President"s Message
by BJ Martens 

Our General Membership Meeting for this month will be at Desert Vista on Thursday, October 4 at 7:00 pm. The program is "Smart Computing", a monthly magazine written in plain English which is devoted to helping users improve their productivity with features such as a Q&A section, PC operating instructions, searchable article archive, personal library and how-to articles on such programs as MS Word, Excel, WordPerfect and Quicken. Other sections cover the Internet, computing basics, upgrading, troubleshooting, and more.  Highlights of Smart Computing’s presentation will include free computer support, five magazines for the price of one and their online tech support center. There will be goodie bags for everyone plus refreshments and prizes as usual!  You won’t want to miss this meeting!

Google and Gmail
There has been a lot of interest lately in Google's free Gmail as well as several other helpful features that have been added to Google. An earlier seminar was filled to capacity and the recent hands-on class was filled with a waiting list. We will be booking more classes and seminars on this free and practical program in the near future.

Classroom and Lab Calendars
The monthly calendars for the Classroom and the Lab will no longer be printed for distribution as this information is available on our website. To locate the calendars, click on the current month’s Gigabyte. Scroll down past the link for the Classroom Calendar and the Lab Calendar and you will see a link titled "to PRINT the Calendars". By using this link the calendars will print out on two separate pages, one for the Classroom and one for the Lab. (Or, you can print them on both sides of a sheet of paper.)

Remember to also check out the "Classes Scheduled" and "Seminars Scheduled" links for details about the classes and seminars and information about registration. And don’t forget to print out the handouts for the class or seminar you want to attend. The "Our Handouts" link is found on our home page beneath the Sun City Summerlin Computer Club logo.

Spotlight on Two New Instructors
Two new Sun City residents have joined the staff of instructors for our Club. They are Howard Verne and Stu Gershon.

Howard was born in New York City.  After graduation, Howard married his wife, Patricia, and moved to Los Angeles.  Howard started out designing computers. He wandered into the world of software, and spent many years developing software for planes, missiles, spacecraft and the like.  He finally retired (for the first time) as Director of Software for a large aerospace company.
 
He stayed retired for 3 days and went to work as a consultant for a few years. He retired again and moved to Peoria Illinois. He rapidly got bored and signed up with a local college (to teach computers and business). After 5 years, he retired again and moved to Las Vegas, where he is very active in our computer club - giving courses and seminars as well as working with the HW SIG, fixing computers.

Stu Gershon is a retired NYC School teacher who recently bought a second home in Sun City.  On Long Island, where he lives, he is known as the Digital Doctor and, in the past four years, has given over 265 lectures on Digital Photography and Computing in over 57 Libraries and other venues!  He is an avid digital photographer.  He writes a monthly column on Digital Photography in 50+Lifestyles, which is a Long Island Senior newspaper.  You can find out more about Stu, his hobby and his services on his website www.DigitalDocOnline.com.  He will be doing occasional lectures for us when he is in Las Vegas.  His wife Beth is also a retired NYC school teacher.

We are fortunate to have these two highly qualified instructors in our Club!