Duane and Nancy Swope      

By Jim Conant

Duane and Nancy Swope joined CUGG partly because they felt welcome among CUGG's friendly computer users. To add to this spirit, Duane volunteered to take over the responsibility of the name badges from our hard working Treasurer, Frank Weaver, and to be the official "Greeter". (Nancy and Duane work as a team in most of their endeavors, so her hand is in there somewhere, too.)

Their first computer was an Apple, purchased in the mid-80's. Nancy did greeting cards on it in black and white. Duane, then Wiggins Postmaster, chafing at how slowly the Post Office was getting its work onto computers, put his two rural routes on the Apple, too. Next they graduated to a Mac, used Prodigy for the Internet, and did more greeting cards.

To get access to more programs, they switched to an IBM Aptiva about three years ago, got an Olympus D-300L digital camera and a Zip drive for extra storage. A year ago MicroComputer World built them a new computer with more storage yet. In April '99 they added a Hewlett Packard 500 MHz machine with 128 MB of RAM, a 19 GB hard drive, a 19" monitor, an HP DeskJet 882C printer and an HP 6200 Scanner. HP was so pleased with their operation they sent a camera crew to film it.

Nancy uses her computer to do t-shirts, cards, and her web pages. Duane uses "his", the MicroComputer World machine, for genealogy and other things. They made a very interesting presentation of their work -- beautiful photos, genealogy charts, and their Christmas card -- to our meeting on digital cameras last Fall. Their web site address is  http://members.xoom.com/nans2568/index.html.

Duane uses Mindscape's "Printmaster Platinum" label function to maintain and print our name badges. Beginning with the March 11th meeting, Duane will let you rate yourself as "Beginning", "Intermediate" or "Expert", and mark that on your badge. This will help us breakdown into appropriate small groups for the breakdown Q & A sessions. It should also help us all to know better how to answer each others' questions or make suggestions. Someone suggested this at the CUGG Board's brainstorming session Saturday morning, February 26, that Duane and Nancy attended. It doesn't take them long to implement an idea.

Nancy's Computer connects to the Internet via AT&T's @home cable service; Duane's connects via a free ISP, Freei Internet. They've been happy with their cable service. They've been saving on their phone bills by using Dialpad to place calls through Nancy's computer. You can sign up for this free service at www.dialpad.com. They've also tipped us off to Zone Alarm, a firewall you can download for free from www.zonelabs.com. Internet security should be on all our minds now, especially those of us using "always on" ISP's like cable and DSL.

Nancy and Duane came to CUGG's December Board meeting -- all members are invited -- and they've been coming ever since. The Board welcomes their fresh ideas and insights. Duane volunteered to maintain our Random Access distribution stands in the Centennial and Lincoln libraries and at Computer Brokers in the Bittersweet shopping center. Nancy volunteered to take an officer's job, but had to back out because of her mother's ill health. Both work with Dick Maxfield at the library, teaching the Internet.

Born in Denver, Nancy was adopted by Kersey farmers and grew up around Kersey, graduating from Kersey High School. Then she ran the machines that developed film for Barber's Studio. In 1964 she had a blind date with Duane. They were married six months later. Nancy stopped working when they adopted a son, Kevin, now 33, and a daughter, Karen, now 31.

Duane was born in Greeley, moved to Orchard, and graduated from the Weldon Valley High School there. He then joined the U.S. Navy in 1946, where he was a hospital corpsman and operating room technician until his discharge in 1948. He spent the next twenty-seven years as a U.S. Postal clerk and carrier. In 1975 he was made Postmaster of Wiggins, Colorado. When he retired in 1988, he and Nancy moved back to Greeley.

Duane and Nancy are always available to help CUGG members however they can. They're frequently passing on tips and new discoveries to the rest of us. You can email them at dswope805@aol.com or mistyebony@home.com.