C C C C N E W S L E T T E R
CENTRAL COAST COMPUTER CLUB
Santa Maria, California
VOLUME XIX: NUMBER 2 FEBRUARY, 2004
NEXT MEETING: February 17, 2004 6:00PM KNOLLWOOD VILLAGE 4012 S. BRADLEY
PRESENTATION: Gil Vela on "Home Networking and WI-FI"
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| CONTENTS |
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(1) Officers, Helplines, S.I.G.s
(2) President's Corner Spence Stimler
(3) Web Wanderings Gil Smith
(4) Systems S.I.G. Dick Trissel
(5) Digital Imaging S.I.G. Charles Barney
(6) A Computer Story Charles Barney
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OFFICERS HELPLINES
President Juno
Spence Stimler 938-0217 Gilbert Smith 925-3743
spence@pronet.net colgil1@juno.com
Vice President Windows 95/98/ME/XP & VoiceControl
Bill Corning 934-0775 Amy Malicki 925-5780
foster95@juno.com savvyseniors@juno.com
Secretary and Book Librarian Hardware and Windows XP
Barbara Godwin 934-9885 Ray Isenson 937-6938
yung.bag@verizon.net risenson@juno.com
Treasurer AOL
Gerry Miller 934-1396 Frank Maciel 922-2318
2741 Banyan Way frm8198@aol.com
Santa Maria CA 93455
gandamiller@verizon.net
Disk Librarian Visual Basic and Genealogy
Sharon Allen 928-2209 Gerald Miller 934-1396
sallen4060@aol.com gandamiller@verizon.net
Publicity Help With Any Problem
Bill Corning 934-0775 Fred Adams 934-1128
foster95@juno.com fredeadams@verizon.net
Newsletter Editor Digital Imaging
Dick Trissel 937-7572 Charles Barney 937-1240
rtrissel@juno.com Cbarney@lightspeed.net
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (S.I.G.s)
Digital Imaging (6:00pm) Genealogy (6:00pm) Systems (5:45pm)
Charles Barney Gerry Miller Dick Trissel
Cbarney@lightspeed.net gandamiller@verizon.net rtrissel@juno.com
CCCC Membership is $15 for twelve months ($20 family). For this you
receive:
Monthly newsletter
EXTRA4C E-mail Messages
Access to the clubs software library
Disk of the month (usually for $1)
Helpline support
Monthly presentation
Valuable door prizes
Question and answer sessions
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CCCC Page 2 February 2004
PRESIDENT'S CORNER
by Spence Stimler
The Jan 2004 meeting is a wrap. To my mind, it went very well. However,
with people like Dick Trissel, Ray Isenson, Amy Malicki, Gerry Miller,
Barbara Godwin, Bill Corning, Sharon Allen and Past President, Chas.
Barney, how could it be otherwise? All of these people unselfishly give
hours of their time. I'm not sure we give them credit enough and I want to
take this opportunity to tell them how much they are appreciated. I'm sure
I'm not alone in these thoughts. Also, thanks to Barbara Lohman and Sharon
Allen who have volunteered to purchase the cookies for the upcoming year.
Charles Barney's presentation on Digital Resolutions was not only well done
but also very instructive. We learned a lot about the pixel relationship
between camera, scanner and printer. The sizing for emailing was
especially interesting, and since we know how to do it, we can lessen the
download time for recipients of our photos. Now all we have to do is pass
the message on to people who send us their family treasures, so that we can
spend more time looking at the pictures than we do downloading them. For
those of your wanting more information on digital imaging, I would suggest
you attend Charles' 6:00 SIG in the main room.
Speaking of SIGs, Gerald Miller will be hosting one on genealogy in the
library. Ray Isenson felt that the attendance for his hardware sessions
didn't warrant continuing on in that format. If you are interested in
looking up your family using the web, then Gerry's session is for you. It
also begins at 6:00.
Of course, Dick will be leading the Systems SIG in the pool room at 5:45.
It would be helpful if you would email your questions or points that you
would like to have him discuss. You can reach him at rtrissel@juno.com.
Fred Adams conducted the 50-50 drawing followed by the drawing for door
prizes. The absentee losers were: Bob Gallagher, Phillip Smith, Ginny
Carmichael, Bill Reineke, Sylvia Fischer, Howard Williams, and Bernie
Benninger.
Ginny DeBolt and Jim Burress won Flip Album Suite 4.0; Gerry Miller won
Greeting Card Factory Deluxe 2; Ted Hoogenbosch the E-Mail Mouse; Robert
Dixon the CD Storage Tower, and Win Campbell won Who Wants to be a
Millionaire 3rd Edition.
Finally, in our staff meeting, a discussion arose regarding future capital
expenditures and the means of providing funds for same. One solution might
be in having the members download the CCCC Newsletter from the website
rather than printing and mailing it. In so doing, a savings of up to $700-
800/yr. could be realized. Some might not be able to access the website
and of course some mailings would still have to be made. A question arose
that some might have a problem printing the newsletter, so I would like to
ask each of you to get on the website and download and print the Feb. 2004
edition. Dick mails the Newsletter on the Tues before the meeting. In Feb
our meeting is on the 17th and the mailing will be on the 10th. The
Newsletter will appear on the website around Sunday the 8th. We will
devote a few minutes of the Feb meeting to a brief discussion of the topic.
_________________________________________________________________________
IS THIS YOUR LAST CCCC NEWSLETTER?
It is if you haven't paid your dues. You also won't be eligible for door
prizes. To stay on the mailing list, bring your check to the February
meeting or mail it to the treasurer (address on the Officers page).
_________________________________________________________________________
CCCC WEBSITE NEWSLETTERS
You may not be aware the CCCC newsletters are available on the club's Web
site at http://member.apcug.org. On the home page is a link to the
newsletter index from February 2000 to present
(http://member.apcug.org/newsltrs.htm). On each newsletter first page
there are links to the individual articles.
Also, there is a link to the newsletters contents from January 1998 to
present (http://member.apcug.org/content.htm).
_________________________________________________________________________
FEBRUARY PRESENTATION
The February presentation will be Gil Vela speaking on "Home Networking and
WI-FI" (wireless networking). Mr. Vela is a Santa Maria resident with an
impressive professional resume in the area. His PowerPoint slide
presentation will be about 15 to 20 minutes in length followed by a
question period. If you have some particular network questions, please
send them to me (rtrissel@juno.com) now and I'll forward them to Gil.
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CCCC Page 3 February 2004
WEB WANDERINGS
By Gil Smith
A BODE OF GODE COOKERY
I know you are sitting there going "what the heck kind of a title is that?"
Well, I thought the same thing. Welcome to a site about medieval recipes
for your 21st century kitchen. This one is definitely a keeper.
There are tons of recipes on this site, from medieval to renaissance
cooking, and a little something thrown in for you gentlemen chefs. You
definitely want to check out the section "A Word from the Cook" to get up-
to-date info and current news on the site and the cook. I'm off to the
kitchen now to make dowcetts (A delicious sounding tart)!
http://www.godecookery.com/godeboke/godeboke.htm
WHALE NET
Whale Net focuses on whales and marine research. The page comes in four
different languages as well. Whether you are a student, a teacher, or just
curious you can easily enjoy surfing through this site.
I highly recommend taking the Whale Net tour. It will give you a nice
overview of the site features and it is well put together. Follow the
links and have fun. I also think you'll enjoy the satellite tracking
section. Dive in!
http://whale.wheelock.edu/Welcome.html
YO-YO UNIVERSE
First of all, ignore the shopping links (unless you need a new yo-yo), this
site was too cool to pass up. I like yo-yos and hope you all do too. You
can get information on yo-yo events, news tips and tricks, chat, the pro
spinner's club, and information for you parents out there.
I love the tips and tricks section: you can learn how to do the moves, and
if you have a question you can ask the experts. I think my favorite move
is probably "Walk the Dog". What's yours?
http://www.yoyouniverse.com/
INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE
At the Internet Movie Database you can find out just about anything about
any movie, actor, director etc. From the top selling movie at the box
office right down to the most obscure release. This is your complete movie
database, from children's movies to your favorite action thriller.
Surfin' around this site you can check out the movies now playing like
"Daredevil" and "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days", or "The Hours". You can
check out your favorite childhood movie like "Mystic Pizza" or "Goonies".
Check out the Quote section for memorable lines from favorite movies.
And for those of you who love independent films, there is a whole section
devoted just to that. So come on you movie buffs, check it out.
http://us.imdb.com/
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CCCC Page 4 February 2004
SYSTEMS S.I.G.
by Dick Trissel
After a three-month hiatus I thought there would be a large attendance with
many questions and problems. I guess the State Of The Union speech kept
some home. Actually, the reduction in attendees to the SIG (23) made the
room a little more comfortable. It will probably continue that way with
Charles having an excellent Digital Imaging SIG, and Gerry starting a
Genealogy SIG in the library.
There were a lot of questions and advice. My advice was to re-iterate the
caution about not putting labels on compact discs. It is being discovered
that the adhesive can damage the data layer, which is directly under the
top surface of the disc. Of course, everyone knows by now not to try to
remove a label--it strips the data layer off the disc.
Also, you should not write on the disc where there is data beneath that
area. It is safe to write on the clear portion of the hub, and toward the
outer edge where there is no data directly below it. On most CDs you can
see the data from the bottom side as a gray area.
I also discussed the four methods of constructing a dual-boot configuration
with Windows 98 or ME, and Windows XP. In three of the methods you must
have at least two partitions on the hard drive. The fourth method requires
two hard drives. The easiest to use is to install Windows 98/ME in one
partition, and then install Windows XP in the other partition. Windows XP
will automatically create a dual-boot configuration in which you choose the
operating system at computer turn-on or restart. This only works with a
fresh installation of Windows XP--it won't make the dual-boot if it is an
upgrade installation. This method has the advantage of giving you
visibility into both partitions at the same time with Windows Explorer; if
XP is in a FAT32 system, not NTFS.
The other two methods, using two partitions, requires using the program
PartitionMagic (which you can use to make the partitions), and/or BootMagic
(which comes with PartitionMagic). In either method you put the operating
systems in their partitions. Then either install BootMagic to get dual-
boot capability (with visibility only in the active partition); or use
PartitionMagic to manually select the active partition. If you also
"unhide" the other partition, you will have visibility into both partitions
at once. Again, if XP is in a FAT32 system, not NTFS.
The fourth method simply puts each operating system on separate hard
drives. You then select the boot drive from the BIOS screen during boot-
up. It requires you know how to select the BIOS setup screen and edit the
BIOS.
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CCCC Page 5 February 2004
DIGITAL IMAGING SIG - January '04 Recap
By Charles Barney
I was pleased to see about 30 of you who turned out for my very first SIG
at the January meeting. Thank you for your patience while the group's
format is in flux. With your continuing participation and suggestions, I'm
sure that we will find a general structure that suits the majority of
members.
Some of you came prepared with questions that you were hoping to find
immediate answers to. Although I did attempt to address your questions as
best as possible within the time frame, my focus at the first meeting was
primarily on getting to know you and finding out what your interests are.
About 80 percent of you indicated that you owned a digital camera; with
some, your second or third one. When queried, nearly all the digital camera
owners indicated that they wanted to learn more about their cameras. To
these folks, I passed out a "home work" assignment to complete before the
next meeting. This consisted of a questionnaire type form to list your
various camera features, modes, settings, etc. which requires most of us to
study the manual (ugh!) that came with our camera. Although manual reading
is something that a lot of folks avoid like the plague, I know of no better
way to increase your photography skills several-fold in a relatively short
period of time.
With what remained of our 45 minutes, I demonstrated the Red-Eye Brush Tool
in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. As you may know, red-eye is a common
problem that occurs when bright light from the camera flash illuminates the
blood vessels of a person's retina and is reflected back into the camera
lens, producing a most unflattering red glow effect in the subject's
pupils. This tool produces a very natural-looking correction by employing a
selective color replacement technique. The offending red tint is replaced
with black while preserving the existing highlights in the eye.
Next time I will attempt to be more thorough in answering your questions
and, time permitting, demonstrate another useful photo-editing technique.
You can find my contact information listed in the Helplines section on the
front of this newsletter. Call or email me between meetings if you have
questions, suggestions or what have you. Do keep in mind that I work full-
time on weekdays, but am available at most any other times.
______________________________________________________________________
NEW GENEALOGY SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP
Gerry Miller will be starting a new Genealogy S.I.G. at the February 17
meeting. It will start at 6:00pm in the Library. Members, guests and old
closet skeletons are welcome.
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CCCC Page 6 February 2004
A COMPUTER STORY
By Charles Barney
A few weeks ago, I decided to give my system a major upgrade and purchased
a new processor (Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz), RAM (2 gigabytes DDR400) and a state-
of-the-art motherboard built to handle all this. I had gone to PC Club in
Goleta, a trendy computer store with bright young employees. They had
recommended this particular combination of components whole-heartedly and I
trustingly agreed.
After carefully installing the new gear into my old Comstar box at home, I
anxiously flipped the power switch. Nothing. Well, the power light did come
on for about half a second and then nothing.
OK, let's read the directions this time. Geese, I'm sure that the
documentation was written by a highly-educated and well-meaning Chinese
person, but I found it somewhat difficult to follow since it was incomplete
and in very BAD English.
A few times through the instructions and a study of the diagrams revealed
that I had missed an additional second power connection to the motherboard
- a small plus/minus 12 volts plug (never seen that before). Guess
what...my power supply didn't have that particular plug in its tangle of
wires and connectors.
I removed the board and went out hunting for the illusive power connector.
I found success at the first place I stopped! At Abro Computers, as soon as
I showed the tech my board he says "oh, yea" and quickly retrieves the
needed connector from the back of the shop. "Great" I said, "how much do I
owe you?" "Nothing" he says, "we got a ton of 'em laying around." So,
things are finally starting to go my way!
With the motherboard now reinstalled and all the proper power connections
in place, I once again flipped the switch. Things got a little further this
time. The BIOS and video info screen came up and the RAM count began before
the computer spontaneously reset itself. Several attempts later, I was
totally stumped. New motherboard out, old one in. At least I'm no worse off
and can still use the computer.
Next day, old board out and new one in. I hauled the whole business back to
PC Club. The tech there figures out that my 300 watt power supply is
inadequate for my configuration. He says that each gigabyte of this type
RAM alone takes 100 watts (that's 200 just for the memory), which doesn't
leave much for the rest of the system. OK, so I buy and have him install a
new 400 watt power supply. The system powered up fine and passed POST
(Power On Self Test) on his bench test (that's as far as he went). He did
say as a parting word of advice that "you may have to repair your operating
system because of the new hardware." Huh? Repair? He assured me that all I
had to do was insert my XP install CD and select "Repair" and everything
would be fine.
Well, the tech was right; XP absolutely would not start. After the Windows
logo came up it would just reboot - every time. So, I took his advice and
booted from the XP install CD. Repairing the operating system is not a
straightforward process I discovered. You have to go through a number of
steps in Setup just like you were doing a completely new installation, but
choose "repair" at a certain point (who would have guessed?). OK, there it
is! I click on it, confirm "yes" and then trust the great Microsoft to
repair my computer. Poof! It reboots again. Try again, same thing. Dang!
In case you were wondering, yes, I'd been through just about everything in
the CMOS setup to try and find a solution. New board out, old one back in.
Went to the manufacturer's web site and searched the support areas and read
all the FAQs. Conclusion: download a revised "bugs fixed" BIOS program and
copy to floppy disk for "flashing" the BIOS with the new code. Now flashing
the BIOS, as you know, is a potentially very dangerous activity that can
easily turn your motherboard into just another piece of electronic junk.
Yet, I was undaunted.
With the updated BIOS file now copied to a floppy, I took out the old board
and put the new one back in. On this board, the flash utility is accessed
from the CMOS setup, so any installed operating system is circumvented -
pretty cool. Well, upon running the flash program it read the file on the
floppy and gave a "BIOS ID Check Error" message and refused to go any
further. Maybe I had jumped too many revisions ahead, as the web support
site had vaguely cautioned about. The above process was repeated several
times, trying all the BIOS updates they had, all with the same result -
ZIP!
At this point, I was contemplating taxidermy as a replacement hobby.
However, on a long-shot hunch, I switched the RAM on the new board with the
RAM from my old one. Voila! Much better now! I was able to boot from the XP
CD and "repair" my operating system installation (like watching paint dry).
After all was done, the computer did the necessary restart and all appeared
to be going fine. The Windows logo proudly came up and the startup music
played. The desktop was coming back just as I had known it. All my icons
were there! Then, as if I hadn't known better, XP informs me that it must
be activated within 30 days and would relentlessly nag me until I did!
I had heard that replacing a number of hardware devices could trigger XP
into activation mode, since it thinks it's installed on a different
computer. OK, I wasn't trying to pirate the software; just needed to
straighten things out with Microsoft so I could legitimately use my
licensed copy. So I chose to start the activation process. It first looked
for an Internet connection (it had been really slick activating online
before, just a few seconds and done!). But since "repairing" my OS had
resulted in losing many of my program configuration settings, no Internet
connection was currently available. Alternately, the activation program
offered a phone number to call up Microsoft and presumably to plead my
case. After taking some deep breaths, I dialed the given 800 number.
To my surprise, I didn't get a real person on the other end, I got a
talking computer! The voice sounded to me like a female version of the
robot on the old "Lost in Space" TV series. But, she was good and guided me
capably through the activation process. I was instructed to read the 28-
digit code supplied by XP and then hear her speak it back to confirm -
check. It took about 5 seconds to process the information before the
computer voice came back on and recited the 42-digit Confirmation ID which
I had to type in the appropriate boxes that appeared on my screen. I then
read back all the numbers for my helpful computer gal to confirm. Got it on
the first take! XP was now officially activated. This part actually went
pretty well. And I didn't even have to try and convince somebody that I was
telling the truth, "cross my heart and hope to die."
OK, so things were almost there but there still remained the problem with
the RAM. I paid a lot for those 2 gigabytes of ultra-fast memory chips and
by gosh, I wanted them to work! Gotta try everything. I'm not (if you
haven't already guessed) one to easily give up. Tried swapping the old RAM
with the new again and XP would inevitably crash at random times. This was
the first time I ever saw XP brought to its knees.
From my year or so experience using XP thus far, I had figured it to be
invincible. But there it was, albeit a prettier shade than I recalled it
ever being, the Blue Screen. What's more, this was no ordinary Win 98 Blue
Screen of Death, this was the "new and improved" Blue Screen of Death.
Whereas the old OS used to just lock up tighter than a (your vision here),
XP attempts to save all the information it can for possible later
debugging. No, it's not locked up, it's working hard still. With the
ominous message "dumping physical memory to disk" on the screen, it grinds
away on the hard drive for about 10 minutes and ends up saving
approximately 1.5 gigabyte totally useless file in the Windows directory
called MEMORY.DMP. Thank you very much.
It didn't take too many repetitions of this futile exercise for it to lose
its fun factor. Had I overlooked anything? Of course! The drivers contained
on the included motherboard utilities CD! I couldn't believe I missed that.
This will surely straighten things out. New RAM out, old RAM in. Pop in the
utilities CD and auto-run begins to start the interface. About 3 seconds
into startup, the program says that it "has encountered an error and must
shut down." Why am I not surprised at this? Check CD drive, all working
fine. Attempt to run utilities program from command line, same problem. Bad
disk or bad program? I went back to the manufacturer's web site and
downloaded the needed drivers. Installed them, no trouble. Did it solve the
RAM crash problem? NO.
Alright, I'm open to suggestions here. Normally, contacting tech support is
something I only do as a very last resort and I was just about out of
resorts. I filled out a help request form on the board maker's web site in
exhausting detail. They wanted to know practically every detail of my
configuration, which required partial disassembly of the system to be able
to read model numbers, brand names, etc. I did the best I could. Finally, I
typed in a description of my problem and what I had already tried. The
message was successfully sent off to the tech support team. A thank you and
an assurance that my problem would soon be solved message was displayed
along with another that said "Due to the holidays, tech support personnel
are on vacation and that it might take longer than normal to receive a
response." Sure, no problem. Do I look impatient?
It was only about 24 hours until I received an email from another highly
educated Chinese fellow named Lawrence. He had a nearly equal mastery of
the English language as the documentation writer I mentioned earlier. I
did, however, manage to decipher his message. Two things were suggested.
One - download and install an even newer BIOS update file. Two - they
recommend using RAM only from certain makers (the better, more expensive
ones). I tried the former suggestion, again flirting with disaster by
flashing my BIOS. No help there. Crashes still persisted.
Only one thing was left to do. Pack it all up and take it back to PC Club
again. This time I insisted the RAM they sold me was bad and that they put
in some better quality stuff. Either make it work or give me a refund on
everything, I told them. Fair enough they said, but they were out of the
better RAM and it was on back-order. So I left the system at the shop for
three days until they informed me that it was "ready to go." No charge.
Turns out they put in the very same brand of RAM, but insisted that it was
made by a different manufacturer. The other maker was apparently having
some quality control problems.
With the upgraded computer back home and whole again, I've been putting it
through its paces without much trouble so far. Is it finally fixed? The
jury is still out...
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