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.