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August 2007 In this edition
Goodbye Geoff By now most South Australian AM-Win clients would have heard that Geoff Pike, our South Australian Distributor passed away recently from heart failure.
Geoff was dedicated to his family. He loved cooking and was an accomplished chef [he often bragged about his quiche]. He was also a fiendish practical joker and a wonderful raconteur who always had a story to tell. Whenever Geoff invited friends over for a meal they knew that they were not only in for a good feed, but an equally great wine and a special evening, with lots of laughter, good conversation and great company. He was a music buff who loved dancing and took rock and roll lessons with the Adelaide rock and roll club in 2001. It was at the club that Geoff met his partner Sue. Sue and Geoff found they had a great deal in common besides rock and roll and and they spent many happy hours together dining, dancing, bushwalking, walking along the beach, traveling and collecting antiques and collectables. Sue and Geoff's sister Lynne have asked that we take this opportunity to thank the many AM-Win users around South Australia for their kind words, flowers and support. |
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Geoff was a consummate professional who researched everything thoroughly before he made recommendations to his clients. He was not only well liked but was respected and trusted by his clients. So from all of us at AM-Win - we'll miss you mate. You were a professional, a pleasure to work with and your input at conferences on behalf of your clients was always well considered. You were highly valued by the team. AM-Win Support in South Australia Please contact Calibreone IT Business Solutions [formerly GSoft] on 08 82841266 or the AM-Win National Support Centre on 1300 766 231 if you are a South Australian client and unsure of your support arrangements. Survey Thank you to all of you who took part in last month's survey where we asked if you were currently using a high or low resolution monitor. Ninety people took part in the survey with 75% selecting high resolution and 25% selecting the low option. While this is a huge majority for the high resolution users, when you consider our user base it means that [if the percentages are correct] there are still a thousand Am-Win users who are using low resolution monitors and we would be inconveniencing many users if we updated our website so that it could only be viewed correctly in high resolution. We will revisit the survey again in 12 months or so to see if the situation has changed. In the mean time we will leave things the way they are. Please note that there is no new survey this month Feed back Want to say something or submit a good article or joke. The e-mail address is webmaster@am-win.com.au We'd love to hear from you and you'll win a mention in the newsletter. The Quill tool - Word processing on invoicing. Here's how: Select the "Detail" button on the bottom left hand side of your invoice you would during normal operation. Now type your first word into the text field as usual.
Select OK - The text will now appear on your invoice in blue. Please note that it has to be hi-lighted in blue for the quill to work. Select the "Quill" button at the bottom of the invoice.
You will now see the following screen - It's called the scratch pad and it will have the text [detail] that you typed into the text field earlier.
Now you can type away to your heart's content. So let's type in the following
Note that we have been able to correct the first spelling error on the page using the scratch pad - we have added the "e" on the end of please. You can edit, add, delete and cut and paste anywhere you want to. When you have finished typing the message you can now use the spell checker to check your spelling. Click on the quill in the centre of the scratch pad screen.
The spell checker will now open.
Using the spell checker you can now do all of the things that you would normally do in a spell checker. Some words or abbreviations may be unique to your trade [eg CV joint] and the spell checker will not know the word. If this happens click the add box and the word will be added to your dictionary. Once you are happy that there are no errors close the spell checker. Now you can play with the fonts and their colours. To do hi-light the text in the scratch pad that you want to change then click the font button at the bottom of the scratch page and the font screen will appear. Select the size, colour and font style then select OK and the text will change to the settings in the font screen. A word of caution - remember that the text on your invoice has to fit on the invoice so don't make a huge block of text too large - the general rule of thumb is that a heading should be no more than 12 points and normal text no more than eight or nine points. Select Ok and the scratch pad will drop the entire contents onto your invoice. If find that you have made a mistake click on the first line of text so that it's highlighted in blue, select the "quill button and re-edit the text. More about the spell checker The Spell Check option is now available in many areas of AM-Win. This option will allow you to spell check invoices, letters and memo fields. In the invoicing modules spell check is available in the “quill” option. When you use the quill to either add or edit text you can click on the Spell Check button and this will begin the spell check process. Business InformationLearn to be Consistent We often hear stories of one bad month wiping out two good months, one bad hiring decision unravelling a team or one bad customer experience leading to the end of a previously good relationship. These common issues are often caused by a lack of consistency - a major factor in the success or failure of a business. The only way to ensure consistency is to actively plan towards it and give your business sufficient time and resources while it is 'learning' to be consistent. You may be aware of a model called the 'Four Stages of Learning'. Here's an analogy which explains it in simple terms. Long before you learned to drive, there was a time when you didn’t know you needed to learn the skill of driving. This stage is called Unconscious Incompetence. Then one day you realised you needed the skill and that you didn't have it. This is stage two – Conscious Incompetence. As you are learning to drive, you are gaining the skill but are very conscious about it e.g. you have to think about changing gears, your position on the road etc. – this stage is Conscious Competence. These days, driving is something you can just do without giving it any thought. You now feel comfortable talking, thinking about other things and listening to the radio while driving. This is called Unconscious Competence. So what’s that got to do with business? Well if you think about it, businesses also need to learn. Your business needs to be skilled in hiring staff, providing service, marketing, selling etc. Successful businesses (and their managers and staff) are those that are Unconsciously Competent in key areas which comes only with experience gained over time. The key is to allow your business sufficient time to develop in key areas. For the business owner, this means setting well thought out strategies, letting them run their course, measuring appropriately and avoiding reactive decisions. By forcing your business to become unconsciously competent in key areas, you are one step closer to achieving consistency across your business. i.e. your business can accomplish it’s goals regularly without giving constant attention to day to day activity. Windows Tips
We received a request from a user the other day asking how he could capture a screen in windows XP. When he hit the print screen key nothing happened. He's very knowledgeable when it comes to computers so we thought - Hmm - if he doesn't know many others won't know either. So here's the answer David. Tips and tricks for the perfect Windows XP Print Screen Learn everything you need to know to make a perfect Windows XP Print Screen. If you just need a quick error message screenshot to send to a technical support person, you already have everything you need on your Windows XP computer. Just press the "Print Screen" button, which is usually located to the right of the F12 button.
Nothing happens at all ? Ok, it may seem as if nothing happens when you hit the Print Screen button, but Windows already made a picture of your screen and copied that to the clipboard. Windows does that in the background, so you won't notice anything. The image is there though, available for you when you need it. Just fire up Word, WordPad, Paint or whatever application that can handle images and then select "Edit" from the application menu and choose "Paste" (you can also press the CTRL-v key combination). The picture of your screen magically appears in the application. You can even use this technique to capture a particular strange behaviour of your computer in a picture and mail it to someone who can help you. Or maybe you want a screenshot as proof of an online transaction or money transfer. Don't want the entire screen ? No problem. The Windows XP Print Screen functionality can handle that. Press and hold the ALT-key and then press the Print Screen key. Try and paste that image in your word processor and you'll see that only the active window was captured in the screenshot. How do I see what's on my clipboard How to quickly open the ClipBook Viewer When you use the Cut or Copy command on the Edit menu, the material you cut or copy is automatically copied to the Clipboard. The Clipboard is a temporary holding area for the items you've cut or copied. You can use the ClipBook Viewer to see the information that you've copied to the Clipboard. You can also store information permanently in your local ClipBook and share it with other users. The local ClipBook opens when you start ClipBook Viewer. The ClipBook Viewer isn't listed in the Start menu in Microsoft Windows XP, so if you want quick access to it, just create a shortcut on your desktop. To open the ClipBook View
No Particular Category Well we kept saying your computer would eventually do everything except make your coffee. Maybe we were wrong.
The clean ones first - Guaranteed to roll your eyes
My memory's not as sharp as it used to be. Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be. Thanks to Carolyn from Seaside Motors for the next one - an oldie but a goody.
Two starving Eskimos in a kayak were lost. One said to the other - the kayak is made of fur skins - let's pull it up on the ice and eat it. So they pulled it up onto the ice and tucked in. Without their kayak they were well and truly stuck and finally died. The moral of the story - You can't have your kayak and eat it too. And while we're on polar matters here's one you can tell in the pub Question - How do catch a polar bear
Answer. Take a handful of peas. Cut a neat circular hole in the ice then place the peas one by one around the hole. Now when the polar bear comes in for a pea you kick him in the ice hole. I guess a better question is what do you do with it when you've caught it.
Ok now the not so clean ones - you know the rules - don't go any further if you are easily offended. Thanks to Ross in Tassie for our first yarn . It's still Pretty Thin! The year is 2222, and a human couple are taking their first trip to Mars. While there, they meet two Martians and the four of them get talking. They discuss the differences between Earth and Martian politics, technology, society - until finally the conversation turns to sex. "Just how do you Martians do it?" asks the woman. The little yellow man - with thanks to Mike in Dubbo A truck driver is cruising towards Sydney when he spots a little yellow man standing in the middle of the road, crying. He brings the truck to a standstill, rolls down the window, and asks the little man what's wrong. "Well", says the truckie, "I can offer you a cheese sandwich, but that's as much as I can do". He passes a sandwich to the little man and drives off. So the truckie says, I can offer you a can of Coke, but that's as much as can do." He hands a tin of Coke down to the little man and drives off. Really annoyed now, he stops, rolls down the window and snaps "Yes, you silly little blue queer, what planet are you from and what do you want?" But you haven't heard the worst
This yarn is a little tasteless - if this type of joke offends you please do not read on. It's the last thing in the newsletter so you won't miss anything if you don't proceed. Here's a yarn that you can tell in the pub. You can keep it going for hours if you think about all the things that could have happened to this poor guy while he's hanging from the window sill and add them into the yarn - So here we go. Fred met Bob in the pub one day and noticed that his fingers were bandaged up. Fred commented and asked Bob "what happened to you"? Bob said - you wouldn't believe it - I met this absolutely gorgeous lady at the tavern last night and she invited me home for a "nightcap". She must have had a quid because she took me to this huge two story house in Toorak [substitute your own favourite suburb here] - One thing led to another and we finished up in bed together. Says Fred - that doesn't sound too bad mate - but howd'ya hurt your fingers. Says Bob - well we just got started and we heard the front door open and her husband calling "hi Honey I'm home" Geez says Fred that was bad. Says Bob - It was - but you haven't heard the worst. I dived naked out the window, and you know how cold it was last night and found myself hanging by my fingertips from the window sill in the dark. Geez says Fred that was bad. Says Bob - It was - but you haven't heard the worst. I'm hanging by my finger tips slowly turning blue with cold and I could just see over the window sill and I have to watch her husband finish off where I left off - it was agony. Geez says Fred that was bad. Says Bob - It was - but you haven't heard the worst. - I'm hanging by my finger tips slowly turning blue with cold and when the lazy sod finished off where I left off he came over to the window and peed all over me Geez says Fred that was bad. Says Bob - It was - but you haven't heard the worst. - I'm hanging by my fingertips, blue with cold and covered in wee and the B@!#$% came over to the window. He must've had too much to drink because he leaned right over me with his eyes closed and threw up all over me. Geez says Fred that was bad. Says Bob - It was - but you haven't heard the worst. - I'm hanging by my fingertips, blue with cold and covered in wee and sick watching these two tucked up warm in bed together when he wakes up, gets up, walks over to the window and slams it down shut - right on my bloody fingers. Geez says Fred that was bad. Says Bob - It was - but you haven't heard the worst. I hung there all night by my fingertips, blue with cold and covered in wee and sick with my fingers throbbing and blood pouring all over me. Then it started to get light and I finally got the courage to look down - it wasn't a two story house after all it was only split level and my bloody feet were only six inches from the ground. Until next month
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C
Geoff's death came as a terrible shock to all who knew
him. He was only 59, an avid and accomplished water and snow skier,
competitive swimmer, and a man who had the self discipline to go for a 5
kilometre run every morning without fail. Geoff had also competed in
several marathons and was a great all round sportsman. 
