Archive for October, 2004
10.31.04
Posted in life in Canada, family, learning at 10:41 pm by Mrs C.
This afternoon we had an 80th birthday party for my mother! My siblings and I rented a hall and a number of people dropped in for an informal time of eating, visiting and taking pictures. We put together a binder of decorative paper and had all the guests write a memory or note about mom and then the photos and cards will be included. It will be a great keepsake when it’s finished and something that can be handed down for generations.
A big hit at the party was the Family Legacy book that mom has been writing. For the past five years, on the anniversary of what would have been my dad’s birthday, our family get together for dinner and mom gives us a few more pages to add to the book. Including text and pictures scanned into the computer, this family history details the time from my father’s birth, through their courting and marriage days.
Even though mom is 80, she continues to learn and can usually be found in front of her computer. These days she is working on having her own website and writing an ebook about running a courier business. Mom is a real inspiration to me to continue learning and trying new things.
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Posted in learning at 10:34 pm by Mrs C.
Thursday night was our second networking session and only two of us were available. We met anyway, partly to brainstorm and partly so Juan could practice his English. Amazingly we talked for almost two hours. He told me a lot about business in Venezuala and his business plan. Neither of us finished the things we were supposed to have done, so this week’s action plan is to finish those things. Mine is to get audio on my site and then write an article about it to publish on the www.creativehomecomputing site. Next meeting is scheduled for this coming Thursday, so I need to get going with it.
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10.27.04
Posted in learning at 2:20 am by Mrs C.
Today I read an article about training your brain. Every day you should learn one new thing and then think about what you learned right before you go to bed. Then when you get up the next morning, think about what you learned again. This is supposed to re-inforce whatever it is that was learned. I’ll have to try it with my learning Spanish. I’m having a hard time remembering more than two phrases and saying “I’m going to the washroom” and “goodbye” don’t get a conversation going very far.
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10.26.04
Posted in life in Canada, learning at 1:15 am by Mrs C.
This past Thursday, two other people and I met for a two hour brainstorming session at the local restaurant. We tried to be very official, with an agenda and a networking name for ourselves. The other two members are Ydania, a jewelry designer from Venezuala and Juan, an accountant also from Venezuala.
We talked about how many immigrants want to start their own businesses because it is so hard for them to continue in their occupations when they first come to Canada. I’m often amazed at the amount of talented, professional people that come to the college ESL (English as a Second Language) department where I work. They are highly skilled and educated, yet willing to do any kind of menial jobs to get them established here.
Anyway, team brainstorming is energizing and motivating. We encouraged one another and came up with enough ideas to fill a book. I told them about Internet marketing, being an affiliate, eBooks and private members’ sites. They had never heard about any of those things before and were so interested.
They were both half my age, but we had a great time and will be meeting again next week, along with another Venezualan girl.
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10.25.04
Posted in computers, life in Canada at 10:20 pm by Mrs C.
Well I decided to return the second hand laptop I bought. Thought it was such a great deal, but I couldn’t get the battery to hold a charge and I didn’t want to buy another one. Plus I realized how heavy it was to carry.
I am slowly looking for a good laptop this time and want to make sure the battery lasts for a while and it weighs under 5 pounds. Otherwise I will not want to carry it on the bus with me, which is my main reason for wanting one. My commute is at least one hour, more when the weather gets bad and I hate to waste the time sleeping.
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10.13.04
Posted in computers, life in Canada at 11:25 pm by Mrs C.
This has been another gone like the wind week. The older I get, the faster time goes. Here in Canada we just celebrated Thanksgiving and have been enjoying beautiful fall weather. The trees are changing colours and I am reminded that no one is a better artist than God. His colour combinations are awesome!
Every day lately, I’ve been getting emails about seminars and new products that I would love to buy and attend, but I’d have to be a millionaire first. How do people decide what to focus on? I read that you should find one or two people on the net that you admire and concentrate on learning from them. So I am going to follow Lynn Terry more closely because I like her style, she knows her stuff and is getting more well known all the time. And I wish I had her energy.
I finally got another website up at motivatedtolearn.com and am in the process of moving all of my newsletter and article archives from creativehomecomputing.com. I decided to give Ready Websites another chance since it’s been a year since I hosted with them and so far I am quite pleased. They have a lot of nice options, so I’m glad they’ve fixed their old problems with slow servers. I have my daughter Melanie in Belleville helping me with this new site and will be happy if she can take over a few things.
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10.05.04
Posted in computers, learning at 5:13 pm by Mrs C.
This will be quick, I’m on my way downtown to a networking session with Ryze. These are the computer lessons I’ve learned the last few weeks:
1. Keep a computer journal - every time you have a problem, write it and the solution down. When the same problem comes up again (which it often does), you know what to do. With a memory like mine, this has saved me a lot of time and money.
2. If something doesn’t work, check the obvious first. For example, my printer stopped working, so I checked the program, re-installed the software, re-booted the computer, but nothing worked. Then I realized that the printer cable had come just a little bit loose. Not enough to notice, but enough to stop the power.
3. My hard drive at work got slower and slower, then totally died. I didn’t realize that hard drives were capable of that and it reminded me again of the importance of saving my data to a disk or cd.
4. I received an official looking email at work, claiming to come from administration. It was a zipped file, so I downloaded it. Later I found out it was a virus. Lesson- just because the name on an email looks official doesn’t mean it is, so be careful about opening files or giving out personal information, especially charge card details.
5. I was painting the kitchen and wasn’t sure if the previous paint was latex or oil based. So I went onto the Internet, asked Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com) and found out how. Answer: apply a cloth dampened in denatured alcohol and latex will bubble or wipe off.
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