Beginners’ SIG, Important Announcement
| July 5, 2023 | ||
| 1:00 pm | to | 3:00 pm |
From Steve Morrison, Pflugerville Community Church:
The August 2nd Beginner SIG has been cancelled but the meetings will resume on September 6th with a new name, new leader and new focus. First, let me say how very much I appreciate the decades of service that Kelly has devoted to Central Texas PC Users and moving forward, hope he will share of his expertise & participate as his schedule permits. It is both sad and exciting for this transition; and we hope to continue on with the same integrity. Kelly enjoy your new freedom as we assume the watch. Now here are a few words on where we’re heading – your input is very much Welcomed…
The new name is “Ask a Tech” It’s a Group of Seniors for Seniors who gather to learn about how technology can enhance our lives. We will focus on what devices can do for us and provide details of operation & available resources. Here is what you can expect at a typical meeting …
* What’s Hot – What’s Not
* App of the Month (**)
* Office Application Lesson – Word, Spreadsheet, PowerPoint
* Humorous & Light Hardhearted
* Valuable Resources
(**) The September 6th, 1p-2:30p meeting will deal with photos – You’ve captured them, now what? As we look at how to improve the quality on taking pictures, how move them, make safe copies, edit them and make them accessible to those you want to share them with. Check us out in person at the same location, date and time: Pflugerville Community Church on the first Wednesday of the month, 1p-2:30p. And you can still join the meeting via Zoom. Details on logging in to Zoom will be forwarded–It’ll probably be the same as before.
We are conducting a survey of topics that are of interest to cover in future meetings; if you would like to receive a survey to provide your input and to register to receive future meeting announcements, please send an email to 50Plus@pc-church.org with the subject “Ask a Tech” and we will listen to your suggestions and add you to the mailing list. Just as in the past, your email will not be given to anyone else nor used for any other purposes. I look forward to hearing from you, feel free to email or text me with ideas & thoughts.
Steve Morrison
1214 Pfennig Lane, Bldg 2
Pflugerville, Texas 78660
stevemorrison@pc-church.org
512-577-3253
And now this from the Old Guard:
Beginners’ SIG Members,
All things must come to an end and the July 5th Beginners’ SIG meeting was my last as the BSIG leader. Don, Steve and I have enjoyed helping people over the years to better understand and better use their computers. Old timers may recall that I took the reins of the BSIG from Dori Nanry in April 1988. At that time the BSIG met on the 2nd Saturday morning of the month at a privately owned computer school called Productivity Point, Inc. It was located in north Austin in the office park at the SW corner of Shoal Creek Blvd. and Anderson Ln. and just south of the Coco’s restaurant. We’d walk over to the BSIG meeting after the social breakfast. Pat Macken was in charge of PPI at the time. He also happened to be the president of the Computer Club of Austin, then called the Central Texas PC Users Group or PCUG. Per my (not so good) recollection, the PCUG was founded in 1982 by John Dierdorf who worked at IBM. IBM had just introduced its IBM-PC which forever changed the world of personal computers. Prior to that the much smaller “hobby computer” market revolved around Apple IIs, Altairs, Tandys, Sinclairs and others. But IBM gave PCs respectability. And they were a big leap in capability from their predecessors too. I joined the PCUG around 1985 after picking up a flyer at its booth at the Austin Computer Fair in the Palmer Auditorium. I didn’t ask any questions at the booth but I read the flyer later and decided that this club was just what I needed. I had resigned a few years before from Applied Research Labs where I spent considerable time working with DEC PDP-11 minicomputers and various attached hardware. I got all the computering I wanted at work and so I had no interest in PCs during my free time. But I watched in amazement as the PC industry grew.
After ARL I did electronic consulting and had one gig where I needed a computer to control some electronic instruments. Minicomputers were still too pricey at $10k+ but these cool new IBM-PCs looked like they could handle the job. I was unable to persuade my client to buy one for my project so I bought one–for $5k. Then I rented it to them. Most PCs at the time we’re equipped with one or two 360 kB floppy drives but my shiny, new (beige) IBM-PC from Compu-Add (Rockwood and Anderson Ln, as I recall) had 320 kB of RAM and a HUGE 10 MB hard disk drive. That added $1k to its $4k base price. But I didn’t know a thing about PCs or DOS–the operating system PCs used in those days. I was a hardware guy, not a programmer. My programming experience had been limited to Fortran when I attended UT for a BSEE. At ARL I would use a row of switches on the front panel of the computer to enter simple programs to test hardware. Sometimes one of the REAL programmers would write a simple program for me to use. That client I mentioned above had an employee who helped me to get started with PCs and I later delivered my project to the client’s lab. The other employees saw it there and within a couple of months, where there had been none, I’d see IBM-PCs all over the place as I walked down the hallways. Everybody loved ‘em. I finally gave my client an ultimatum: Get your own PC! I want mine back to play with!
And so began my PC avocation. In its first two decades the PCUG had a dozen or more Special Interest Groups, aka SIGs, that met in various local businesses, branch libraries, restaurants, homes, etc. Membership in the PCUG peaked at something like 800. We had a monthly General Meeting at the UT Thompson Conference Center with 100+ attending at times. The lady running the Beginners’s SIG back then wanted to resign and move back to West Point so she put the arm on me to take over. Don jumped aboard too. I thought that having to teach computer stuff would force me to learn it too. And it did. It was fun to be part of PC revolution but now all the excitement seems to be with smart phones, social media, AI and other online stuff. PCs are just appliances now. But I spend a lot of my day in front of one and it does a lot more for me than my smart phone. I hope everybody continues to learn about PCs and other new technologies. Learning is hard work but it keeps you young. Take the challenge! And I’ll be seeing you around.
Kelly
