NOW who do we vote for?

For those of you wondering which candidate should get your vote this election season, the picture just got a whole lot more confusing.

The rapper known as 50 Cent (if you say it out loud, be sure to pronounce it correctly: "fiddy cent") has decided to switch his endorsement again.

A few weeks ago, he was a Hillary backer: "There's nothing bad about Obama in my eyes...but I just think Hillary would be my choice."

Then he heard Obama's recent speech on racial issues: "Yo, Obama! I'm Obama to the end now, baby!"

Yet his most recent comments were, "To be honest, I haven't been following that anymore. I lost my interest."

So where does that leave the rest of us, the ones who were looking for some guidance in these complex political issues? Are we supposed to just research the issue ourselves now, without any help at all from the rap community? I just don't know what to do.

Fix a pesky Word problem

I like Microsoft Word, but it sure does some annoying things sometimes. This week's tip is about one of those bothersome Word functions, and how to fix it.

I like to use tables. If you have several different information items and you want to display them in a Word document, using a table is often the best way to do it. However - if you make your table fill up the whole page, you might find that you now have a 2-page document. Page 1 is your table and your data inside that table, and page 2 is...nothing. Yes, the cursor blinks there, but you cannot backspace and no matter what you try to do, that second page just sits there laughing at you because you can't get rid of it.

Here's what's going on, and how to be done with it.

After the table, Word inserts a paragraph mark. You just can't see it. If you tell Word to show the paragraph mark(s) then you will see it. This is done by using the "Show/Hide" command. In Word 2007, get to the "Home" tab, and then in the Paragraph section, click on the paragraph symbol. Now you will see all of the paragraph symbols in the document - including that pesky one on page 2.

First, highlight that page 2 paragraph mark by double-clicking on it. Now, go up to the font size selection at the top of the screen and click the drop-down menu as if you were going to change the font. Instead of clicking on one of the font sizes displayed, hit the number 1 on your keyboard, and then the Enter key (this actually changes the font size to 1). Now you will see that the paragraph mark is extremely small, but it has moved back to page 1! Page 2 is gone.

You can now go back to the paragraph section and select the paragraph symbol so that you don't see all of those symbols on the page any more.

This week's video is about a wonderful woman and what she does for the families of fallen soldiers. I cannot embed this video in my blog, but you can see it at the link below.

http://www.militarytimes.com/hancock

Vintage iPod advertisement

Click to see it full size:

A good cause

My son David will be graduating from college in May (don't ask me how those years flew by so fast - I have no idea). David plans to teach English in Ecuador, but right after graduation will be taking a short trip to China. He is in the process of raising the needed funds for that trip. Here are some details, as written by David:

As many of you know, I will be finishing my undergraduate education this May. Many of you also know that my plan and dream is to return to Ecuador to teach English. The prospect of graduating is especially exciting to me since I will be making the formal transition from student to teacher.

I would be perfectly content to move to Ecuador after graduation to join friends and begin my career. After much prayer and advice from adults who were once in my position, however, I have decided to postpone my plans, for a time, in order to travel and gain new experiences. Although I do not yet know the full implications of this decision, I have already begun planning for this new and exciting time. Several weeks ago, I was asked if I would be interested in joining a team from my church who would be traveling to China this summer to teach English. Needless to say, my decision was not a difficult one to make!

So, this May 16th, I will fly from Tampa to Yinchuan, China, a city in north, central China. Led by my church’s Community Life Pastor, Jack Piquette, who recently moved back to Florida after having lived in Yinchuan with his family for two years, our team will work in one of the universities in Yinchuan, teaching English, building relationships, and serving the faculty in any way we can.

My hope is that we will not only be able to help those in China with whom we come in contact, but that this experience will open doors and yield more opportunities for me to serve in the upcoming year before I return to Ecuador.

Right now, everyone on the team is preparing for the trip in several ways. One way we are preparing is by asking for the support of family and friends. Not surprisingly, one of the areas we need support is finances. The total cost for each member to go on this trip is $2,000. So, please keep us in your prayers, and, if possible, please consider joining those who have already given to make this trip possible. If you are able to assist financially, please make checks out to Clearwater Community Church and put “David Johnson – China” on the memo line – (by early April, if possible).

Thank you all SO much for your help! Finally, when I return, I will be posting pictures from the trip. So, if you’re interested in seeing those, check back here in late May for the “debriefing”. Thanks again! David

If you are able to help David with this trip, he would greatly appreciate it! Please mail your check to:

Clearwater Community Church
2897 Belcher Road
Dunedin, FL 34698

Create an email signature

If you use email (of course you do because everyone does) you should have an email signature file (better known as a sig file). Why type your name at the end of each email, when it is always the same anyway? Let the computer do it for you. If you get an email from me, here is what is at the end of the message:





If you have a business, you can put your business name and address or whatever other contact information you want on there. It's your sig file, so it's up to you what you want to use.

There's a great website if you want to create a signature in your choice of font. It is mylivesignature.com and that is where I created mine.

Once you have created it, how do you get it to show up in your emails? That depends on what you use for email.

Outlook Express: click Tools - Options - Signatures

Outlook 2007 (and earlier versions of Outlook also, I believe): Tools - Options - Mail Format - Signatures

Web-based email:
Gmail: Settings - General tab - Signature
Yahoo: Options - Signature
Hotmail: I don't use Hotmail because it is a truly awful email service, so I am not specifically familiar with the sigfile procedure - but you can get the instructions here.

This week's video shows what firemen do when there are no fires and they get bored. They make cars fly.

Not every IT person is an expert

From Computer Stupidities:

A friend of mine told me that when he was in junior high school (mid-to-late nineties), they got a computer in the classroom free for the students to use during breaks. The first thing many of them would do to was to change the dull Windows 95 desktop. The school's IT Manager for some reason thought of this as vandalism, so he frequently fixed it in the only way he knew how -- by reinstalling Windows.

I was almost on the floor laughing when my friend told me about how the IT Manager had come into their classroom one day and told the students, "Will you STOP changing the desktop background? I've had to reinstall Windows every day for the last two weeks now!"

Gmail tracking tricks

As you know by now, I use and highly recommend Gmail - Google's free email service. I could probably do several month's worth of weekly tips on things you can do with your Gmail account. But this week, I want to tell you about two of the most valuable tricks available.

Trick #1
Let's say my email address is pctutor@gmail.com (which it is!). Gmail allows you to use dots in between the characters of the user name portion (that's the part to the left of the @ sign). So - any email that gets sent to:

pc.tutor@gmail.com
p.c.tutor@gmail.com
pct.u.t.o.r@gmail.com
or even
p.c.t.u.t.o.r@gmail.com

would still end up at my regular email account, pctutor@gmail.com. Even though you only signed up for one Gmail account, you effectively have several accounts by using this feature. You can use one configuration for work, one for home, one for school, etc. and you still only have to check that one email account to receive all of them.

Trick #2
This one is really cool. You can use the "+" sign after your user name and enter anything you want after that, and the email will still get to your original account. So, next time you are at a website that requires you to put in an email address to register, you don't have to worry about them spamming you because you can enter your email address like this:

pctutor+flakywebsite@gmail.com

If you wanted to get really fancy, you can use a different word or number (or combination) every time you give out your email address, then track which site or company sold your email to some spammer. Then, just tell Gmail to automatically delete any emails that contain that code.

This week's video will make you think about your life, and put your problems in perspective. You need to see this.

Fun in New York City

This week is a little diversion from the typical Monday "here's how to fix your computer" tip. Sometimes you just need a break.

One of my favorite shows was Candid Camera. To me, some of the best humor is found in seeing how human beings react in various set-up situations. Of course, there have been many shows that have copied Candid Camera (Punk'd, Scare Tactics, etc.) and some of them have been pretty entertaining at times.

There's a group in New York that operates on the same premise, except they are not on television. They are on the internet. The group is called Improv Everywhere. Basically, this organization plans and executes scenes in public places that catch the attention of passers-by, to get their reaction. These scenes can use just a few people (those that are involved are called "agents"), or there may be hundreds involved. Some of them are quite complex and involve lots of coordination.

Here are a few examples of what they have done:

- 60 cell phones ring at the same time (in the bag-check area of a large bookstore)

- The McDonald's bathroom attendant

- Of the thousands of people in Grand Central Station, over 200 people freeze in place for 5 minutes

- The Hug Patrol

- Surprise birthday party - while on the subway

There are lots more and they have lots of pictures and video. It's good, clean, clever fun - which is a nice thing to find on the internet!

This week's video is a combination of comedy and gymnastics:

The trick to viewing online videos smoothly

Even on a high-speed connection, when you view an online video the playback can be choppy sometimes. Depending on the format, a video can use a lot of "bandwidth" - that basically means that you are transferring a large amount of data from the video's server to your computer. Since your internet connection speed can vary, sometimes a video will play smoothly and other times it might have that stop/start problem. And if you are still on dialup - don't even bother trying.

Here's how you can get your videos to play without having to stop and let the data "catch up" to it. Just click the Pause button and wait for the download to get well ahead of the scene marker.

You can try it with this week's video below. Instead of just starting to play it as normal, click the Play button and then right away click the Pause button (that's the one that replaces the Play button when the video is actually playing). Watch the gray bar fill up across the bottom - that's the data loading. You can wait until it gets about halfway, or you can wait until it is completely across.

Now click Play again, and you can watch the video without interruption.

This week's video is a great display of redneck art - which is actually rather impressive!