Lissi, so glad you're back! Sorry about your computer troubles. I'm glad to hear that everything is working okay now, though. I responded to your e-mail off-list, but perhaps you never received my message. I will be happy to work with you for $20 an hour. I work from home, and I basically create my own hours, so it's fine for you to call me any time. At the moment, I'm working through the process of opening a merchant account, so that I can accept credit cards at my concerts. I hope to be able to use my account for computer training as well. In fact, that's my reasoning for replying to you on the list. I thought it might be something that other folks would want to know about as well. Lissi, I'll be out of town next week, but if you'll give me a call on Friday or Monday afternoon, we'll figure out how much training you will need. E-mail me off-list at jana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx if you need my phone number again, or if you would like for me to call you instead. Peace! Jana ----- Original Message ----- From: Cindy Deren To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 7:46 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Tired of turning pages? Make your own scanner Dear Pratik and everyone, I'm back and so happy to be among Bookshare users, movers, shakers and volunteers again. Two weeks ago my computer crashed for reasons the Dell people couldn't name. I'm still clawing my way through the set up of organization the way I liked it and though you'll quickly notice I haven't figured out how to get the spell check engaged again. I'm grateful to be back in the loop, but I sorely regret the loss of my validation files, Daisey and brf books, Volunteer tips and computer tips I so carefully collected and used to tackle my ever present computer challenges and all of the addresses for individuals in my outlook express address book. I also lovingly created files of hundreds of poems, quotes, humor, diabetic and regular recipes, knitting patterns and tips, interesting links, book announcements and synoopses and reviews from this group and from the Reading Club for the Blind, hobbit stories both touching and funny by some of the most talented tolkien fan writers and so so much more. It feels as if my library burned to a pile of ashe. Today, I bought some kind of 8 gig drive thing to connect to my computer once a day to make backups of everything I've saved every day. It's also obvious I'm still in serious need of a teacher who would teach me for the pittance of $the 20 an hour I can afford. I haven't been to the Bookshare site yet to see the sorry state of my validation projects. Two books were poised for uploading. Either someone else has taken them which will be fine as long as they end up in the collection, or I'll be starting work on them from square one. This post sounds so general you must be wondering why I singled you out in my greeting, Pradik. It's because I read your e mail about the automatic scanner and I'm here to stand up and admit, as I always do, that I'm so muzzy about computers that when I went to the site and read about the scanner, I couldn't tell if I was reading about a real piece of equipment or if the entire site is humor. At first I was positive it was a joke. With my bad vision, the pictures sure didn't help. They looked like pictures of shopping carts, huge construction equipment or those ladders they sell in infomercials which can be arranged in a score of positions. So, Pradik, was your post some silliness to brighten our day or the beginning of the end for your corpse of volunteers. Yes, we can be a prickly lot, but we adore Book share, and those of us who learn to take the quirks of the huge system in stride, and ride them out, love our work and the feeling we're contributing to the diverse, ever growing Book-share collection. So, here I am, more scared of computers than ever, but ever so happy to be back. I missed Book-share so much and I missed all of you who post to the discussion and volunteer lists. I perceive every one of you as a unique, likable, personality. With even more love than usual, Lissi ----- Original Message ----- From: Pratik Patel To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 1:26 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Tired of turning pages? Make your own scanner Hello all, The search for the Holy Grail for bookshare volunteers has ended. Here is a perfect solution. Start the scan, leave, come back, scan done. New request: let's make the validation and submission automatic too! http://miniurl.org/00s Pratik Pratik Patel Director, CUNY Assistive technology Services (CATS) The City University of New York pratik.patel@xxxxxxxxxxxx