Our volunteer of the this month for this month will remain un-named for the moment, for reasons which you will see later.  This volunteer is quite active in the organization right now in several areas, and appears to enjoy all this activity and volunteerism.

The volunteer has had an interest in computers for quite a few years, starting somewhere in the early 80’s.  The first family computer was at Christmas time in 1985 – a Radio Shack Color Computer, called the “CoCo”.  It had 4 Mb of Ram, but was upgraded quickly to an incredible 16 Mb of Ram memory.  It had no hard drive or storage solution except for a cassette tape plugin.  There weren’t many ways to get programs for the machine, so the family took turns typing the programs into the keyboard from a couple of magazines published at that time.  That worked fine for short programs, but several times the family typed in 200- to 300-line programs into the machine.  The problem was that if you skipped a line or left out a character or two, the program wouldn’t run. One of the kids in the family took this simple little computer and a book, and taught himself BASIC programming.

Then came a Commodore, then an Amiga, then a Sanyo machine with CPM  on it, and finally a 286 with Windows 3.11 as the operating system.  So he’s been into computers for a while, but as a casual user.  He says however, that in the last few years his interest has escalated to the point where he now builds computers, installs and updates, and tutors privately on computers.  This started with friends, but has developed into a small sideline business.  He also shows up on Friday mornings to help during “the Doctor’s In” SIG.  He now has formal training, wide reading, and substantial personal experience with computers.  He has 4 computers running at home.

This volunteer had a career in an entirely different field, and still does that part time.  He is now semi-retired - after about 30 years in the field - from teaching languages at the college level.  Schools included UTSA, Our Lady of the Lake, Hispanic Baptist Seminary, Wayland Baptist University in San Antonio, and Alamo Community College District.  He has discovered an interesting combination of his two major interests by  teaching languages over the Internet.  He has written 3 Internet Spanish courses now being taught at SAC over the Internet, and is now writing a French Internet course.  He says that this is the cutting edge of teaching, and that SAC currently has about 80 courses taught over the Internet.

So how has he been involved in AlamoPC?  Like many members, he just lurked and observed during his first months of membership, but now has become actively involved. He teaches a class for SeniorComp, manages the desk on Saturdays at the Resource Center, helps with “the Doctor’s in”, and also writes the Volunteer of the Month column. ?  So now you know that the name of this particular volunteer is: