Did you know there's a Friends Helping Friends group in River Bend? Go to http://www.ci.river-bend.nc.us/friends_helping_friends.htm. Best bet is to put an icon on your desktop for the River Bend webpage by going to http://www.ci.river-bend.nc.us/ and clicking on File, Send, Shortcut to Desktop and then you'll have access to lots of other information, like when's the next stick pickup (Recurring events). If you don't have a computer and need help or wish to volunteer for Friends Helping Friends call Bill or Bev Healy at 637-7005.

Did you know that stuff sells really fast on RBmail? Join the River Bend e-mail list by sending your name, address, phone number and e-mail address to Charlie Sharpe at csharpe@XXXsuddenlink.net (remove XXX). To sell items, address your message to rbmail@always-online.com and close to 500 members will see it. If you include a photo of the item make sure it's not too large. Although RBmail has a 500kByte file size limit all photos can be resized to around 50kBytes by using free Photo Resizer available at the NBCUG website at http://www.nbcug.com/links.htm.

Did you know there are other municipal e-mail lists besides RBmail? RBmail was the first but Trent Woods has a list managed by Don Wainwright enterprising@XXXaol.com (remove XXX), Taberna, managed by Wayne Maruna wamaruna@XXXsuddenlink.net (remove XXX) and Fairfield Harbour (contact http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fhmail/join).

Did you know that the New Bern Computer Users Group (NBCUG) no longer meets monthly? It's essentially an e-mail club now. At the January meeting members voted to meet quarterly instead of monthly. Upcoming meetings are on April 19th, July 19th and October 18th. See the NBCUG webpage at http://www.nbcug.com/. To be a member of the NBCUG e-mail list one must attend a meeting. Join and get PC help from gurus at NBCUG.

Did you know that you don't have to waste time downloading mail with big attachments? Go to your server's Webmail site, sign in and delete mail you don't want. A better and faster way is to download free MailWasher from http://www.mailwasher.net.

Did you know that too many startup programs might be causing your PC to run sluggish? Go to Start, Run and type msconfig. When the menu appears, click on the Startup tab. Delete as many programs you can that are unnecessary to be placed in memory at startup, like memory hog MS Office. Google the items you're not sure of. You can always add them back.

Did you know that junk piles up in your PC the more you browse the web? Some of it might even be bad. Let Microsoft clean it out by going to Start, Run and typing cleanmgr. Check every item listed to be deleted. A faster way is APF Cleaner for Windows XP & 2000 available at http://www.atribune.org/content/view/25/2/ or CCleaner for Windows 98 and later versions at http://www.ccleaner.com/

Did you know that most NBCUG members use free AVG antivirus? Go to http://free.grisoft.com/ and click on Download at AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition.

I hope everybody knows about Windows Update. It's at http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us. Download the security updates or your PC could be loaded with bad stuff. For my Window XP with Windows Defender 432 updates have been issued so far. I set it up for MS to notify me when security updates are available.