News

28 March 2010

Premises & Progress

The new premises are working very well with the more open space allowing us to have more workshops and Q & A sessions with larger groups of members.

We have developed a short course using Picasa, the free photo management and editing software. This is proving popular and dovetails well with our Photo editing courses.

Microsoft Windows 7 is now here and, thanks to Microsoft and Techsoup, we can now install it and offer our courses using that new operating system. Half of our computers are set up as dual boot machines to boot either into Windows XP or Windows Vista. The remainder presently have Windows XP only and we will set them up to boot either into Windows XP or Windows 7.  Further down the track we expect to replace Windows Vista with Windows 7.

To cope with the demands of these operating systems we have increased the random access memory in all of our computers.

The March newsletter is now available on the Newsletter page.

We will shortly be having another Open Day so have a look at the Chairman's blog for the details. The link is at the top of this page.

The Tough Old Days.

In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In the winter we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction.

In my day, we didn't have rocks. We had to go down to the creek and wash our clothes by beating them with our heads.

In my day, we didn't have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

In my day, we didn't have cats and dogs. All I had was Silver Beauty, my beloved paper clip.

Our Email

Webdrive is the Auckland based company who sponsor us by hosting this website for free. They also provide us with an email box. This means that we can use our domain name as the base of our email address, so open up your address book and change the email address of our Learning Centre to:

                        learn@seniornet-huttcity.org.nz

We think that this is a neat name and much easier to remember alongside our web address of:

                        www.seniornet-huttcity.org.nz

Our old address is no longer available.

We now subscribe to TelstraClear for our telephone services and they also provide us with the ten mailboxes that we use in our Email and Internet courses.

TelstraClear subsidise the Federation of NZ SeniorNets by a proportion of the monthly amount that our members spend

with them. So please let us know if you use any TelstraClear services. You will be helping us.

What do Retired People do all day ?

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. One elderly man's response was,

 "Well for example, the other day my wife and I went into town and went into a shop. We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a parking warden writing out a ticket. We went up to him and said, 'Come on, how about giving a senior citizen a break ?'. He ignored us and continued writing out the ticket. I called him all the names under the sun, he glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tyres. So my wife started to let him have it, so he finished the second ticket and started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes and the gathering crowd was giving him a hard time as well. The more we abused him the more tickets he wrote.

Personally we didn't care. We came into town by bus.

We try to have a little fun each day now that we are retired. It's important at our age."

You could of course come into our Learning Centre, have a great deal of fun and gain some new skills.

11 August 2007

Smooth Green Lawns

 God looked down on Lower Hutt recently, was surprised by what he saw and called up his helper.

God: Frank, you know all about gardens and nature.  What in the world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago?  I had a perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon.  The nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds.  I expected to see a vast garden of colours by now.  But, all I see are these green rectangles.

St Francis: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord.  The Suburbanites.  They started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

God: Grass?  But, it's so boring.  It's not colourful.  It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and porina catepillars.  It's sensitive to temperatures.  Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

St Francis: Apparently so, Lord.  They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green.  They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

God: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast.  That must make the Suburbanites happy.

St Francis: Apparently not, Lord.  As soon as it grows a little, they cut it-sometimes twice a week.

God: They cut it?  Do they then bail it like hay?

St Francis: Not exactly, Lord.  Most of them rake it up  and put it in bags.

God: They bag it?  Why?  Is it a cash crop?  Do they sell it?

St Francis: No, Sir, just the opposite.  They pay to throw it away.

God: Now, let me get this straight.  They fertilize grass so it will grow.  And, when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

St Francis: Yes, Sir.

God: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

St Francis: You aren't going to believe this, Lord.  When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

God: What nonsense!  At least they kept some of the trees.  That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself.  The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer.  In the autumn, they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. It's a natural cycle of life.

St Francis: You had better sit down, Lord.  The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle.  As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

God: No! What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the  winter to keep the soil moist and loose?

St Francis: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which  they call mulch.  They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

God: And where do they get this mulch?

St Francis: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.

God: Enough!   I don't want to think about this anymore.

And the moral of the story ?
Well, when you are busy typing up your family history and aiming to produce a beautiful smooth sward of text,
but your word processor keeps on popping up these annoying "weeds", don't despair, just remember
that somebody up there loves them.

24 December 2006

Merry Christmas and a Safe and Happy New Year !

One of our members, who is a cracker-jack tutor, had her entry in the recent Grown Ups photo competition "Highly Commended".  So, for your enjoyment, here is her entry, called  "Dressed for The Races".

Now that Santa is bringing you a digital camera, you will of course have every reason to come along to our Digital Camera  and our Photo and Image Editing courses in the New Year to learn how to produce wonderful images like this.