STOP PRESS:-  I will try and get some newsworthy stuff in here as soon as I install the drivers for my scanner and get some documentation scanned in

I START ASSISTING ANOTHER TUTOR NEXT WEEK. (23rd Febuary 04)

Im starting as a tutors assistant next week over at Sneinton. Glynis is teaching how to trace your family tree, but some of the students are a little shakey on the internet. Im going to try and help them to find the right sites, as I know my way around pretty good.

This is part of a VEA's (volunteer education advisers) job. This allows the tutor to teach the subject that he or she is there to teach and the assistant can keep an eye on the students ability to use the computers. Hopefully this makes the group run more smoothly.

I enjoy this type of work as it keeps your brain active, as your not sure what sort of mistakes people are going to make. As Iv said before you have to practise all the time or your brain gets rusty and this really gets you thinking at times.

After Easter I might cut back on my courses and spend more time assisting groups as Im running out of courses to take anyway. I was retired last Saturday so I dont need to improve my education for enployments sake. I only play with computers for the challenge; thats why I built this super computer Im using now, I had to find out if I could do it. It works so I must have got it right, it did get my brain boiling at times though. It still has its little quirks but Win XP is a quirky program anyway, so I cant blame the computer, the user is pretty quirky too.

A good course for anyone using a computer is the desktop maintainance course. Not only do you learn how to keep your computer running smoothly, but you learn your way around the inside of your computer too. There is a lot of things you can do for yourself before calling in a computer engineer when things go wrong, as long as you know how to run some simple tests.

Gone are the days of soldering irons and a lot of tools, a computer is just an electronic Lego set and everything just plugs together. If you know how to test your computer you can track down whatever is wrong with it and simply unplug the bit thats gone wrong and put a working one in its place.

I originaly put in to take a computer building course but this got cancelled as the center changed its location and in the new building there wasnt the storage space for all the kit. I started on a maintainance course and soon realised I could build a computer, I admit I kept tapping the tutors brain every week until I got it finished but it got done.

The best thing about building your own comp. is it is not only a lot cheaper than buying a ready made one, but you can build one to suit your pocket. I built mine from new parts that I bought as the came up in sales, but you can always go to computer fairs an buy secondhand parts and still finish up with a working computer very very cheaply. Just get signed up for a maintainance course and find out for yourself how easy it is. 

THREE WEEKS AGO I STARTED ASSISTING ANOTHER TUTOR (24th Febuary 04)

About a month ago Bob Massey the tutor whos brain I tapped whilst building my comp. asked me if I would help him out at "Bestwood Park Community Center" on a Tuesday afternoon. I started over there following week, tomorrow will be my third time over there.

He has a large class, (17 on the books) and everyone doing something different, from raw beginners to some who are quite well on. He takes care of them and I muddle through helping the beginners where I can. I have to do a lot of thinking as they all use laptops which puts me on par with them as I am a desktop man.

Them little keyboards can really screw your head up if your not used to them. They use laptops over at "BANCA" in Sneinton on Monday mornings as well but they run WinXP Home and at Bestwood they run ME and Win95, at home and at "Peoples Center Marple Sq." I use WinXP Pro so I have to untangle my brain about four times a week. Its all good interesting fun though, I enjoy it and at times I think I learn more than I do in class.

With just these two classes Im covering just about every subject Iv learned myself, Notepad, Word, Internet, Scanning and Printing, Photo Repairs, Cropping and Enhancing, and a bit of Paint Shop Pro slung in for good measure. Its a good job theres not too much Paint Shop as I am still learning it myself on Wednesday mornings.

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