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Inclement weather closings: SenCom follows the Shawnee Mission School District’s Inclement Weather Procedures.

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Senior Techies SIG
Central Resource Library
9875 W 87th Street
Overland Park, KS 66212
Conference Room 01

MAP→

Wednesday, December 11, 2024, 2:30 ~ 4:00 pm

Topic:
To be determined.

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Note: This will be a hybrid meeting. You can join in person or remotely using the Free Conference Call as referenced in the Revised Virtual Meeting Procedure shown below.

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Joe Callison convenes the Senior Techies SIG
sencommember00@gmail.com
(913) 229-4684

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Revised Virtual Meeting Procedure:
We miss seeing our members. If you have been having problems joining our virtual meetings using Free Conference Call, please contact a Board Member, and one of us will work with you before the meeting you are interested in joining. Board Members’ email addresses and phone numbers are under the “About Us” tab of SenCom’s website.

QUICK ACCESS TO A SENCOM MEETING

If you have the FreeConferenceCall (FCC) app, please start the app to join our meeting with audio and video. If you do not have the FCC app and do not want to install the FCC app, please click on this link below to enter the virtual meeting, and participate with audio only (your picture will not be available to anyone):

https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/sencomuser00/viewer

You will still need to tell Free Conference Call to use the audio either on your computer or through a separate phone call. If you are using the FCC app on a computer, smartphone, or tablet, turn on your video by clicking on the icon of a video camera so that we can see you. On a phone or tablet, you may need to tap your screen to see the icon.

Here are the complete instructions for our virtual meeting procedure:

We are using a service called Free Conference Call that allows all of us to be on at one time through video/audio conferencing or just audio conferencing. If you have a camera and speakers on your desktop computer or a laptop computer with a camera and speakers, you will find that using your PC or Mac computer along with the FCC app will probably give you the best experience. To use your computer to conference into the meeting, follow the instructions that I have assembled in this PDF:

Using your computer to access the Free Conference Call (PDF)→ (Revised)

Also available on our Free Conference Call page → (Revised)

When using the Chrome browser to access a video conference, you may see a message that your browser has blocked access to your camera or audio. Look at the icons at the top right area of your browser for an icon with a red X like the following:

Click on the icon and then click on the button to allow access and then click the Done button. If the red X does not disappear after a few seconds you may need to refresh your browser by clicking on the icon near the top left of your browser that looks like the following:

The settings for the site will be saved in your Chrome browser Privacy and security settings so you will not need to do this the next time you access the site.

Although Chrome is the preferred browser, others have used Firefox without any problems.

For those who wish to use their Android devices (either tablet or phone), we are using an app called FreeConferenceCall that you can download from the Google Play Store (note that there are no spaces in the app name). Bob Bowser has assembled a set of instructions that you can print and follow to join the meeting:
Using your Android device to access the FreeConferenceCall (PDF)→

Apple iPad/iPhone users can find the same app (Free Conference Call) on the Apple App Store. Installing and using it should be very similar to the Android instructions above.
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SenCom is on Facebook. See the access instructions below to find our Facebook Group page (SenComKC).  Check it out!  Share your favorite SenCom moment or interaction.

To access the group page:

1. Log into your Facebook account.
2. On your computer, click “Search Facebook,” left-hand corner (to the left of the home icon, on your mobile device, in the middle of the screen on top, then type SenComKC (not case sensitive).
3. Search results should give you “Groups” and under that, you will see SenComKC. To the right of your search results, you should see a “Join” button. Click the button to request to be a member of this Facebook group.
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SOS! NEEDED NOW! – Volunteers to help our Board of Directors fill the board positions of Vice President and Program Director. If interested, please email me or another Board Member. Our email addresses are on the “Board of Directors” page under the “About Us” menu. Remember, this is your organization; please help us keep it healthy and growing!!
LITTLE OR NO COMPUTER SKILLS REQUIRED.
Lou Risley, 913-298-0575 or sencomprez@gmail.com
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CDC information on the Coronavirus Outbreak →

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FOR~GO
(For Geeks Only)
By Joe Callison
27 May 2024

Hiren’s BootCD Updated!

Much more than a decade ago, a favorite software tool of mine was Hiren’s BootCD. It was a bootable CD full of the most popular software utilities, some of which were pirated. The last official update was in 2012. Fans of Hiren’s BootCD have updated it, with only legal software utilities included, to a Windows 11 PE (preinstallation environment) for booting on modern UEFI computers. I have tried it out and was pleasantly surprised by the huge assortment of software utilities available. The only issue I have found is when using it on a computer with a high screen resolution (3K horizontal or higher), the icons and text can be quite small. Unfortunately, I could not find any method to change the display settings with the installed display driver, though you can add other drivers. I did find that the Accessibility settings in Windows PE could still be used to enlarge the icons on the desktop and the Taskbar settings could enlarge the icons on the Taskbar, which helped.

The download and instructions for preparing a bootable CD or USB can be found at Hiren’s BootCD PE

I used my trusty-free utility Rufus to create the bootable USB. Be sure to use the UEFI and not MBR setting and the NTFS format in Rufus for booting only on a modern computer system. The dual boot MBR/UEFI method for compatibility with older computers is much more complicated to create if not needed. Windows Home computers should be able to boot from a boot selection menu without getting into BIOS/UEFI settings to turn off Secure Boot or adding the USB drive as a trusted device in the Windows Boot Manager as may be required on computers initially set for Windows Professional. The keyboard key used to get the boot menu varies by manufacturer but is often briefly displayed on the screen during the boot process. You can also look it up for your computer or refer to articles such as Boot Menu Option Keys For All Computers and Laptops | [Updated List 2021] | Techofide
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