Click for

Presentation Materials:

Organizer Documents (compressed file) (zip)

Organizer Presentation (pdf)  (ppt)

Computer and Technology
Group Meeting Highlights
January 17, 2008
by Jack Bevis (Branch 116), CTG Secretary/Web Correspondent 

Emergency Records Organizer

Presented by Phil Goff

Computers & Technology Group Co-Chairman Dean Steichen opened the meeting at 9:00 am. Executive committee members in attendance were Phil Goff, Floyd Skelton, Dick Curry, Jack Bevis, Dick Chaffee, Ollie Greenlee, Frank Crua, Lo McCarley and Vic Moore. Total attendance was 64.

Dean explained the organization for this year. He and Phil Goff will be co-chairman. The other officers, directors and key people will continue in their current positions. He introduced them all and extended a warm thank you for their service to the group.

The volunteers for this meeting were: Refreshments Floyd Skelton; Coffee Master Vic Moore; Setup Chairman Lo McCarley with Frank Comprelli, Don DeGraf and John Schick.

Phil Goff then gave his presentation entitled Emergency Records Organizer. Phil had produced and distributed to the group a CD containing its Word Table Templates.

Phil has developed a series of 19 tables (or templates) in MS Word format to help you capture pertinent information about your medical, financial and other ongoing life processes. Such information will be invaluable to you or members of your household in times of emergency. He distributed a CD containing the templates.

The templates are intended to be copied to your hard drive and then customized to suite your needs. Delete unneeded portions. Combine sections if you wish. Cut and paste works just as in any other word document. Use the tab key to navigate within a document. Use the Wonder of control Z if you make a mistake.

Phil cautioned not to record everything, only the very important things. What would you need if there is a medical emergency or if your house burns down?

The first 11 templates are for non-sensitive information including medical, insurance, personal, contacts, payments, wills, advisors, memberships, life events and safe deposit boxes.

Phil suggests that these sections be stored in a folder on your computer with a CD copy for backup and a binder printout for reference. Give copies of the CD to family members.

Sections 12 –19 are for your sensitive, confidential information.

These would include bank and investment accounts, jewelry and valuables, personal information, wallet contents, sources of income, real estate and mortgages.

Burn the confidential information to a CD. Store it in safe or safety deposit box. Then delete the files from your computer.

Augment the completed templates with digital photos and scans. For example scan the contents of your wallet. Take pictures of your home and belongings to supplement your inventory. Include an inventory of your home safe and safety deposit box. Include all of this on your CD.

Q&A Session with Dick Curry

The first question had to do with printing PDF documents. They print out exactly as they were created.  They can be transmitted as an attachment to an e-mail and each recipient can print out a document looking exactly like the one the originator created (including the same fonts).  There is a free reader (Adobe Reader -  available at adobe.com) that permits anyone to easily read and print a document prepared in pdf format.  Initially, a pdf document had to be created using Adobe Acrobat - a software application that costs around $300. But now there are a number of applications that permit you to create a pdf document that can be read by the Adobe Reader.  Documents prepared with Microsoft Office Suite 2007 can be saved in the pdf format and incorporate many of the Adobe Acrobat features.

There is an option to PDF from Microsoft called XPS or XML Paper Specification. It is offered royalty free and is an open source program.  XPS documents can be created using any of the Office Suite 2007 applications or any application using Vista.  XPS is said to accomplish everything that pdf does and a little more.

Another question concerned a network setup consisting of a satellite Internet connection wired to an Apple computer through a wireless router to a laptop running Vista. The technician was unable to get the wireless link to work to the Vista laptop. He claimed that Vista was the problem. Our CAT group of Geeks all agreed that Vista was not the problem. It must be security or router settings.

It was reported that there is a Norton Removal Tool that you can download and remove Norton Antivirus.

The question was why didn’t the XP restore point work. It could be that there was insufficient drive space for the point to have been set. Try increasing the available space.

Question-Is there an SP-3 for windows XP?  Floyd Skelton said that he had found an SP-3 overview at the Windows Update Center.

Return to Home Page                                                                      Return to 2008 Meetings