A few more issues

The latest issue of the HOA newsletter.

I thought with my new laptop I’d be through with computer issues. But an issue came up with the latest issue of the newsletter that I volunteer to do for our homeowner’s association.

If you didn’t read about my computer issues, I was losing files and realized that the “automatic backup” wasn’t backing up. You can read about that HERE.

My new laptop doesn’t have the fonts for the newsletter. I get missing font messages and the type reverts to Helvetica or Geneva which doesn’t look great. So, I asked my son — who created the layout and template for me — to help fix it. He told me to email him the newsletter and he’d convert it to a pdf on his laptop. (He has the fonts.)

After my son made the newsletter look pretty, I sent it off to my newsletter co-editor for proof reading — plus the board of directors for their input.

In the end I received 10 small corrections and tweaks last night. Instead of sending the newsletter to my son to make the corrections, I thought I’d try turning on the old laptop — which has the missing fonts. I thought I’d be able to update the newsletter all on my own. What I discovered is those fonts on my old laptop are missing. too!

So, even with a brand new laptop that’s working great, I still have issues to fix.

With different fonts, spacing is different which changes every page’s layout.

What a mess.

On our beach vacation, our kids are joining us and my son has promised to install the fonts and we won’t have to be emailing the newsletter back and forth in the future.

Do you work on any layouts besides your blogs? Do you enjoy it or find it tedious? What computer problems or glitches have you dealt with?

Issue number two

newsletter
My community newsletter

Issue number two for 2022 was put to bed today. YAY! It’s a satisfying feeling to finally get it approved and done.

I sent the newsletter to my co-editor to proof read and to make sure I made all the requested changes from the Board of Directors. Then weird stuff happened. I had made changes and they didn’t save. Also when I made a few corrections, photos disappeared and entire blocks of text disappeared. My layout skills haven’t kept up with the newest version of the program.

I held my breath when I hit send. It’s done. And I have a few months until it’s time to do it all over again.

It’s hard to remember back to when I wrote nine newsletters a month. That was way before internet and newsletters were a big thing. With social media, blogs, and email newsletters, not many are still printed and delivered via snail mail.

Without me stepping up to take over the newsletter, this one would have ended after 15 years of being published. I like the old fashioned printed newsletter. There’s something to be said for reading on paper.

I edited the newsletter for my kids swim team on a volunteer basis for years. We used to mail it out with the monthly billing. Eventually the billing went online — and my son started a website and posted the newsletter there. The newsletter was no longer printed. That was before the iphone got popular. We were using an Apple program that worked well for the new iphone, but not for the Blackberry. One of the board of directors wanted us to invest in software that was older so it would be compatible with Blackberry phones because he predicted the iphone would never amount to more than 10% of phones. Do they make Blackberries anymore?

Then one of the coaches told me she didn’t see a place for the newsletter anymore. She felt Twitter and FB would be more up to date. I was sad to see that newsletter go away.

What are your thoughts about newsletters? Do you see them very often or do you think they are going by the wayside?

How Computers and Technology Changed My Life

Swim Practice

Swim Practice

It was my daughter’s 19th birthday this past week, and I texted her Happy Birthday, first thing in the morning. Yes, I talked to her later, but I knew she’d be at swim practice early and couldn’t talk to me right away. I wanted a nice message for her whenever she had a chance to glance at her phone.

photo (1)My birthday last year was filled with FB wishes. Twenty years ago, I’d get phone calls. It was a big deal, because I‘d hear from people that I’d lost touch with for years. Plus, people would call “long distance!” Sometimes they left messages on my answering machine, if I was busy at work.

Remember the answering machine?

Remember the answering machine?



I used to write my mom and my best friend letters. I had moved from Washington to Southern California, and we couldn’t afford to make that many long distance phone calls. I loved getting long letters back from those close to me. A lot of news and thought was put into writing letters. It wasn’t at all like the quick posts we do on FB or our tweets today.

On the positive side, I can stay in contact with a whole lot of people thanks to social media that I’d probably lose contact with otherwise.

In my working days before the computer, I’d write my stories on a typewriter. We’d use special purple mimeograph paper to type on and then I’d walk it over to the print shop to be printed. We’d mail the stories to the local papers, except when my boss would drive timely ones straight to the editor of The Desert Sun.

My favorite typewriter. The IBM Selectric II.

My favorite typewriter. The IBM Selectric II.

My newsletters were also typed on an IBM Selectric —what a luxury that was to type on compared to other typewriters — and I knew how to do the math to figure out how many words of copy would fill a column inch. I’d drive my copy to Indio to the typesetter and a few days later drive back to pick it up. Then I’d proofread, mark it up and drive it back. No, we didn’t have fax machines back then.

The machine I used to "send copy over the wire."

The machine to “send copy over the wire.”

The closest thing I’d used to a fax was “sending a story over the wire.” I took my sheet of paper with my copy on it, and rubber banded it to a round metal cylinder. I called the newspaper’s office and we started the wire. I took the phone receiver and placed it on a cushioned base and the cylinder spun around as the words were magically transmitted. If my wire didn’t go through, I’d read my words slowly to someone transcribing them at other end of the phone.

What a difference technology and computers have done to my world. Mostly, it speeded up the process and made everything so much easier.

What differences have technology made in your life?