If you weren't among the 65 or so who attended the picnic at Silver Springs Park, you have my condolences because you missed not only an abundance of good food, but also a terrific opportunity to fellowship and get better acquainted with other ICON members and spouses.

Special thanks to Nancy Preffitt for reserving the pavilion; Bill Patrick and Richard Preffitt for shopping and bringing the paper goods, coffee urn, etc.; Faye Patrick for getting the tickets for the picnic and raffle; and Terry Roberts and Sarah Marshall for bringing the coffee pot, folding tables and Mouse Toss game-maybe for hauling the grill as well, I'm not sure about that. Thanks to Shirley Emerson for helping with rebating so we could have more raffle items and also for baking beans. Other bean bakers - Pat Gavisk and Jim Troutt (with a little prep work by Bonnie) and our grill chefs - Dan Wright and Frank Davidson get special thanks. AND to everyone who came and brought dishes and desserts - a loud applause. Picnics don't just happen; they're the result of a lot of teamwork and ICON is very good at that. Yee Haw!!!

With all the discussion going on about viruses, worms, spam, malware, spyware, and XP Service Pack 2, I'm really glad we're having a concerted theme about security for the next several months.

If you haven't got both Ad Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy on your computers, it isn't necessary for you to go searching the web, just go to ICON's homepage at www.iconusersgroup.org, click on Links, and scroll down until you find each of these and then click on the link to go to a safe website for downloading. After you have the programs downloaded, you will need to double-click on the files and follow the prompts to install them. Once you have the programs installed, you need to run them at least once a week to clean your computer of the adware, malware and tracking programs that are clogging your system and slowing it down.

Most important of course is to keep your Windows updates and Live update for virus definitions current so you're protected again viruses, worms, and Trojans. Scheduling automatic updates is the simplest way to accomplish this. Make sure your system is scanned at least weekly.

I'll see you at the October meeting,

Mary Phillips