24 April 2013

Stocktake of Club Assets - Wednesday 24 April 2013

 Went to ComputerPals today, and on arrival found the place full, Deborah in the main office with a student doing One on One Windows 8, and trainer Bing Kinsey with three Johns - John Moxon, John Hain and Jon Bayley - updating our computers before the start of the next training term. When I arrived Bing was completely out-numbered by four Johns! Went to take a pic of these four volunteers happily working on computers, and then realised my camera was at home.....so no pic in this post!

Spent an hour in the office area taking down details of our computers, printers, scanners, laminator, paper drill, etc. Now I just have to put all my notes together to complete a detailed Asset Register.

Cleared and balanced the receipt book and cash tin contents, wrote a couple of cheques and then left to pick up my car before the 3-hour limit expired, and bank the deposit at Wentworthville.

No pic, but here is our great looking logo -


19 April 2013

APRIL 2013 MEMBERS MEETING & GENEALOGY SIG

I met Ron Taylor at Wentworthville Station and we boarded the 9.04am train to Parramatta to attend the members monthly meeting.

 I set up my Treasurer's table and immediately had members lining up to pay for courses, as well as joining up a new member Kay, who found us through the local paper and another member. Judy was very happy when she found out Kay had an Apple!




Jon Bayley was demonstrating Windows Photo Viewer and the Film Making SIGroup are videoing his presentation and the Q&A session, to put them on our club's YouTube channel for the benefit of those members who are cleaning up or can't make the meeting.




John Moxon and Dawne Zotz and I did the videoing - John Moxan and Deborah will edit our efforts to a short movie.
The Q&A session was presented by Deborah and our helpful IT specialist Robert Delvecchio of IT Support Guys, it was also recorded on video.

John Hain kept members smiling when he showed another online comedy off YouTube

And....popular and hard-working volunteer Julie Williams was presented with the Mug of the Month award by our President Deborah.

Then it was off to a light lunch before Deborah's afternoon Special Interest Group session on Genealogy. Eight members enjoyed looking for various family history websites, with Deborah leading the way......
Ron and I caught the train home, after a full, enjoyable day at our ComputerPals meetings

17 April 2013

WORKING BEE AT COMPUTER PALS-17 April 3 2013

All our committee members now have access to our Club's Google Calendar. I looked at it yesterday and saw that today was a Working Bee for volunteers to carry out tasks in preparation for the next term's computer courses. I have been planning to undertake a stocktake of the Club assets, so today would be good to stocktake items in the training room while there are no classes.

When I arrived I found our happy volunteers Silvia, Robyn, Florence and Deborah (our President) were busy doing their tasks...and it was morning tea--good timing, for me!



Silvia is our volunteer who carries out various tasks for our Secretary and President-she is very competent and of great assistance to them.




Florence is one of our club's Apple trainers, and
today she answered phone queries and joined up new members.
Florence is with new member Francisca, who
will be attending next our Members Meeting next Friday, so look out for her and make her welcome!


So, while the ladies were working hard, I undertook a stocktake of our assets in the Training Room. I was under desks, up on the stepladder looking in high cupboards. Next time I'll check out assets in the office.
I then balanced the incoming monies and went to the bank. At home after lunch, I entered the deposit details into the club's computerised accounting programme.

16 April 2013

MEMBERS LUNCH AT ROSE HILL - Tuesday 16 April 2013



It's an overcast day in Parramatta today, and we're off to the Bowling Club where we meet up with our Computer Pals members for our regular lunch in the school holidays - no courses to run, so the day is free time for us volunteers.

President Deborah is welcoming popular Gus to his first of these luncheons.


Josie and I brought our grand-daughter Samara along to the lunch.

Sam has attended many of these lunches, when she gets bored out comes her smart phone or Pop's tablet.





Our "All you can eat" lunch is finished, and our group is ready to go home, Margaret, Cassandra, Dawne, Gus and Josie and me.

These lunches are popular with our members, and
enables them to socialise with their computer pals friends. Over 30 attended on this occasion.

15 April 2013

COMMITTEE MEETING - 9 April 2013




Our Committee spending an afternoon working on running and improving our Club. Secretary Margaret (far end) records the minutes on a laptop.
I'm the one behind the camera, standing on a chair.....

11 April 2013

Our Office Assistant Volunteer

Aileen is one of our regular volunteer Office Assistants. She attends to phone and visitor enquiries and books in members for courses.

Best of all, Aileen banks incoming monies for me in my position of Club Treasurer.

Thanks Aileen for the great work you perform for members at our Computer Pals office.

10 April 2013

Creating a Blog - 2nd day

It's our last day of this short course with Trainer Jon, student Keith has started his blog about his convict ancestors, Margaret has started her blog on a forthcoming trip to Europe, Dawne is working on a blog.

Today as a group, we have found out how to customise templates and background colours.
I customised my blog to the bright, blue colours and background that you see now on this blog...and its easy once you are shown how!



We also looked at sharing our blogs on Facebook and/or by email.
Jon also introduced us to a very useful application, Snipping Tool which is a very useful application that snips sections from documents, pictures, charts or webpages.....these snipped sections can be pasted to your blog.

Our happy students pose with Trainer Jon who did a great job in
helping us learn how to
create our own blogs, and how to read other persons' blogs

09 April 2013


Same day, Monday.

After Deborah's Ancestry.com short course earlier, I balanced the Treasurer's cash box, walked down Church Street to the Bank and completed the deposit. Then a quick lunch at Maccas before heading back to Computer Pals for the afternoon course on Creating a Blog with Trainer Jon Bayley. A different mob of students, except for two, Dawne and Keith from the morning course.

Jon had made a blog of his trip to the USA in 2012. It was his first and only blog.

Because Jon was now considered a blog expert, it was decided by the Committee that he was the ideal Trainer to conduct today's course, and so he landed the job of instructing us six students on how to make a blog. He told us he was still trying to get his head around blogging (hopefully).

Jon showed us some examples of blogs from people we knew in Computer Pals, including his and wife Penny's USA adventures.

Then he instructed us in the mysteries of creating a blog using Google's Blogger!

Here he is showing student Mary how to locate the blog starting point on the Dashboard.


We learnt how to Create a Blog, to write a new Post, to view ours Posts, and how to share our Posts - by email or to Facebook......and how to add a photo image or a video.  Finally, how to publish our Blog and Posts.


Anyway, at this first days course we students were happy enough to create our own Blog  (see the above smiling faces of students Margaret and Mary!).

And then, off home we went to further develop our individual Blogs and to return on  for the second and final  half of our Blogging Course where we will show them to Jon and the other students.

This Blog is my effort................

08 April 2013

Short Course - Using Ancestry for family history

Boarded the 9.04am train to Parramatta and then walked to our ComputerPals office and training room where I am a student at our club president Deborah's Short Course (one day, 2 hours) on  Using Ancestry.com.au for family history research. I was one of six students booked for the course.

Club member Keith turned up four hours early for an afternoon course, but agreed to stay to assist Deborah as a Buddy. Keith is very experienced in using Ancestry and his attendance and help was much appreciated by Deborah and us students.

Deborah demonstrating features that search Ancestry data bases.

Deborah is using our new interactive, large screen, as well as our specialised microphone and speaker equipment.



Student Cheryl was very excited when Deborah searched Ancestry and located many details of her family






The regular morning tea provided by the Club is always a welcome break halfway through a course,
with tasty cakes and biscuits provided by the club Catering Officer, Margaret



Deborah's course covered Access to Ancestry.com.au, Creating your own family tree on Ancestry, and How to search for family historical records. Courses using computers to research and construct family history trees are regularly conducted by Deborah and other trainers - interested members should put their name down on the Waiting List, or talk to Deborah at the next Members Meeting

06 April 2013

Today is a sunny Sunday, with an extra hour in bed, thanks to the end of daylight saving.

Back to Jon's manual for a while.


Jon stresses that to use Google Blogger it is necessary to have a Google sign in.

Google's gmail is an excellent service, and gives you access to all of Googles goodies, like Blogger, photos, videos, maps....just by being in Google and clicking on    more   and       even more.

So, before turning up for the course tomorrow, go to www.google.com.au and sign up for gmail. Write down your gmail address and password and bring it to Jon's course. If you cannot sign up now, dont worry, Jon and John will help you at the course.


(oops, I'm still leaarning - posted this and when viewed couldn't read the text against the coloured background....so had to find my way back to edit the blog and change the text colour....now it's ok.

BUT, the date is yesterday!

03 April 2013

SETTING UP THE COURSE

I am a Buddy assisting ComputerPalsTrainer Jon Bayley conduct a short course on Blogging.
Jon has re-designed the course manual and I am checking it out to ensure that when students follow the manual....the documentation is correct, easy to read and it will work.