Another internship is done

Sad to say that today will be my last day at work, but I have the most awesome reason for leaving. I'm going on maternity leave! YAY! My baby is due on January 12th. If she's born anytime next week, we will be thrilled! We know it's going to be a girl, and we do have names picked out. We have pretty much everything we need, and we're as ready as new parents can be.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I had a great time as a CAP youth intern. I started in the the fall of 2009 and even worked through part the summer last year doing some of the same kind of work. It was very interesting and fun. I had some great success stories along the way. People really do appreciate the services we provide and the work that we do. I hope that the following interns are as open to learning and have as much fun as I did.

Internship coming to an end...

With just a couple of weeks to go, my internship is coming to an end. That makes me a little sad. I really enjoy working as a CAP YI intern. What I get most out of this is that it makes me feel like I belong in the community. It makes me feel needed and useful and I really enjoy helping people. To know that someone has learned something from me, make me feel satisfied. Everyone has needs, like the need to belong, the need to survive, the need to be powerful and free and the need to love.

My position as CAP intern fulfills my need to belong and if knowledge is power, then my power need is fulfilled too. And of course getting paid fulfills my need for survival. Being able to set dates with people that work with my schedule and the people feeling grateful that I can help, partially fulfills my needs for freedom and love. This is an all around great job to be doing. You learn and teach at the same time. You can have fun and get work done at the same time. You have space yet people around you at the same time. If this were a long term, full time position I would definitely want to be in it.

To all interns and non-interns: Live in the NOW and embrace the positives!

House call

House Call

In a pretty small community where everyone knows everyone, I thought it would be OK to make a house call. As a side job I do a bit of house cleaning. And the guy I do this for needed some help with his computer. It’s an old computer, big heavy tower, as old as a dinosaur and as slow as a snail. It was simply not performing as some of the newer, faster computers of today. He and his wife also have laptops but he prefers to work on his old desktop PC. So he had gone out to a computer store and bought himself a new one, brought it home and tried working with it. He found it didn’t work so well for him because it was not compatible with the older programs he was using. You see, he’s working on his family genealogy, which goes way back to the 1600’s. This is important family history information you don’t want to lose. He brought back the new computer and hooked up his old one again and came to ask for help. He wanted me help him organize his folders and programs. He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he knew his computers were a mess.

I went to his house thinking I could show him how to create folders, drag and drop files into them and he would be on his way. But when I took a look at how he had his folders sorted out on his laptop, it was perfect. They were very organized, so I didn’t understand why he thought it was a mess. But when I looked a few things that might make his computer slower, I saw that the virtual memory was getting a little low and his hard drive was getting really full. And I couldn’t seem to find out how he could have filled it up so fast with what seemed to be so little on his laptop. But as we looked even deeper and he showed me the program he was having trouble with, we noticed that there were duplicates of certain files. So we figure that was the problem that was confusing him. Duplicate files in different or the same folders.

On his old PC though, it pretty much was a mess. There was maybe 500mb of free hard drive space, virtual memory was running really low and there were tons of old programs and software he never used anymore or didn’t even know he had or what they were for. So we started clearing out old programs like that, and updating his antivirus program. This took the better part of the afternoon. As for homework, I asked if he could work on organizing his files on the old computer, just like he did with the new one. Create folders, drag and drop the files, and delete duplicates.

I also recommended that he get himself an external hard drive to keep all of his family photos, scanned funeral cards and genealogy history as a backup.

He seemed a little overwhelmed, but very happy to know that he doesn’t have to lose everything and start over and that with a little maintenance, everything will be just fine.

Mother and son success

A lady and her son came into the cap site one day, brought their laptop and a USB stick. They came pretty well prepared wanting to print out the son’s resume. He had made his resume and I took a look at it to make sure he had all the needed information. After fixing a couple of little technical mistakes he made in Word, I asked him if he was going to attach a cover letter along with his resume. He hadn’t thought of it and didn’t know how to go about making one. I was really busy with other people at that moment, so I just printed out the pages that show how to make a cover letter and asked if he would read it and try to make one and then to come back if he needed more help. They were very thankful and excited that they received help so quickly.

A few days or about a week later the son comes in again and asks to print out a few more resumes and cover letters this time too. He had done a good job of making the letter on his own.

His mother came back to me too asking for help emailing an order for Norwex products. She’s a consultant and independent sales person for these products, I had also just had an in home product party with her. She had been having difficulties placing the orders through the website and her email. So we went through it together here at the CAP site and sent it via email. The problem she was having was with Microsoft Excel when filling out the order sheets. She kept missing that there were different pages within the file and I showed her how she could see them and where to click. It was a success. The products came in about a week later!

February 3rd, 2010

Last week was a crazy busy week, like it always is at the end of the month. The newsletter has to be finished and printed for the communities in the region. My supervisor hasn't been at work for over a week because she's having serious back problems, only a lot of physio, painkillers and rest will help her right now. So she's out of the game for a while. I try to pick up the slack a little bit with little things I can do to help her out around here like answering the phone, taking messages, faxing, photocopying or being the messenger. The activities coordinator is here only 3 days a week, so I do what I can to help her get things done around here too.

There have been more and more people coming in to use the CAP site in the past couple of weeks. I think the word is finally starting to spread that we are here to help and offer great services. Some people are finally taking advantage of that. Like this elderly lady I'm helping, who's learning about emailing and sending pictures via email and web surfing and that kind of stuff. She keeps telling me: If someone can teach you something, learn it. You never know when you might use it.

It's amazing that at over 80 years old, we can still learn about things we could never imagine as a child. Technology is evolving all around us and at every level. It's impossible to keep up with everything, but to keep the mind young, keep learning about anything that interests you.

Over 80 and still learning!

I was in the restaurant helping to prepare for a banquet one evening. It was about closing time for the public, and an elderly couple was having a cup of coffee while waiting for their car to come out of the garage across the street. The elderly lady asked the waitress if she knew anything about the tutorials from the CAP poster in the entrance of the building. The waitress said to the lady that she knew the intern and came to get me in the kitchen to go talk to her. I go out into the restaurant to talk to the lady who’s interested in the tutorials. I had not gotten many replies from the poster, just a few saying they were interested but never showed up or never came to ask for more information. But this lady was saying that these tutorials that I was offering were exactly what she would need to improve her computer skills. So we set a date for that same week and I asked if she could write down her questions and make a little list of the things she wants to learn.

The elderly lady of over 80 years old, showed up as she said she would, with her binder full of papers to take notes, and she had her list ready too. She used to be a teacher and now the positions were switched, she would be the student, and I would be the teacher. I vaguely knew the lady from when I was younger. I would go around with my mom, delivering milk, from our dairy farm and this lady was one of the customers.

We stared with the basics of email: how to check email, how to reply, forward and create new email, etc. After sending out a few test emails that she felt comfortable with, we moved on to something different. I showed her how to upload pictures from her digital camera to her computer and then to select the few that she wanted to have developed and put them on a USB stick.

We’re meeting up about once a week to continue to improve her computer skills. She now has more confidence to use her computer to keep in touch with family, friends and current events. When we started, she had not used her laptop for 3 month and had only just looked at it a few times. She still calls me or emails me with questions, but now that she’s more oriented with her laptop, we can usually work it out through the phone.

January 14th, 2010

One month until

Valentine's Day!!!

I love lovie-dovie holidays like Valentine's and Christmas when you get together with loved ones and celebrate. I'm a sappy romantic that way sometimes...

I loved being able to help people. It felt good knowing that I helped someone to understand something, or make them feel better, or just give a helping hand. This past week I had been able to help quite a few people. It made me realize that although my job may not have a big impact on the whole community at the moment, it has help a few people who DO have some impact on the community, and by helping them function with their computers more easily, it will simplify the job they do within the community. One who is a writer and helps to teach creative writing at school needs to have a good functioning computer. Another who does the administration for the parish needs to know how to use his programs in an efficient manner. And another one who's on many boards in the community, writing up reports and gathering and sharing information on projects that affect the community could use some technical related stress relief. I'm happy to be of assistance.

Jan 11th & 12th

Well yesterday I spent a couple hours at the neighbour's two doors down. He's retired and now spends more time doing things on his computer. He had come in last week and a few times before to ask for some help, but I needed to go to his house. He was very organized and had his topics all written down and questions ready for me. I sat beside him and explained what was what and he did all the clicking and typing. It was a good little training. He caught on really fast and came in this morning to tell me that he really learned something yesterday, he seemed all happy and giddy and proud still be learning something new at his age.

Yesterday I also had another retired man's laptop (for a couple days already) that he wanted Windows 7 installed on. So I went about updating and doing a back up first, JUST IN CASE... after a bit of arguing with the thing it finally installed Win 7. Everything seemed to be up and running... until he calls me the same evening saying, it doesn't read Cd's and there's now sign of the E: drive. GREAT! so I brought back the computer and some Cd's and manuals, which were no help at all... I had looked up the problem on discussion forums but couldn't seem to fix it on my own... so I had to call for back up. I handed the laptop over to my husband and within 1 hour he had it fixed. I'm so gratefully to have him :) "Thanks Hun!"

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Today was a bit of everything day, I started by updating the Bellevue website with the latest Newsletter. Cleaning up the messy desktop I had... making sure the other computers in the office are also updating...did some cleaning and decorating for Valentines. I also took some pictures and emailed them for the cook at the Restaurant (we need to get some appliances fixed and the mechanic wanted to see exactly what kind it was before coming).
I helped the Services Canada lady get installed and punched in my code so she can use the photocopier.
yeah it was a bit of this and a bit of that all day.

Now I'm going to go help patch up the town outdoor Skating rink along with my Uncle.

Talk to you guys later.

January 8th,2010

Today was a productive day. We started working on the layout for the next newsletter right away while it was fresh in our minds from just finishing the January newsletter. Now they can start gathering information to have it all done BEFORE the end of the month...we'll see about that.

I had 2 people bring my their laptops for help today... still working on one now. One lady wanted help to sort out her emails and files and the other guy wants help installing Window's 7 (he hasn't done any Windows Updates on his computer for a long time so that has to be done first.
Someone also wants me to go to his house to help him for about 30 minutes or so... since he can't haul his big computer here, I agreed to go to his house next week (he lives just 2 houses down from where I live).

We also took down all the Christmas decorations. I didn't think we'd get it all done in one afternoon, but with 3-4 people helping it goes WAY faster then on your own. After putting all that away it was time to quickly clean and reset the gathering room.

All in all it was a great day.
This evening I'm going to my Uncle's birthday party for some of Aunty's DELICIOUS chocolate cake and maybe play a few games of cards.

Have a good weekend!
Jennifer

January 5th, 2010

Today didn't start off too well, I came to find out that the document I had be working on all day yesterday was somehow NOT where it was supposed to be. It went MISSING! "ARGH! No way! this can't be happening to me!" after a long search and trying to recover the lost document, I had to call my husband; he's the "computer guy" for the whole town. He came just when I thought it was unsolvable and when I thought "Restart!" he recovered the lost document. YAY!!!

So I did what I could for the newsletter and I'm still helping them finish it up tomorrow in between my other job.

I had also had one lady come and book an appointment for friday to help her with her computer.
Looking forward to that.

Have a good evening!

GO CANADA GO!!!!
(hope they win tonight)

January 4th, 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope everyone had very enjoyable holidays. My holidays were jam packed full of fun activities with friends from far away and close family. Tiring but enjoyable and satisfying.
Today was a bit of a long day staring at a computer screen after a couple of weeks of other visual stimulation. The Christmas days and traveling took a nasty bite out of my wallet, so I'm happy to be back at work.

I'm glad I had prepared part of the January local newsletter before the holidays, but it's still a long process to bring it to print. Hopefully we have all the information needed to 'get er done' tomorrow morning. And then comes the task of removing all of the pretty Christmas decor and neatly storing it away for the coming Christmas season.

Mother nature has thus far been good too us, no crazy blizzards or other distructive storms. The coming days should be steady winter weather.

Hope everyone stays cozy and happy.

Career Cruising

http://www.careercruising.com/ is a great website. It helps anyone find a suitable career. Suitable as is customized to fit the likes, dislikes and skills of a person. If you're a student not knowing yet which direction you want to go, or an adult that's still not sure of what they really want to do for a living or someone needing or wanting a change of career, this website will help you figure things out. It might show you things you already knew or totally surprise you with career paths you wouldn't have even thought about.

I never saw myself a teacher type of person but last year I was working as a teacher aid (classroom assistant). It was very different to the other hands on, physically active jobs that I've previously had. But I got into this job and found it was a great position to be in. I had varied tasks, from sitting and watching to showing and teaching and it was really fun. I would definitely do this job again, but I wouldn't make it my lifetime career. It just doesn't fulfill enough of my needs. I found this out by answering all of the questions on the careercruising.com website. My closest career match was Crafts person (someone making a living from selling their handmade crafts) and that is so true. If I liked sales and retail more this would be something for me, but I really dislike doing the marketing and selling, it puts a damper on my mood to craft. My dream careers lay more in the skilled trades and arts & design world, like Model Making or Jewelry Design & Repair.

It was a very helpful website and I'm going to advise and help people (who are unsure of their career) find the right path for them.

December 8th, 2009

Today at the cap site I first updated the St. Isidore de Bellevue website. You may now view the community news letter at http://www.stisidoredebellevue.com/ .
The webtrain session about career cruising was also interesting. I had almost forgotten about that service. I had signed up for it earlier this year or about 1 year ago when I was working for the school in town here. It was quite interesting to see what careers suited me after I had answered all the questionaires. I think I will be redoing the questionaire, because our likes and dislikes sometimes change as do our interests, skills and goals, so I'm curious to find out if there are some new careers that apply to me.

This is also my 3rd blog of the day. I was so busy in the past week that I didn't get the chance to share my days' experience with you. I've been trying all afternoon to upload some pictures to the computer to share with you my Christmas Decor... but I couldn't get it to work and couldn't get the drivers to install, and I couldn't find the CD that came with this old camera, so next time I'll try a different camera. Hopefully that'll work.

Service Canada sends someone to town here every 2nd tuesday of the month. So today a new lady came to assist people that needed help with government services. It turned out to be someone I went to school with, I hadn't seen her in AGES! Anyways...she sets up her lap top and portable printer in the room behind me. I helped her hook up to the Internet with one of our Cables and later helped her print out the dates for the next time she comes. So I guess I'll be seeing her on the 2nd tuesday of the upcoming months, untill she goes on maternity leave.

We are also starting to plan the January News Letter, trying to come up with a new name too. since most of us are taking some time off between christmas and new years.

So we have alot of work to do before the Holidays really start.

Put your nose to the grind stone and give it your all to then relax and have fun with family and friends during Christmas.

Getting into the Christmas Spirit

Getting into the Christmas Spirit has been a little tough this year,

there was no snow, it didn't feel like winter and I was just too busy with my 3 jobs. But then sometimes you just have to get things done, like decorating, baking, shopping and stuff like that.

So I started with the decorating last week here at our CAP site.

The room behind me is a fair size room where there are banquets, gatherings, art displays and more social activities.

The manager asked if I could take care of the decorations. Well I just jumped at the opportunity. I love decorating and making things look nice and it's a great way to get into the holiday spirit.

Wednesday evening until Friday afternoon, I was all into the X-Mas Decor. I started by pulling out all the boxes I could find that had Christmas in or on it. I wanted to see what I all had to work with, so I could make a plan of what could be used and where. I found lots of that green life-like garland with lights in them only to find out that almost 1/2 the lights didn't work. But never fail, I found some extra bulbs and went courageously on to try to fix them. Towards the end of the 3rd long L-O-N-G piece of garland, I was starting to get frustrated and fed up of switching little tiny bulbs. I must say, it didn't go so bad but if someone saw me working on those lights, they would've thought I was a little loopy. But hey, I had the Christmas carols going on the stereo, had my Santa hat on and it was all good. Friday afternoon I cleaned up the decorations that weren't used and set up some table and chairs for a Christmas supper party that a group of 20 had reserved.

It turned out beautiful, I felt so proud and the feedback was very positive. I felt like I had done my part to bring some Christmas Cheer to this place and to the people who visited the Center.

And the Holiday Spirit continues to spread

with a smile & warm greetings from the heart.

Photo slide show

Photo slide shows are fun to look at and fun to make, as long as you know the basics of working with a slide show maker, like Microsoft Power Point. In November I had someone ask me to help them make a Photo Slide Show for the dad's 50th birthday. They wanted to have lots of pictures to show highlights of his life, from childhood to young adulthood, to parent to grandparent.

So with the brand new photocopier/scanner machine that the Francophone center BDS got for the Bellevue Cultural Center, we were able to mass scan photos, crop and save them using IrfanView and then add them to slides in Microsoft Power Point.

I think the longest process is scanning and making the pictures ready to put into the slide show. I've been using IrfanView for about 10 years now. I find that it's quick & easy to use, you download it for FREE from http://www.irfanview.com/. I showed my MOM how to use it and that's all she uses to edit her photos (and she's got TONS of them).

After cropping and resizing the pictures and saving them all to a folder, the really fun part starts. Making it PRETTY!

There are pre-made themes that are applied automatically to all the slides, we picked a suitable one and went with that to make it easier. You can also create your own theme and apply it to all slides or switch it up as you go. This process takes more time and experience though. I find the easiest way to add photos is to have the folder open in a separate window and then dragging the photos (one or more at a time) into the slide. We also added some effects to the photos, like a shadow or a border. Together we made 100 pages of photo slides to represent his life with family and friends and his fun and hobbies.

I also went to the 50th birthday party for a quick hello and Happy Birthday, and the family really enjoyed the slide show. It made me feel really good to have been able to give them a gift in this way.

December 1st, 2009

So today is the first day of December, there's no snow and barely any Christmas decorations up. Where's the Christmas spirit? Did the Grinch take it away? Or is Christmas just late this year... like everything else.

But today we are printing the December news letter for our Francophone region and it's all Christmasy! Yay, we're only 1 day late. (supposed to have been done before december)

I also helped a few poeple make photocopies this morning.
so I had a couple people come today.
It's a nice day today.