Monday, October 22, 2012

Typing Class

Do you remember typewriters?

They were sort of like computers except nothing was ever saved other than on the blank piece of paper you inserted in the roller.

More to the point:
        Do you remember typing class?

asdf  jkl;  asdf  jkl;  asdf  jkl;  asdf  jkl;                     

qwert  qwert  qwert  yuiop  yuiop  yuiop

Exercise after exercise to train your fingers to hit the correct keys.

qwert  qwert  qwert  yuiop  yuiop  yuiop

The rules of the game were that you copied the exercise page exactly.

A maximum of two errors was allowed.

We spent the fifty minute class hour typing away, making perfect copies of the exercise pages. 
Some of my friends caught on quickly and by the end of the class handed in perfect copies of ten to twenty pages in the book.

I tried over and over to get one page perfect.
I might be almost to the bottom of the sheet when Error Number Three slipped from my fingers.
         RIP out page!
         INSERT a new clean sheet!
         START again!
         S I G H !!


Last week I was reminded of typing class when my computer locked up and I feared that 290 pages of my novel would have to be typed into my computer again.

But my resident computer guru saved the day, fixing my computer and there was my novel safe and sound.

On a computer, once you make a correction and save it, it stays corrected! Hooray!

If you are too young to have struggled with typewriters and typing class, consider yourself blessed.

Computers are a huge inprovement.


Drop me a note at my new email address: collinsleej@gmail.com to tell me your computer/typewriter adventures. Or leave a comment.


Saturday, October 13, 2012

It's Been a While

Apologies and a promise--

So my last Blog post was on July 8. Sorry about that. What happened to the time?  I could easily blame someone or something else for my lack of posting, but the truth is I got caught up in other things and when I returned to this, I lost track of how to do it! Google came up with a new wrinkle in how to access it and required that I come up with a new email address. That put me off for a time, and I spent the hours writing on my novel and doing a great amount of reading, so the blog got pushed to the back of my TO DO list.

Announcing: my new email (which is in addition to my old one, so you can still reach me there) is:

collinsleej@gmail.com


On Monday the Medicare.gov website will be open for signing up for Part D, the drug program for people on Medicare. I am a volunteer for SHIIP, the Senior Health Insurance Information Program, in Iowa and will be counseling people to help them choose which Prescription Drug Plan will be the best for them in 2013. There are many changes every year and it is important to check out each year what plan will be the most beneficial for the patient in the upcoming year. Fortunately the Medicare.gov website has a plan finder which ranks the available plans in your area according to their annual cost. Anyone can use the plan finder but many folks prefer to have a SHIIP counselor help them navigate it.

I warn you that from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, I'll be spending a lot of hours at Crossroads, our sponsor's office, talking to Medicare benificiaries.  I will try to be a more faithful blogger, however. So watch for my posts.

And send me an email at my gmail address, so I know you are reading.