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January , 2002

Tips from Topaz Cove Creations

www.shirleyannparker.com

Welcome !

This is our first electronic newsletter, or e-zine as some prefer to call it. We are excited to be gathering these tips for you and hope to keep this short and sweet enough that it can be issued every other month. Please bear with us while we test various approaches. Since some people experience difficulty downloading PDF files, we'll try to keep it in html format for now. If you would like to receive this e-newsletter in your e-mail once we get organized, please see the subscription box at the end of the newsletter. Until then, please check the website every few weeks. Thanks!

Contents

Technical Writing Tip of the Month

Anti-Virus Software is for everyone!

Have you updated your anti-virus software lately? It goes without saying that everyone needs anti-virus software on their computers and that it needs to be scheduled to sweep regularly. But we all need to download the almost-daily updates to the dat files, as well as purchase each new version of whatever program we’re using. Your sys admin probably sends e-mails about the latest upgrade availability or in some corporations forces the upgrades on you to save his or her own sanity. But do you upgrade your home or home business computer? Daily is not too often! Or do you think it doesn’t matter because "they" won’t get you at home?

Some of us are essentially technical people in one way or another, even those of us who do something besides document software. But relatives, hobby club friends and other likely computer newbies may not have a clue what an anti-virus program is. Many don’t yet know how to file or delete messages from an Inbox. Do you think they won’t inadvertently infect your e-mail system, or worse? Do you then think you won’t feel bad because you didn’t want to hurt their feelings by telling them to install / upgrade the anti-virus software on their systems or stop e-mailing you? Just be aware that e-mail apparently isn’t the only way to get a computer virus any more.

Even relatively-experienced computer people can get clobbered because the never-gonna-grow up dolts and malevolent creatures of the world have nothing better to do than try to wreck international commerce and cooperation any way they can. Whether it’s a virus, worm, Trojan horse or bacterium, it can sneak up on you, often through backdoors or sunroofs left open by the folks at Microsoft Corporation. Even so, Microsoft has security patches and Service Pack upgrades available for download that close those windows and doors! Please, do yourself and everyone else a favor. Get them! And help your non-techie loved ones to install them on their computers, too. Just make sure you’re qualified to help on their system or you’ll make things worse. You may have to point other people to a computer retailer with experts on call. To fix your own setup, go to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/topics, where you’ll find a lot of information. 

While you’re in that area of the Microsoft website, consider signing up to receive their security bulletins via e-mail. They’re worth it, in spite of the increased sense of helplessness you may feel, that is, that there’s no end to this nasty stuff that can wreck your computer system for a day or longer. It’s a war, in more ways than one. There’ll never be an end to the patches you need to retrieve and install, and the anti-virus folks will never sit twiddling their thumbs, wondering what to work on today.

If you’re interested in viruses spreading in the wild (ItW), check out www.wildlist.org for relevant information.

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DISCOVERIES   A Journey Through Life 
available now from www.buybooksontheweb.com

Writing Tip of the Month

Getting Ideas

As writers wiser than I have said, ideas are all around us. Whether we do anything with those ideas depends on several things. 

First, we each have God-given talents to use or let atrophy, but we aren’t all given the same gifts. 

Second, if we have been given the ability to write, we usually know that at an early age - not always, but usually. So, as we go through life, we need to be aware of our surroundings and what’s going on.

Third, keep a writer’s journal and jot down ideas that occur to you: odds and ends of overheard dialog, a truly funny (or even a cruel) joke, an inspirational saying about building a bridge to the moon, the names of the seven dwarfs and the eight reindeer, a folktale you’d like to research, and so forth. A writer soaks up everything: dialogue – spoken and unspoken – between human beings; the communication that goes on all the time between God’s other creatures; sounds and how they vary at different times of day, or whether near or far away; smells, like cinnamon toast, a backyard barbecue, the oily diesel exhaust from a decrepit old school bus; the ocean and its majesty; a dead animal; the forest after a rainstorm; that which is beautiful and sometimes, that which is ugly; whatever we happen to experience or hear about. 

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Lifestyle Tip of the Month

Obstacles Are Much More than Challenges for Us to Handle

Life is full of obstacles, so I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of being told there's no such thing as an obstacle, that everything should be considered a challenge. If I hear that one more time myself, I may scream. The truth is: life is indeed full of obstacles. 

Just ask a 2-year-old, who can't do what she wants to do because some giants prevent her at every turn. Ask the single mom who can't go to school to learn job skills because there's no transportation or child care available. Ask the young man confined to a wheelchair, who can't negotiate the curbs in the neighborhood because the city never got around to sloping them at intersections. Those are not challenges, my friends; those are obstacles!  

Ask the 17-year-old who can't pursue any of her career choices because the so-called guidance counselor at her high school says, "People like you are a burden on society. You'll never qualify for higher education, so forget about such silliness." Ask the wife whose abusive husband tells her she's stupid and is only on earth to serve him and his needs. 

After either one of those individuals has broken a woman's spirit, it may be decades before she recovers her nerve to try anyway, and by then, half a lifetime has been wasted. Those few existing fairy godmothers are awfully busy people and just don't get around to everyone, young and old, who so desperately needs them. 

On the other hand, anyone or anything can look like a failure in the middle. Life is full of obstacles that defeat us at every turn. We need to find ways around them, under them, over them, or when all else fails, straight through them. And the bigger the hole we leave in our wake, probably the better. That's the constructive "I'll show them!" of final frustration. 

It's always better to use love to overcome enemies, but some people only respond to being metaphorically hit in the head with a 2 x 4 (not referring to a modified SUV). Certain people come from backgrounds or cultures that only respect those who shove back. This means, for our own protection and that of our families, we sometimes need to caber toss those people who step in our face at every turn. 

I'm not talking about breaking the law or assaulting someone, as shortsighted, hate-filled people too often do. However, each one of us must stand up, both for ourselves and our dreams. No one can just lie down in the road and wait to be run over again by the same berserk steamroller, or spiked by the same zealot. 

Finally, as Dr. Bertice Berry* believes, "use obstacles to change yourself and it will change everyone who comes behind you. Don't get caught in the past! Don't let your abuse abuse other people. Don't keep picking at scabs. Just move forward!" 

Move forward with love, with great humor and with determination. Persistence and determination will get you from where you are to where you want to be, or very close to it.

* Bertice Berry, Ph.D is the author of Redemption Song and The Haunting of Hip Hop, among other enlightening works, and is a highly acclaimed motivational speaker and humorist. For more information, visit http://www.berticeberry.com/

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