Genealogy

Around Thanksgiving I decided to get moving on digitizing dad's slides and movies. I was feeling pressure because these degrade over time. The thought was I would delegate it to get better quality and save myself some time. I was however nervous about sending these irreplacable things off somewhere else. Social Media and my experience: Since covid I have been trying to post in Facebook daily - what made today different? what were things that made me smile? ... I linked to that blog entry on slides. I mentioned the adventure of retrieving the slides from dad'd house. Someone offered to loan me thier scanza. I knew myself well enough to recognize it had the potential to preempt other things and at least got my taxes to the accountant before picking it up. In any case before I was ready to pull together another blog, I just started to jot notes on facebook with some pictures. While I don't feel like I am done figuring it out, I think it is time pull those notes together as oth

I had three goals. Did the last one change? Lots of new information today. Maybe should have taken more notes in my calendar or the Goldie May log. Let's face it this is my document for me and to share with family and friends that share the hobby.  Get the laptop online, so I can do research from the parking lot. https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/family-history-center-premium-content-browser-extension I tried to follow the instructions on my first visit and failed to get quite there. Upon reading the (printed) ... document at home, scribbled in the margins it said: "if you fail, reboot". I am not sure how many windows update forced reboots have happened, but definitely have done that since. Viola. It connected. the helpful volunter reminded me about the chrome exttension (green when connected), and fed me the  alternate familysearch website, https://www.familysearch.org/centers/portal . And I was off. I was so happy to be functional that I stayed on

When I started on Familysearch, hints were addictive, causing me to add information to people, and people to the tree. About a month ago I realized I had a lot of hints that I had not processed.  (To look at them start at your top page, scroll down to record hints and select view all; or from the same page look at the second menu list row across the top and select hints.) (Another reminder that is becoming annoying with the unfinished attachments - especially when what they want you to attach is “UNKNOWN”.) I started try to knock off a backlog of family hints and remembered why I had not  done some of them: ugly merges, not wanting to step on other people’s toes having attached to their trees, … However I tended to forget what I started looking at, and the truly new ones were getting buried. So I need a research log where I can easily see if I have looked at something before. Goldie May (GM), a chrome extension with familysearch access, seems to fit the bill. I heard about it at Rootst

Some genealogists have research plans and suggest writing notes to come back to distractions later. I can see where that makes sense with trying to finish off anything. Thomas McEntee, of genealogybargains and do over fame (these catch names span social media and help me find people again). described these as Bright Shiny Objects or BSOs. This tickled my fancy. I often chase them, as I do this for my amusement.The same group seems to also suggest setting down a regular scheduled time to research. Hah! This is not my job. Nor is it necessarily my life style. I like that I can sometimes go out and play on a nice day. Considering  organizing time and information is not limited to to my genealogy. You may have noticed Facebook posts on Bullet Journalling (#bujo). A friend helped guide me in finding a form which mimics some of what I have done. On Sunday nights, I tend to look at what is happening in the week ahead and what has to get done. I may do a revisit going into the weekend too. Thi

Events associated with a place Recently I saw a picture of a frozen Barnegat Bay, that had me flashing back to a time with  people driving on the ice and falling thru. I had a range of years it could have been, but not a precice cold snap. So I googled it and found a newspaper article , I found it interesting and  worthy of sharing. (To be fair I have memories of ice skating, an ocean beach fire permit, and assorted other things too.) However the people in the article were not ones I knew, so in GRAMPS I started attaching them to the town my family owned in but never had a residence. Technically it is not even  a town in the article , it is across the bridge near which the one car sank. (BTW this blo wganted to self configure a link instead of using the embed html that newspapers.com offered.) In my mind the further spot  was straight across the bay from our boats and in the range of "stay in sight" to play and was where we took power  boats for gas, so still associated with

Around Thanksgiving 2023 there was a slew of advertising for weeks. One of the things on TV was a discount for LegacyBox. I have an assortment of momentos from my folks and myself, that I have yet to make easily sharable or to help tell a story. (In addition I have been attempting to help my uncle organize his google pictures with tags and captions and share them. The multiple cloud issue is something I have yet to research.)  In googling LegacyBox I came across Everpresent in Highland Park, NJ. I like that I did not have to mail stuff. Everpresent I had a fine phone conversation with Hillary at Everpresent.com about my best guess about the slides and movies at dad's house. She sent me an estimate for smaller numbers and a bulk discount, USB.... During the conversation she mentioned that thier processing is done in Massachusetts and they have trucks pick up from partners and customers. They are accustomed to cleaning, scanning, adjusting....  Apparently I can get DVD/USB. They hav