Senior) Obsolete?
Having just returned from a vacation cruise in the Caribbean, I am having re-immersion difficulties, but maybe those difficulties have given me some new insight into effective tutoring of seniors for computer literacy. Certainly these insights have been made even more clear by the links Chris sent me to the videos of his father (a [...]
January 26 2012
Good Deeds and the Evolution of Piracy
Knowing a group of people with similar interests can be more than just a social thing. There are often other benefits as I have once again learned. This week I received an email from one of the other members of a group I attend. He sent a reference to the Hiren’s Boot CD. Although I [...]
January 16 2012
How to Have Effective Club Meetings
The PC users clubs I support have experimented with various formats for meetings with some surprising results. The normal format, probably repeated around the world, is to have a formal presentation by either a guest or volunteer from the group followed by a question and answer period. These sessions use a projector and a group [...]
December 31 2011
Unintended Consequences of Tutoring Seniors
Anyone working with computers and the Internet for any time bumps up against the Law of Unintended Consequences. Geekdom is full of examples. However, we seldom think of it as applying to moral decisions — particularly moral decisions involving tutoring seniors in computer literacy. Yet that has happened again to me an it involves the [...]
December 26 2011
How Do You Define Retirement?
Yesterday, the latest OASIS catalog came with a huge variety of courses designed for, and mostly presented by, seniors. Being human, I quickly scanned through it to find the listing for the new course I will present starting in February. This should be a fun thing. The emphasis is on major computer applications that can [...]
December 15 2011
A Waste of Time, or an Investment?
This week, my senior group ogled over Google Gravity when I demonstrated it to them. If you have not seen this, either click that link or search for it and generally click the first entry that pops up. Not to be a spoiler, this is a surprisingly enchanting experience. It only lasts a few moments, [...]
December 05 2011
Why is My Computer Getting Slow?
Well, it has happened again. A friend told me that he is thinking about buying a new laptop. His current one is about six years old and “getting slow.” For some reason, my senior clients and friends seem to accept as a given that older machines will slow down and get something like cyber-arthritis as [...]
November 14 2011
Frustration with Uncommon Sense
This is being written in LibreOffice on a Linux-only computer, and is being written with some frustration. Not that I am frustrated with either LibreOffice or Linux — I am frustrated with some of my clients. Behind me sits a newly converted computer that started its life as an XP machine. It worked for years [...]
November 07 2011
Oops, No LibreOffice – when Help Files Are Less Than Helpful
This week I had another example of how what I think is simple might be difficult for others. One of my clients purchased a new laptop about a month ago and had me help her set it up while I was at their office doing some work for her husband. The difficulty came when we [...]
October 30 2011
Computer Repair and Good Interactions
A senior client with what I thought was a standard problem surprised me. She lives in another state, but has a house near me that she rents to occasional visitors and keeps for her family to use as a vacation house. In that house, she had an XP computer. She said that on this trip [...]
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October 24 2011
Tool for Repairing Computers and Connections to Billiards
Strange how really simple things can make a big difference. Sometimes your life can be improved greatly with a small expense. In this case, an unlikely chain of events leading to a nice improvement in repairing computers started with our decision to move our stored pool table from an upstairs bonus...
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Continue reading this article on LockerGnome.com
Wanted Features?
The current computer helper column in our local paper features an explanation of making labels, particularly from an address list to send out greeting cards. That got me thinking. Making labels sounds like a useful skill for seniors who want to send out mass mailings like Christmas cards, but in...
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