Don't forget; the meetings this month are May 8th for the Board and May 10th for the General Meeting.

Mission Summaries:

- 4/16/07 Little Colorado River - missing German photographer. We were called to assist Coconino County who had been searching for 3 days along the cliffs of the Little Colorado River, northwest of Cameron Trading Post. 10 members responded at 0400 at GCSO. Half were assigned to cover several areas by quad, and the other half were detailed to search along the edge of the canyon. Subject was not found and search was abandoned after 7 days.

- 4/22/07 Called out by GCSO for lost hiker near Pine Trailhead. Another hiker found them and brought them back to trailhead.

- 4/28/07 Injured hiker at lower trailhead to Fossil Springs. He was down a steep embankment, so we set up a quick 3:1 rope haul system to assist getting him up to ambulance.


Successful Business Showcase - sold close to $600 worth of raffle tickets. Thanks to all who participated, and special thanks to Don Peters for organizing this event.

The Highline 50 mile run was uneventful. The Stampede 24 hr mountain bike race is the weekend of May 5 and 6 (noon to noon). Hopefully it will be uneventful as well.

There is an Open House at the Tonto Rim Sports Club on May 6, 10:00AM to 4:00PM. TRSAR will have a booth and we will be selling raffle tickets.

The Special Olympics Torch Run was the first week in May this year. This is an event where Special Olympians converge on Phoenix from all over the state, then perform in the AZ Special Olympics. The group that came from northeast AZ traveled through Gila County on Thursday, May 3rd. Somehow, Rod Cronk talked me into volunteering to help move the torch with him to the Maricopa County line. There is a walking part through town with the Special Olympians - Ron Crimmins and Dave Pirtle joined us for that part, as well as members of DPS, GCSO, and Payson PD. The walking continued to the brake test area above Oxbow Hill. We jumped on bicycles for the next section, 10 miles to Deer Creek. I had an extra bicycle, so we talked Ron Crimmins into riding down that next section, against his better judgement - now there was a sight to see! Heh heh! Next we had a running section, about 2 ½ miles from Deer Creek to Jct 188. Then Rod and I bicycled the last section up two steep passes to the county line at Mt Ord. The last mile was not only very steep, but the 20-30 MPH headwinds which had hampered us all day were funneled straight down the canyon at us. We were both fighting leg cramps when we reached the county line, but we made it and handed off the torch to DPS on the other side.

Bill Pitterle - Commander, #500

May 2007 Training & Events Schedule

Planned Training Sessions

 (Coming this Year)

Requested Training Sessions

If you would like to volunteer to run a training session, or if you have a training session request contact any Board Member or Don Johnson
 

Italics = Sign-up required to attend this training   

* See following notes:

To reserve use of squad ATV, contact Don Johnson at 928-474-5335. Jacket, gloves, boots, helmet, and eye protection required to operate Squad ATV

Question for the Month: How much water should you carry with you ? 

Enough for the days that you are going to be out and for one extra day.

Squad Web Site:  www.trsar.org

____________________________________________________________________________________

Computer Tips, Techniques, Rants, Raves, and Netiquette

submitted by Jack Quinn and Les Hulse

Is Your Computer Running? Then Go Catch It!


This month we would like to address a topic which over 90% of PC users do not follow.

Back Up Your Data

Just about everybody has important data on their hard drive, from digital pictures to important documents, Emails, earmarked websites, and the list goes on and on. In my experience people are pretty lax about backing up their PCs, and I think this really is an area that deserves attention. With a good back up set you can bounce back from a fatal hard drive crash and be up and running with all the your pictures, documents, downloads, Email, and favorites before you know it. Having important files stored on removable media is also a good safety precaution in case you get a virus or Trojan horse.

There are a couple of different ways to back up important data, from the casual copy and paste to running complicated scheduled backups. There is no wrong way, as long you have a copy of everything you need.

You can save the data on a couple of different types of media (floppy, ZIP, CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, Flash memory, external hard drives, even DAT drives) but for home use I really recommend either CDs, DVDs, or external hard drives. Floppies are just too small; Zips, although bigger than floppies are still small (100-200MB), and they're old and kind of expensive. Flash memory can store data, but it's not really something you want to save data to and store away unless there is no other option. DAT tapes are more for the corporate end of things and are overkill in most homes. CDs and DVDs are cheap, hold a lot of data, work on any PC, and are easy to store. External drives (the best storage) are more costly and some are subject to static electricity errors.

If you use CD-RW, or DVD-RW you can actually save money by setting up a "round robin" with your backups. To do this, you need at least 3-4 of the same backup set, take the oldest and erase it. Now use the blank disk for the new backup, the next time you do a backup use the oldest disk in the set and so on and so forth.

As for the methods of backing up, I find it's easiest when all my intended files and folders are organized in a structured manner and not scattered all over my hard drive. This is a good way to insure that you don't forget anything important by hunting for a bunch of individual files. An easy way to stay organized is to create a descriptively labeled folder structure and try to be diligent about saving your data to its designed folder.

Another good practice is to test your backups. Don't just take the burning software's word for it. After a backup, explore the disk and randomly go through files and open them up to make sure that they're complete and not corrupt. Learn from my experience in helping users set up backup systems - waiting for a complete system failure is not a good time to check the validity of your backups! This is a good way to get your self in a lot of trouble.

Once you have all your ducks in a row, it's time to back up. There are also a number of ways to do this. The easiest is to open your burning program, select data CD or DVD, go through the folders using Explorer, and grab the folders you want to back up. When you select a folder, you should see it in the "burn" selection window. When you're done with your backup selection, choose "burn".

If you have Windows XP, you have the luxury of being able to open up the blank CD or DVD in Windows Explorer and copying and pasting the desired folders right onto the disk and select "Write files to CD". Windows will do the rest for you. This is nice, but I personally still like to use my third-party software.

Most burning software has its own backup service, and there are a number of third-party backup titles out there. The nice thing about these types of software is the options, like compression, backup jobs, and incremental backups. These are nice features especially when you have some backups that you want to insure are up to date.

For instance, you can create a "Back up Set" which is basically a saved and named list of folders and files that you want backed up. This makes the whole process so easy-you can create a backup set and once a week or so your can run it and it will either create a new back up or save just the changes to the backup. These are two options that are usually found in backup programs. If you use "backup sets", it's important to keep the files organized, and in all the correct folders. You can also schedule Backup Jobs, which are basically backup sets that are scheduled to run at predetermined times, and intervals (i.e. once a week Friday at 6:00).

As PCs become a bigger part of peoples' lives the information being stored on the PCs is becoming more important. Performing backups is essential for protecting your data.

Stay safe out there.

 

Question: Do any of you find this section useful?

We can rant and rave about many topics, but do not know if it is appreciated. Also, we will most likely choose topics that “tick us off” and ignore the ones that you may be interested in. We can give you our opinion on just about anything (opinions are cheap).

So let us know if this section is useful, and if you would like us to tear into some topic, just tell us.

Send any comments and/or suggestions to the webmaster; Jack.

Website

Tonto Rim SAR Members can now have your very own email address through our site. Just contact our Webmaster at jack@jackswebs.com  to arrange for it, no cost to you or us.

You’ll also find our newsletter on the

Rim Country Volunteer site;

http://www.inpayson.com/TRSAR-Payson-Rim-Country-Area.htm

Related SAR info

Trekking Poles Reduce Risk of Strain and Injury in Hikers

New research has found that using trekking poles while hiking downhill reduces force and strain on knees and ankles when hiking with or without a backpack. This is good news-and offers a practical tip-for hikers and backpackers as well as for those involved in search and rescue who often carry loads during the search mission.

http://www.isb2005.org/proceedings/abstracts/0970.pdf


Free Directory Assistance (aka 411) Phone Number

We've all been in situations where we needed a phone number and the easiest or only option was to call 411. Often we are charged $1.00 or more per call. Now there is a new toll free number-almost as easy to remember: 1 (800) FREE 411, or 1 (800) 373-3411 -that incurs no cost at all. We checked the urban legends reference pages on the web, which gives the claim "true" status. Find out more about how it works at the link below.

http://www.snopes/com/inboxer/nothing/free411.asp


Thanks to those who contributed to this issue of the newsletter.
Bill 500