August 2000
News Letter
A message from the president:
There were 16 members and 2 guests present to hear Todd Updedraff’s presentation on The History and the Future of the Internet. He did an excellent job and we thank him.
Rodney Malkoff has several old 5 1/4" floppies that pertain to our group Library and Bulletin Board. He wants the space back that they have been taking up. If you have any interest in these items, see Rodney or call him at 453-1159.
Check your mailing label, if it is highlighted in blue that means your dues are either due or overdue. Don’t pay them. In a couple of months, we’ll drop you from the membership and if we get down to few enough members, we’ll just disband and then I will need neither a vice- president or a new president.
There are 4 members due in May, 3 due in June and 12 due in July. Just think, we could reduce our membership by 19 if these members don’t pay. It sounds a little like Survivor except there is no $1,000,000 at the end.
Jeff Hobson, who attended our last meeting, has volunteered to speak to us on the subjecgt of the database ACCESS. That meeting will be Thursday August 10, 2000; in whatever room is available that evening. Check signs in the lobby for directions to our meeting. Unfortunately, I won’t be there because I haven’t found out how to be in two different places at the same time. I will be playing Reverend William Arthur Thomas in a 1893 wedding re-enactment at the Seiberling Mansion, a previous engagement.
It will be interesting to see who will conduct the Kokomo PC Users Group meeting, that evening. Remember we need a speaker for the September 14th meeting by the end of the
August 10th meeting.
Larry L. Thompson
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WORD: ADDING IMAGES TO MAILING LABELS
Version 4.x, 95
You know that you can insert images into a Word document. You can also insert images into the header and footer. But how about a mailing label? Why not put an image in a mailing label, too? You can do this, but the method isn't quite as obvious as the method for inserting pictures into documents and headers and footers. Here's what to do.
Locate a BMP file that you'd like to use in your labels. Now choose Tools, Envelopes And Labels. When the dialog box opens, click Labels.
Now click in the Address box. Press Ctrl-F9 to create a field. Enter into the field IncludePicture C:\\windows\\MyOwn.bmp where the picture is in the Windows folder and MyOwn.bmp is the filename. Make sure you use the double slashes (c:\\) as shown for every subdirectory when you enter the filename. Now, while the cursor is still in the field, press F9. The picture will load and appear in the label. If the picture is too large, use the mouse to size it. This insertion technique works best with small, simple figures. For example, inserting a small company logo should work well.
Try to size the picture before you insert it into the label. If the picture doesn't look good at a reduced size, then it certainly won't look good in the label. If you use a black-and-white printer, you need to make sure the picture you intend to insert into the label will print well on your printer.
Ed Danley
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WORD: MAKING A BOOKLET
If you'd like to make a booklet, all you need is Word and some standard 8.5- by 11-inch paper. The trick is setting up the printer and visualizing where the pages will appear.
To make a four-page booklet, you'll fold the paper in half. Give this a try now, before you even think about writing and printing the booklet. Fold the paper and then place it on the desk with the inside of the fold upward. You're looking at page two and page three. The back of page two is page one, and the back of page three is page four.
Now you can create a document. Choose File, Page Setup. When the dialog box opens, click the Paper Size tab and select Landscape. Click OK to exit the dialog box and record the change. Next, choose Format, Columns. When the Columns dialog box opens, click Two columns and then click OK. Choose View, Page Layout so you can see what's going on in both columns. Now write your document, remembering that pages one and four will appear on one Word page, and pages two and three will appear on another Word page.
Let's assume that booklet pages one and four are on Word page one. To print your booklet, choose File, Print. When the dialog box opens, select Pages and type in
1) Click OK to print. Now remove the printed page from the printer and insert it in the paper tray with the printed side up (in most printers). Choose File, Print and select Pages. Type in
2) and click OK to print the other side of the paper. With both sides of the page printed, you can now fold the paper to make your booklet. Note: Not all printers feed the paper the same way. You need to determine how your printer works.
Ed Danley
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New CD ROM drive under warrantyI heard Jerry's plea for help in the last newsletter, so I decided to comeout of retirement and share some of my recent computer adventures with you. It has been a few months since I had this adventure, but I will try to reconstruct all the twists and turns as best I can remember.My son got a new CD ROM, the expansion pack for Roller Coaster Tycoon (RCT). He had pretty well mastered the original game and was looking forward to some new twists. When I loaded the software I noticed that it took quite a few tries to read the disk. It did auto-run eventually and the installation went fine.When we restarted the PC and tried to run the game the new disk would notread. I pushed the drive eject button and ran the disk in and out for severalminutes. The drive would not recognize the disk. When I finally got it to read it was like one in 40 tries. Once the disk was detected the game ran fine until the CD was ejected. Then it took another 40tries to read again.
My son mentioned that the old disk took a few tries (1-3) to load as well. I had alwaysthought he original CD was just dirty or scratched and that was the cause of the problem, but the new CD was pristine. I cleaned both CDs, but had no improvement. I checked all the CD ROM set-up parameters. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I tried several other disks and they all worked fine. I asked my son if there were any other disks that worked poorly. We had one other disk that took about ten tries to load. I noticed that they both had dull matte finishes on the back of the disk. ( I don't believe that this had anything to do with my problem, but it did occupy my thoughts for a good portion of the investigation.)I was stuck. Disks that worked, worked flawlessly. Disks that didn't were consistentlybad.My son was now in a pretty foul mood. I tried the original RCT CD to see if I could at least get the original game to run - sorry the original CD would not work withoutuninstalling the expansion CD. (I had hoped it would just turn off the expansion features.)I tried to read the new CD on my other PC (not even install it, just read it) I got ten out
of ten good reads. Now I knew it was the original PC, not the CD itself. But was it the hardware or the system configuration that was causing the problem? I booted from therecovery diskette that was provided when I bought the PC. The PC booted up in DOS mode and had the CD drivers loaded. It still would not read the new RCT expansion pack CD. It would, however, read all the other CDs.I was reading the Sunday paper and Staples had a $19.99 special on new 40X CD drives,so I went in to get one. Unfortunately, they were sold out by 3pm on Sunday - how nice.My wife said she would go in and get a rain check on Monday. I had my doubts, but told her to go ahead and try. The clerk at Staples said they would put her on a list and call her when one came in. After a week I said "fat chance", after two weeks, I went back to the store to check - no cheap drives were available. The clerk said they were probably a closeout and they would never come in. He was amazed that anyone would even offer a rain check on something like that. Oh well.I had a three year extended warranty on the kids PC, but I couldn't remember when I bought it, I looked it up on my original invoice. Two and a half years ago - cool - that was the first time that timing had ever worked out in my favor on a warranty. (Iam usually half a year out of warranty, not half a year in.)I called Gateway on my special extended warrantee hotline number. I got a fairly fastresponse, no more than three minutes. I checked off everything I had tried and told them I felt that the CD ROM detector was bad. It took me a while to explain thedifference between not detecting the CD and not reading it. They were impressed - they would send me a new one. It would be about 6-10 days.After about four days the UPS man bypassed the house and left a note on thedoor saying he would be back Friday. I stayed home on the Friday he said he would be back and still missed him. (I was in the house all afternoon so he could not have rang the bell. If he knocked, he must have done it with feather.) I was so mad I called his boss at UPS and chewed him out'. They said he would have him swing by later that day. The UPS man came by about 5 o'clock. He rang the doorbell ten times and pounded on the door like hewas trying to kick it in. I opened the door, smiled innocently, and thanked him for thedelivery. He must have gotten an ear full from his boss. (An unfortunate side effect of this event is that the UPS man now tends to accidentally leave about half our packages at our neighbors houses by mistake. I suppose this is the price of being too cute.)The new CD ROM drive arrived in about 4 days. I tried to install it. One of the steps said to push a paper clip into the emergency release hole to open the drive door. I looked and looked and found that there was no emergency release poke hole and the door of the drive would not open. I went ahead and installed the drive anyway. I booted Windows and tried the CD ROM eject command. It just got me a little grunt from the drive and nothing else. I tried various things - like shaking the drive vigorously and calling it a selection of names used by professional technicians - but nothing seemed to work.I called Gateway again and asked them how I was supposed to get the drive to eject. They had me try several things, but were surprised I didn't have an emergencyeject hole. (I believe that at this point they decided I had no idea what I was talkingabout - imagining a user that couldn't find the eject hole.) I asked what they would like to do. They said that my only option was to take it to the Gateway Country Store in Indy. That sounded good to me. She would have them call me to set up an appointment.I didn't want to wait so I called the Gateway Country Store. They told me to bring itdown whenever I wanted to, they would take care of the paperwork. I jumped in the vanand took the whole PC to the Gateway Country Store . I figured they wouldinstall the new drive in maybe 20 minutes and I'm outa there. (I must have beendelusional at that point.) They said they could do the work, but it would be 6 to10 days - Yikes! I asked them about the emergency eject hole. The tech looked at the drive and said "Oh, one of those - and smiled. I left it with them, but nobody in my family was very happy with the plan.I called after a few days to see if they had gotten to it. They said maybetomorrow. I went down to Indy the next day just in case they had gotten to it early. No such luck. I asked them if they could just give me a new drive and I would install it. The lady said it would be no problem and wondered why they didn't do that in the first place. In passing the lady asked it I had tried a CD ROM drive cleaner kit. I said no, and that I would try one She said she would give me my PC back and have Gateway ship me another drive. I packed up my PC and went home to wait.I bought a CD drive cleaner kit and tried it in the original CD ROM drive, there was aminor improvement, but not enough to get the retries down into the single digit range. I sent the second CD ROM drive back to Gateway with the return paperwork viaprepaid UPS.The third drive showed up a few days later. I installed the third drive andeverything worked perfectly. The drive even fit in the PC better that the original.(The eject button is easier to push.) I sent my original drive back to Gateway via prepaid UPS. Life was good. I am a hero in my son's eyes again.Unfortunately for me this was not the end of my story. For some stupid reason I becameintrigued by the UPS tracking numbers I had copied down off the return shipping labels,so about a week later I checked the UPS tracking site www.ups.com. I typed in mytracking numbers and checked their status. My packages still showed that they were still in transit. I expected them to be at Gateway in two or three days. (The lastthing I needed was for Gateway to bill me because UPS had lost them in transit. I made a call to UPS and they said that because they were prepaid by Gateway that Gateway had to initiate a tracking request. I called Gateway and asked them to look into it. They said that the drives had arrived and life was good. So much for UPS tracking.On the whole I am satisfied. I guess my extended warrantee paid for itself. I wish the second Gateway rep had just sent me a second drive, but I am sure she justassumed that I was as stupid as most of her other callers and had botched the install. Oh well.If you have had any bizarre computer adventures or found a good tip pleasehelp Jerry out and send it in. He would be glad for the help and I would be happy to read about someone else's good or bad fortune.Mark PendergastStill hackin' But very busy ....
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Larry Thompson, 457-5622
Treasurer Richard Coop Sr., 459-8731
Member Services Rodney Malkoff, 453-1159
Newsletter Editor Jerry Henry 453-4144
Newsletter Distribution Marcy Young
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Newsletter editor Jerry Henry
jhenry@netusa1.net 453-4144
Keep those articles coming in WordPerfect, plain text, or Word
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USER BUCKS
Mark Pendergast $2
Ed Danley $1
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