Genealogy

 Periodically devices die. I seem to have a collection of backup strategies that did not work for assorted reasons. (What do you mean CDs become unreadable?) Yet again a friend (you both know who you are) helped take my old computer apart and pull stuff off my hard drive. But it is more than. An environment that understands the files is also needed. As expected this is going to be a long slow process. Today I bought an upgrade license for Reunion13 and got support to look up my old license to Reunion9. (Time to start keeping records of license numbers.) Opened a copy of the old file, and accepted the option to convert the file format. It then gave an error about missing media files. Woot! This was to be expected and is clearly the next step.  For a small, sample it worked! This enables me to look at the branch in the spotlight this week. So I have a bit of a mess with  4 versions of information: familysearch on internet - built with a bit of knowlege and approximately 20...

 Last night we had a fine family zoom "talking story" about Thanksgivings past. We talked food, football, and hikes.... I was talking about my grandfather's last two residences when one of the Californians asked, "where are these places?" She had certainly heard of all of the places he had lived. I am afraid I fumbled.  I know roughly how to travel between them and how far it takes by car. I realize the limits of my geography as I think of high points and rivers, farming vs hardwoods vs bulldozed pinelands. What was she looking for? These are the things that keep me up at night. Then I go to the technology that is easier for me to quantify what I know and and things I want to figure out.  (Of course the person who asked the question was on the phone.) Here it is the morning after and I am trying to capture my thoughts for when I have time to get back to it. At the very least, it is time to get my genealogy out of my home's common areas and into the den. Unfo...