President Milt Hull welcomed all to the March General Meeting of the Sacramento PC Users Group. It was threatening to rain and thanked the audience for braving the weather.
Roy Korb, the volunteer who obtains small items that augments the monthly pool of door-prizes, spoke to the audience expressing how nice it is to out shopping every month spending someone else's money. He mentioned that it's somewhat difficult to find something new all the time, so if there are any suggestions, please let him know. Roy brought to the door-prize collection a mystery box. He said it was oriented more to the homeowner than the computer geek.
Tonight, the SPCUG will elect the Board of Directors for 2003. Ken Hopkins, Elections Committee chair, informed the membership of the current slate of officers. Last minute changes puts the list of candidates in the following positions: President - Milt Hull; Vice-President - Tim Cardozo and Brian Smither; Treasurer - Don Frieze; and Secretary - Dennis Duffy. The voting went as expected with Tim Cardozo elected to the Executive Vice-President position and Brian Smither elected to the Vice-President position.
Most candidates chose not to speak before the membership, but Tom Anderson (who had withdrawn as a candidate for VP earlier) made an impassioned plea encouraging others to get involved by performing in the leadership positions. Tom apologized for withdrawing his candidacy as he has far too much other work on his schedule at the moment.
Milt Hull spoke of his great idea: have a few individual members bring their kids to the meeting, get them involved, run for president and other positions, then they will get all their buddies to come, and eventually the group will have a whole new generation of members. Milt's been a member for a long time and a lot of things have changed over the years. Milt would welcome new blood, to see someone come in and start things all over again - change things to follow a new vision.
Brian Smither addressed the audience by revealing that participation in the Steering Committee need not be for altruistic reasons. Being one of the Officers has its rewards. We get first crack at all the free stuff software publishers and hardware vendors give us. The membership doesn't see all the activity that goes on at the Steering Committee meetings. Yes, there's a lot of boring talk, but there's also a lot perks! High visibility volunteer activities with the Sacramento community, getting your name (and business) networked around the high-tech industry, and many other events and activities you might enjoy.
Brian was originally nominated for Secretary, a position he held for the past two years, and was convinced to run for one of the Vice-President slots. He said the Vice-President is "one heart beat away from the President" not being able to do his job (more like, "one emergency site visit for a server reboot"). As such, the VP's need to be fully aware of the current activities, policy decisions, and committee deliberations so that the business of the Group can continue uninterrupted. He said that being Secretary is the easiest of the elected positions. So, Brian said he is reluctantly but energetically accepting the nomination for Vice-President.
President Milt Hull routinely writes two columns for Sacra Blue, "President's Thoughts" and "Tech Talk". He, too, has been extremely busy and for the first time since the initiation of those columns, he could not find the time to write for March's issue. He promises his articles for April will be published.
Brian Smither, Editor-in-Chief for Sacra Blue, countered that he published in Milt's stead guest articles written by the President of the Capitol PC Users Group and Brian wrote up an experience he had with a Windows XP machine. CPCUG went through a major re-organization based on a professional audit and suggested business plan. Their President gave a presentation at COMDEX 2002 outlining their past predicaments and innovative solution. Brian's experiences with WinXP (and Windows 2000 for that matter) involved the presence of phantom network cards and the procedure he developed for removing them.
Brian also claims he's been busy and as such, he apologizes for this month's Sacra Blue being only half complete. There are many large areas of white space typically filled with random but interesting tidbits of computer information. All of the main articles and columns are included and the issue is readable as it is. He promises to finish it within the next couple of weeks.
Milt received a package from Microsoft containing their Microsoft Plus! Digital Multimedia Edition in a DVD-like case. It seems one of tabs that secures the disk to the case had snapped and the CD was loose. Milt was afraid that the CD would get scratched and so he put it in a CD envelope and threw the case away. A couple of days later, he went to install it and up pops a screen asking for the activation code - located on the back of the case. He went "dumpster diving" - which is not a pretty sight, wearing a suit and tie. Anyway, he found the number but has still not had time to actually explore what Plus! is all about.
A New Benefit for Members
Dennis Duffy, SPCUG Training Coordinator, announced:
In the many months I have worked in this position, I have tried to find a solution to provide our members with the training they wish for free or at a reasonable price. All of us can use training to accomplish the next computer task we undertake or job skill we may need. The cost to develop training materials for all applications and hardware is too great to give any significant training tools away free.
The SPCUG PC Jamboree training sessions were very well attended but required too great a volunteer commitment to continue on a regular basis. The New User tutorials are well attended but must be focused on beginner issues. We have not had any way of providing comprehensive application and technical training to our members until now.
At one time we had a pretty comprehensive "SPCUG Benefits" column in eBlue and Sacra Blue. It listed magazine subscriptions from Herb Goodman, discounts at local computer stores, hardware or software specials for various periods of time and such. I believe that some members paid their dues in order to take advantage of these special SPCUG member benefits.
Unique membership benefits create and help keep members.
I see that now we just have what Bob Click has in his Orlando User group column in Sacra Blue. This is a great link but we need to find volunteers to work on finding other member benefits and helping to keep this column up to date.
I have negotiated a very deep discount with New Horizons Computer Learning Centers on behalf of SPCUG. They are a well-respected world-wide computer training company. They have actively supported our group for years through the donation of SIG meeting locations at their Sacramento Learning Center. I believe that their one price, annual fee, on-line and instructor led on-line training is just what our members can use, whenever and wherever the need arises.
The April 9 Steering Committee meeting approved a new continuous listing in the SPCUG Benefits column for our new Education and Training Partner, New Horizons.
New Horizons will present and demo their on-line training services at the April 16th meeting and explain the special deal I have arranged for SPCUG members. This is a very deep and unique discount for us. They will be giving door prizes and providing special demo passwords to members.
Q&A
Q: I am getting a "Error 645 - Dialup Networking cannot complete connection to the server." I have unloaded and reloaded most of the networking components including adapters, protocols, and services. I get the same error on both an internal modem and an external modem.
A: Pull up the Properties window for the dial-up connectiod causing this problem. On the Server Types tab (Windows Me: on the Security tab), click to clear the "Require encrypted password" check box, and then click OK. This comes from Microsoft Knowledgebase article 199780.
Q: My Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse has been getting slower and slower and eventually it no longer moves the mouse cursor. Uninstalling and re-installing the drivers does not fix it. Putting in fresh batteries also does not fix it.
A: Some comments from others who are wholly dissatisfied with this mouse:
Moving the mouse around constantly seems to work well. The problem comes into play whenever you let it sit for just a couple of seconds. The LED goes into a "low power" mode and begins flashing at about 1Hz. Since the sensor can only detect movement when the light is reflecting on it, there is an inconsistent lag anywhere from 0-1 second after you start moving the mouse.
When I bought this mouse I assumed the "Intelligent Touch" feature might be a misleading gimmick. But now that I have experimented with it, it seems that it really is fundamental to the design of the mouse and may be related to the problem you are experiencing.
If you take your hand off the mouse and wait 3-4 seconds, and then put a finger on the silver tail emblem and push it away from you, you'll find you can push it all the way across your mouse pad at 1-2" per second or faster and the cursor will not move. Same thing if you put your fingers on the top of the mouse, and push it - mine, I can push rather quickly in any direction and the cursor does not move. If you put your finger on one of the buttons only, it seems to not to respond.
On the other hand, if you put your hand on the mouse in a natural way the mouse is immediately awake. Some experimenting suggests that if your hand touches the silver case or silver buttons at the same time as another part of your hand touches a part of the "soft touch" material on the sides, the mouse wakes up (but there may be more to it).
So it is possible you are pushing the mouse before you have put your hand on it in such a way that the Intelligent Touch feature has kicked in. Also possible is that yours is defective, or at least somewhat less sensitive than it is suppose to be.
