Sherman’s Senior Service

This is my last posting of 2007, and what a year it has been. My nearly blind client who had a heart attack the night after I set up his new computer is out of the hospital and being very active. He called me to come over to help him with some problems. When I [...]

Tutoring seniors in computer literacy can be frustrating or rewarding. This week was rewarding.
My new client is an 89-year-old woman who is severely limited in seeing due to macular degeneration. This condition slowly eliminates the ability to see the sharp things at the center of vision, but generally leaves the ability to see peripheral things. [...]

To make up for the lost client I mentioned last week, a different type of a new client merits mention. A woman I met at the Senior Center called me this week and asked if I could help her husband. They just bought a new computer and he needed help setting it up. Immediately I [...]

This week I lost a client. Actually I lost the client a week ago, but she did not tell me at the time. We seemed to have a good thing going. She runs a small business in which her computer is critical. It was giving her problems. On the phone, it became obvious that she [...]

Security is still a major problem for seniors wanting to become computer literate. They seem to divide into two major groups. One group is extremely paranoid and afraid to surf or download anything. The other group blithely goes about clicking on the latest moving banner to see if they won the free trip to Las [...]

Here is a story without an end yet. You can speculate on how it will turn out. A senior friend who lives about an hour’s drive away has a small business in his home, which requires a LAN with server and five work stations. He does not have a regular tech service provider and knows [...]

My last post seems to have been misinterpreted by several people. That can only mean one thing: I was not clear in my writing. In fact, I have no negative feelings toward the client who did not maintain her computer. It would be more proper to say that I am frustrated by the tendency of [...]

This week a quietly panicked new customer called for help. She uses her computer for business and for club duties. For some time it had been suddenly stopping, but she rebooted and it would work for a while so she pressed on. Finally her computer simply gave up the ghost. She heard about me from [...]

This fall I planned to present three short courses designed for seniors. The first was to be a combination decision theory and puzzle course based loosely on my other Lockergnome post. The second was a moderately advanced photo restoration and enhancement class for people who wanted to go beyond simple cropping and organization. The third [...]

My senior course on how to obtain freebies safely has attracted more than student interest. Several local tutors have asked me about it and I have received comments asking more about the content. In response, I will talk more about it here with the provision that this is still experimental, and the nature of the [...]