President:       Mike Taphorn
Vice:               Jim Tomlinson
Secretary:      Carlos Mariles

Treasurer:       Charles Wallace
Membership Chair; JC Spelce
Editor: Dennis McMurtrey

Librarian;      Jason Whitener
Webmaster: Steven Gilroy
Mitch Graves

M.A.L:             Jerry Casteel
M.A.L:             Chuck Hill
M.A.L:             Bob Havlin

 JANUARY DEMO IS...
SWAP MEET AND COMPUTER FIXING EXTRAVAGANZA
 by Mike Taphorn / GCC President
 

I want to start off by wishing all of you a....

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

I hope that all of you enjoyed the club in 2005 and that 2006 brings many good memories, a few good stories and a lot fun with your friends at the club...

HOLIDAY PARTY = FUN

Thanks to all of you that helped make the party a success. We all had a good time, especially those that stuck around long enough for Dennis to get out the family friendly movies that he found on the Web. I truly appreciate that all of you took the time to share a meal with your computer club friends and family during the holidays. My brother was in town from South America and he enjoyed the party with us. I hope your holidays went well and that you got a bunch of new toys to show off at the January Meeting.

PROGRESSIVE RAFFLE

Our progressive raffle was up to $300 and we kept drawing tickets until somebody drew the Joker out of the deck. Not sure who it was, but, it wasn't me. Hey! Wait a minute... Did you all came to the party to win the money??

Oh well, it doesn't matter, at least you came. I think everyone liked the new GCC flashlights. Every time I use mine, I'm amazed at how bright it is.
Remember, they are not throwaways like the white ones. The Blue ones have replaceable batteries and tiny little switches that keep them on and help you avoid getting thumb cramps from squeezing them. The Raffle Jackpot will be reset to $100 for this month. Make sure you get your tickets so you have a chance to win...

HOLIDAY PARTY PRIZES

Let me know what you thought about the prizes. I thought we did pretty good. If you have any suggestions for prizes, let me know and I'll see if we can get the stuff you like...

JANUARY DEMO IS...
SWAP MEET AND COMPUTER FIXING EXTRAVAGANZA

We are going to see if you got enough stuff to push some of your old stuff out into the garage or into boxes in the corner of your computer room. If you have anything that you need to move out of your house to make room for the new stuff, please bring it to the meeting. We need to make sure we have enough stuff to make the swap meet fun for everyone. If everyone brings a couple items, we should be good to go. If you have stuff that should be throw out, bring it too. If it doesn't sell, there is a big dumpster behind the hall. If you have stuff that you would like to sell that still works and you think someone would like it, bring it...

I think we're going to start an e-mail chain letter that outlines what everyone is bringing.... Watch your e-mail this week...

CD CLEARANCE SALE

Jason is going to do a little cleanup work on the library and everyone in the club will benefit...
He is going to have a sale on the older CD's and the bulk packages that he is going to offer are going to be hard to resist. Make sure you check out his deals on CD's this month...

See you at the meeting,
Mike
 

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 GCC Dec. 2005 Minutes 
 GCC Minutes
 by  Carlos Mariles/ GCC Secretary

 

GCC Dec. 2005 Minutes

President Mike Taphorn opened the meeting at 6 PM and welcomed the general membership, new members and new guests.  He explained in detail the agenda for the night and dispense with the old minutes and the meeting. The membership requested to move to the next room tables so the feast could commence. Mike agreed and closed the meeting and wished everyone a happy Holidays.

The next meeting will be held at the same place at 7 PM on Jan 18, 2006. Until then wishing you and yours happy Holidays and the best of time.

Till then, your Sec.
Carlos B. Mariles

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 DVD Free Rentals 
 McDonald's Redbox
 by  Jason Whitener/ GCC  Librarian

Hello all,

I've been keeping up with the McDonald's Redbox phenomenon, and apparently as of Jan. 15, all DVD rentals will be due back by 7:00 p.m. the next day. For most that won't affect anything, but those of us that work evenings may be affected more. It got this info from the automated Redbox email. Apparently I put in my email at one rental station, so I just got this info today. Also, the best redbox code site that I've found so far is: http://www.insideredbox.com/index.php/codes
They are even setting up a list based on the region that the code is active in. Several of the later ones seem to be dying out.

Legacy… Building a Legacy… Continuing a Legacy…. Liquidating a Legacy….

Admittedly, an odd way to start this months' newsletter article, but after the BOD meeting a couple of weeks ago, it got me to thinking. What I've been trying to do with the club library is to continue a legacy of good quality, well documented, programs and files that our club members use and find benefit from every day. I'm trying to follow the same example of others in this position, so I've instituted the policy of including updates to commonly used programs on each months disk, and then using the remaining space for whatever I've decided to make the disk focus on for the disk release that month. I'll continue to follow this plan for the foreseeable future. I also plan on either updating the listing books or revamping them altogether. The problem I've had is that no one has retained a digital copy of the book masters, so it would fall to me to reproduce the digital layout, and that's a major undertaking in itself. I also am working update the website listing of available software from the library. I've been in this position for the last year and have released about 10 disks into the library, not counting the demo captures that Chuck Hill has made available, and none of them have been updated online. This is going to be my next focus for updating.

Liquidating a Legacy. It was brought up at the last BOD meeting that we should liquidate the club library. Mike asked me how the club library was moving, and I said that we have many disks that I'd not sold a single copy of since taking over as club librarian. He suggested that rather than have me lug over 75 pounds plus the duplicator every month, that we'd have a liquidation sale. So this is what we've decided to do: At the next club meeting, you can get club library disks #1-#50 for $20.00, and then from #51 to last months disk for an additional $10.00. So for only $30, you can get the complete club library to look through and use. At the normal rate of $1.00 per disk this is over a 50% savings. This includes all the monthly disk releases up to last month, as well as the demonstration captures, Linux disks, etc. I'll bring several disk spindles with the disks placed in order and ready for easy pickup. If you are a newer member or have never dug into what the club library has to offer, please give this your consideration. There are tons of possibilities on these disks that you may not even be aware that are there. Just check out the old club website listing for partial updates, and previous newsletter articles for some lists of what I have released on my disk of the month releases.

Well, I guess that's all for now and I'll see you at the meeting on Wednesday.

Thanx,

Jason Whitener


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 Firefox freezing Up?
 by Mitch Graves / Mitch's Corner

A few days ago my Firefox 1.5 was freezing the system for a couple of seconds on loading each page. I have since run Firetune for Firefox which I obtained from:
http://www.totalidea.com/freestuff4.htm
After running this utility I have virtually no detectable lag when using Firefox. I can certainly recommend this utility. 

Microsoft's "Product LifeCycle" sets a series of end dates for each product;
support is gradually withdrawn, stepwise, until the product reaches "end of life," when all support is terminated.
XP Home is scheduled to become unsupported at the end of this year: on Dec 31 2006.
XP Pro will continue to be supported in ongoing security updates until 2011.
Of course, Microsoft has played with the end dates in the past but postponed it due to customer pressure.

As you may know public libraries can set up computers so that users can have a ball with them,
test software, and so on -- but on rebooting, all the changes vanish and the system is back to a clean start. I included the name of a Vancouver, BC company which makes software capable of doing this.Now Microsoft is making equivalent software available for free.
It's written up in PCMag's website under the title "Create an Indestructible Shared PC":
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1892666,00.asp .

Changing most drive-letter assignments is easy, but changing the *boot* drive letter is a bit harder. But it can be done. The official how-to from Microsoft is here,
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188

Microsoft's metasite is aggregating all the new FREE "Live" tools--- over a dozen, and counting--- into one place:http://ideas.live.com/

Free, Powerful Sound Recorder/Editor
Here is one that is open source and can be found at:  http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
There are a TON of features found in other software like Sound Forge and it has an easy to use interface."Audacity" also isn't just an editor; it's also a recorder, letting you easily replace the anemic little sound recorder that ships with Windows.

Later, Mitch

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 Yup its 2006: 
 Just when you get use to writing 2005!
 by Dennis McMurtrey / GCC Newsletter Editor

This is where I'm suppose to put some really useful info. But since I've sent out so many emails I'm gonna give it a rest LOL. See you all at the swap meet. OH, don't forget to use the poll on the right side of the newsletter! - Dennis

 Jackpot: $100.00
 With 53 cards in the deck [ Cause we use the joker ]
 Get your jackpot tickets 1 for 1.00 / 10 for 5.00

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