Renaissance Faire

Since we were in Fort Lauderdale for the week, and the Renaissance Faire was in process, we arranged to tag along as Jo Ellen took the grandkids to the faire.  What a treat for the camera.

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A Week of Computer Clubs

After our Saturday all-day class for the Genealogy group, we had one seminar scheduled on Sunday afternoon for the Central Florida Computer Group.  Some of them had also attended the day before so we decided not to do Picasa, Blogger or Photo Story.  Instead, we presented our overview seminar we call Geeks on Tour: Technology for Travelers.  We start out showing a little of our blog, which shows our lifestyle, then we show a video on how to make a blog.  We explain how we use our smartphones as a WiFi hotspot to do all our web-based work wherever we are.  We go on to explain about the different devices we use to plan our travels and navigate on the road.  Then we throw in just a smidgen of our thousands of pictures all managed with Picasa, and end with our Facebook page and more tutorials. 
We use technology to Plan, Preserve, and Share our travels – and that is what we teach - using the Tutorial Videos on our geeksontour.tv website.  This seminar gets the most comments from the travelers in the crowd.  It’s fun.
When we were done there, we drove back to the Elks Lodge where the RV was, packed up and hit the road.  I figured that we’d sleep in a rest area or truck stop for the night, but Jim was feeling good enough to drive all the way back to Fort Lauderdale and we pulled in and parked well after dark – that’s not easy in a park as tight and full as this one is, but it was nice to be in place come morning.  So we had the whole day to rest up and prepare for another computer club on Monday night.  From 7-9pm we presented our Smartphone seminar to the Valencia Falls Computer User Group in Delray. 
The next day it was a 1pm gig at Palm Isles in Boynton Beach teaching Facebook.  Wednesday we taught Safe Computing at the Boca Raton Computer Society, and Thursday was Smartphones at Valencia Lakes.

Parked at Elks Lodge in Winter Park

Teaching Facebook to the Computer Club at Palm Isles

Teaching Safe Computing to the Boca Raton Computer Society

You might wonder how we got all these gigs and why we’re doing them.  We got on the speaker’s bureau for the APCUG – Association of Personal Computer User Groups.  They don’t pay us anything, but sometimes a few people in the audience will buy our DVD and/or membership.  We’re doing if for marketing.  Has it been worth it?  The jury’s still out – but that’s how marketing goes right?  You may not reap the benefits till a ways down the line.  Meanwhile, it’s sure keeping our skills sharpened! 

Genealogists need Picasa, Blogger, and Photo Story too!

We know lots of people who are interested in researching their family tree.  Neither Jim or I have pursued this hobby, but Jim’s sister, and my cousin have and we have tried to help by gathering and digitizing old family photos.  Several of our friends in the RVing world have encouraged us to do our computer training for Genealogists and we’ve told them no – we have enough to keep up with now, we don’t want to get into Genealogy!  But, no – Genealogists need to know how to manage their digital photos, make blogs, and produce slideshow movies to share.  Yes!  That is what we teach.  Connie Bradish and her husband Peter arranged for us to teach these topics to their Genealogist group a couple years ago, and have been promoting us to their friends ever since.  This past weekend we taught a full day of classes to the Central Florida Genealogist Society, partly because of Connie and Peter’s recommendation.  Thanks guys!  It was a great day.

We taught our standard topics of Picasa, Blogger, and Photo Story but with a focus on old family photos and stories, instead of our normal travel photos and stories.

1. Introduction to Picasa - the free program from Google for all your digital photo needs
   Find your pictures, Organize, Edit, Caption, and Share. It's fast, it's easy, and its FREE from Google. Picasa can: transfer photos from camera, delete and organize photos, rename and caption, browse/view all  photos on your computer, improve photo quality in many ways without touching your original, print, email and post to web, create slideshows, find faces and geotags, and backup to CD or DVD.  It can even work with your video files. The best part is the fast and easy way to make all your photos look better. This you gotta see!
2. Using Picasa to Organize and Improve Old Family Photos
   In this seminar we will start by snapping new pictures of old family photos.  We will show how to store them in appropriate folders and still organize them by family branches.  We will explain Picasa's face recognition feature and, best yet, we'll show how to make those old photos look better with just a few clicks.
3. Using Blogger.com for a free Family Website
   This seminar will show, step-by-step, how to make and keep a Blog.  It is the easist way to make your own website.  It can be a public website, completely private, or shared with only family members.  We will teach you how to write posts and pages, upload photos, maps, and even videos.  We guarantee that, if you pay attention, you WILL be able to go back to your computer and create a Blog!
4. Using Photo Story 3 to make your Family Documentary Movie
   Photo Story 3 is a free program that includes ability to add music and narration to your pictures.  This is the easiest class we teach.  It is so simple, so fun, and the end result is a movie directed by you.  We will use the same family photos that we used in the Picasa session.

We showed how to:

Capture old family photos by simply snapping pictures of album pages	Then fix them up using the tools in Picasa, including text
Make a Movie like This with just a few clicks in Picasa	Or a movie like this using Photo Story 3

If you have a Genealogist group and would like a day of training like this, please contact us. 

Summer Travel Plans: We expect our travels this summer to start in May and take us up the east coast to Washington D.C., then across to Wyoming for the big June RV rallies in Gillette.  From Gillette we plan to keep west to Oregon, down thru California.  By Fall, we should be headed back East, but we hope to spend some time in Arizona and not return to Florida until January.

Traveling Teachers and Lazydays

This has been a cool week of traveling and teaching.  We left Fort Lauderdale on Monday and went to Lazydays campground in Tampa because we had two 'gigs' scheduled in the area.
We presented 'Cloud Computing' to  Greater Tampa Bay Computer Users Group on Tuesday, then Facebook to Tampa SNUG on Friday.
Meanwhile, we had a fun stay at Lazydays.  They have free breakfast and lunch available if you're staying in the RV park, and while we were in their dining room, we ran into several of our Geeks on Tour members who stopped us to say Hi!  One of them mentioned that they were on their way to attend a class at Lazydays on smartphones.  Cool! Can we come too?  There's always more to learn.  The class was taught by Dave Watkins and he did a great job.  We enjoyed it so much that we came back the next morning for his social networking class.  He surprised us with the first slide of his presentation:

Dave tells us that he's been following us for quite some time and enjoys our training as well!  A mutual admiration society has been formed!

Lazydays was a hopping place!  The only sites available were in overflow, meaning we were in a plain blactop parking lot with no water or sewer, but we had 50amp power - so we were happy.  We took advantage of the free food, free classes, and of course the hot tub!  When there was no free food, we went \to the cool little bar/cafe onsite called Exit 10.  The second night we went we ran into another old friend from Datastorm days ... Mac McClellan.  Great to see you Mac!

And, speaking of meeting up with people you haven't see for a while!  My college boyfriend, who I haven't see for 40 years lives in the Tampa area and reconnected with me via email recently.  So, we arranged to meet for lunch.  Check out these pictures!

John and Chris in 1972 at college - Florida State

John and Chris after 40 years!

It was fun to reminisce!

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Riverside RV Park, Port Charlotte

We love it when RV parks ask us to visit and present our seminars!  This visit to Riverside was especially successful.  Thanks to John Goodrich, who attended several of our seminars at the Good Sam rally in Daytona, we were invited to stay at Riverside and present our Smartphone seminar to their computer club at the park. 

John introducing us to his computer group

 

He must have done an awesome job at promoting us because they usually have 35-40 people at their meetings and our audience was around 150!

 

We were warmly welcomed around the campfire in the evening

A friendly group and a great fire at Riverside RV campground!

 

And a nice paddle on the Peace River with the kayaking group in the morning.  Whew!  These retired folks wear us out!

Paddling with the Kayakers at Riverside RV Park in Port Charlotte

James F Guld Sr

Click Here for a YouTube video.

James F. Guld, Sr. passed away peacefully on Jan 30, 2013 in the care of Catholic Hospice and with his loving family around him.

He was born on July 17, 1925 in Atlantic City New Jersey to Johann and Jennie (Dalton) Guld the fourth of eight children.

He joined the Navy in 1943 at the age of 17 and was a veteran of WWII serving in Europe. His 20 year naval career took him all over the world. He was trained as a deep sea diver and later was selected for the Seal Team 2. While stationed in Washington, D.C. in 1950 he met Frankie Copeland, also in the navy, and they were married January 5, 1952. Moving to Long Beach Island, New Jersey in 1963 after retiring from the navy, he owned a gas station and then a popular restaurant, The Pumpernickel. In 1974 he began another career as a yacht captain and again traveled the ocean he loved so much. Captain Jim, as he was affectionately known by all was an avid golfer. He and Frankie loved to travel and drove all over the country trying many golf courses together. They retired to a home in The Mainlands community in Tamarac on the 17^th fairway where he could play golf every day. Married for 54 years he was a devoted husband to Frankie until her death in 2006.

Left to cherish his memory are his daughter, Deborah (Robert) Sharrow, Son, James, Jr. (Chris) and four grandsons, Brian, Michael, and Stephen Roebuck and Devon Guld , six great-grandchildren, one sister, Julia (Richard) Greishaber, daughter-in-law Jo-Ellen Guld, and a host of nieces and nephews who will all miss him dearly.

The family wishes to acknowledge the amazing staff of St. Joseph’s Assisted Living Facility where he resided for the past two years for their wonderful care and kindness.

In lieu of flowers a donation in his name to Catholic Hospice, St. Helen’s Catholic Church, The Parkinson’s Research Foundation, Alzheimer’s Association, or any charity of choice would be most appreciated.

 

There will be a Military Honors Funeral later this spring at Arlington National Cemetery where he will be inurned with my mom.

Cold in Florida?

We are in Orlando, Florida at the Thousand Trails park here.  Some people will tell you that you have to be at least to Frostproof, Florida before you are out of danger of freezing temperatures. In the map below our location is the upper pushpin and Frostproof is the lower.  So that could explain why I woke up to frost the other morning.  On the other hand, I’ll bet they did in Frostproof too! 

If you look up Frostproof in Wikipedia, you’ll find:

The name was a marketing ploy to convince potential landowners that the town has never had, and never would have, a frost that could destroy the large citrus-driven economy. However, only a couple of years later, a frost killed most of the citrus in Frostproof.

We got here on Monday night and had a seminar to present in Zephyrhills, about an hour away, on Tuesday.  Then Jim left me here and drove back to Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday because he was told his Dad wasn’t going to live another 24 hours.  They were right, he’s glad he went.  He’ll write another post about his Dad soon.

Before he left, he showed me how to put the awnings up in case I needed to do that while he was gone.  Yes, I have done this before, but he normally does it, so I forget the procedure from one time to the next.  So I took video with my cell phone while he went thru the steps. It came out good.  I’m going to use this!  You can see the videos here.

Jim returned after helping his sister handle all the immediate affairs.  Then we will be back in Fort Lauderdale next week for services.  His Dad was a real class act. I’m sad to see him pass, but I know he’s been ready to join his beloved wife Frankie.  Rest in Peace Capt. Jim!

Although it’s been cold at night, the days have been sunny and delightful.  We have lots of good friends who are also here.  We got to reconnect with Kim and Robert Jandle who were parked just down the street from us.  Phil and Tracey May were also here, as well as Nick and Terry Russell.  If you think RVing is a lonely lifestyle, we would beg to differ.  And, we had a beautiful, secluded site perfect for visiting.