I ran across the link for this at Huffington Post. It is hilarious. But, it reminded me of a lesson I'd learned from my teen-aged son. To confess, I never considered myself a Trekkie--sure I loved the series and had seen all of them along with the movies but I wasn't hard core. I did, or so I thought, know a lot more about Star Trek than my son. But at one of the ComicCon's or other comic convention we attended, I was about to purchase a Star Trek T-shirt, when my son took it out of my hand and told me absolutely not. Puzzled, I looked up at him and he said, "Mom, the red shirt always dies." Don't laugh, but I'd never heard that before, nor had it occurred to me. I'm embarrassed to find out that its common knowledge. Apparently, redshirt is a writer's slang term for a minor character who's sole purpose is to dramatize a dangerous situation with his brutal death. It was apparently first used in Star Trek, but has become such a common technique among writers that it has a Wiki named after it, a book about it, and so on. Just goes to show me how much I don't know.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Never to Old to Avoid the Trekkie Redshirt Effect.
Logmein.com
This is a site I'd heard about before, but really had no need for it nor did I want others to have the ability to access my computer. Now that my parents-in-law have bit the bullet and gotten a computer, I have found out the need to be able to see their computer when they call. Being able to move the mouse is a major accomplishment for them, so to say the least they are in need of a lot assistance. The only problem right now, is I'll have to go down there and install the logmein software before I can test it out. So stay tuned.
Note: I did install it on my laptop. I had one tiny glitch. I'd forgotten to turn off norton's firewall and the first install failed. Once I'd given the permission to open a port on the network (sorry I didn't write down which one), I tried again to install and it went well.
Check out logmein.com (its free unless you want more features).
Note: I did install it on my laptop. I had one tiny glitch. I'd forgotten to turn off norton's firewall and the first install failed. Once I'd given the permission to open a port on the network (sorry I didn't write down which one), I tried again to install and it went well.
Check out logmein.com (its free unless you want more features).
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Creating a Blogger Template with Artisteer
I decided to test out the blog template creator using the great program called Artisteer. It took some trial and error, but I got it to work. First, I tried to re-create the PastisEnterprises.com look, keeping the same color scheme and header features. That wasn't too difficult. Then I saw that Artisteer supported flash now. (Honestly, I don't care for lots of bells and whistles, but since I was playing around I used it.)
Next, I tried to publish straight to blogger, using Picassa to hold the art work. This is the default in the Artisteer program. It does give the option to export the files to ftp or ImageShack. Since I just wanted to test it out, I went with the default option. Unfortunately, it failed. It didn't like the flash header, so I dropped it and tried again.
The software said it had been published. So I clicked on the view page and the template was there. All the posts were gone, though. So, I bit the bullet and took a look at the code. All appeared to be alright. Sure, Artisteer puts a lot of extra stuff and left out some of the new blogger features, but I can live with that.
So, back to Artisteer. I took out the menus, and other extra's and this time saved the file to my computer instead of publishing directly to my blog.
Then, back on blogger, I went to my dashboard. Then to the Design tab, then selected Upload file. Found the blogger.xml file that Artisteer had exported to my computer, and followed those commands.
It worked.
That piqued my curiosity. Maybe it was just my layout and Artisteer could publish it directly? So, again, with the trimmed version of the layout, I attempted to publish directly to blogger. Once again, it said it was successful, and once again, there were no posts in the blog. So, I reverted to the old layout out.
To make a long story short, if you're going to use Artisteer to create Blog templates, export the file instead of trying to publish it automatically. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes and you'll have a functional and, completely personalized, template for your blog.
I think you'll be able to add additional widgets after you get your Artisteer-created template up and running. To do that, you go through your blogger account dashboard and click design, edit pages and then add widgets.
Note: I am using Artisteer version 2.4.0 and there has been an update since then that may have fixed the problem of publishing directly to blogger. I just am short of funds at the moment, but that's another story.
Next, I tried to publish straight to blogger, using Picassa to hold the art work. This is the default in the Artisteer program. It does give the option to export the files to ftp or ImageShack. Since I just wanted to test it out, I went with the default option. Unfortunately, it failed. It didn't like the flash header, so I dropped it and tried again.
The software said it had been published. So I clicked on the view page and the template was there. All the posts were gone, though. So, I bit the bullet and took a look at the code. All appeared to be alright. Sure, Artisteer puts a lot of extra stuff and left out some of the new blogger features, but I can live with that.
So, back to Artisteer. I took out the menus, and other extra's and this time saved the file to my computer instead of publishing directly to my blog.
Then, back on blogger, I went to my dashboard. Then to the Design tab, then selected Upload file. Found the blogger.xml file that Artisteer had exported to my computer, and followed those commands.
It worked.
That piqued my curiosity. Maybe it was just my layout and Artisteer could publish it directly? So, again, with the trimmed version of the layout, I attempted to publish directly to blogger. Once again, it said it was successful, and once again, there were no posts in the blog. So, I reverted to the old layout out.
To make a long story short, if you're going to use Artisteer to create Blog templates, export the file instead of trying to publish it automatically. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes and you'll have a functional and, completely personalized, template for your blog.
I think you'll be able to add additional widgets after you get your Artisteer-created template up and running. To do that, you go through your blogger account dashboard and click design, edit pages and then add widgets.
Note: I am using Artisteer version 2.4.0 and there has been an update since then that may have fixed the problem of publishing directly to blogger. I just am short of funds at the moment, but that's another story.
Note to self
Self,
You keep complaining that you can't find the notes you made about such and such. So, I started this blog to send yourself notes. I've installed the Safari Extension and the Firefox Addon for Scribefire. Now, when you're surfin' and run across a cool feature or anything else you take notes on, you just hit the little note bubble next to the url and start typing.
Hold on, hold on. I know you also surf with Google Chrome, but I haven't had a chance to look for the extension for that. First thing's first. Scribe fire's extension requires you to put in a url so there's somewhere to put the information in. So, I'm just setting it up right now.
Love,
me
Friday, February 27, 2009
We've Moved, again
You may have noticed that something's a bit different about Heycuz. We have moved to a new server. I had to do a little reshuffling of my finances and could no longer afford to keep 12 different servers but had to combine them to decrease the bills.
The down side is that I had such excellent support from the previous server. He held my hand when ever things went buggy, let me slide when the bills came due, and kept the bandwidth high enough to let me run amok. The upside is that the new server has more room to run amok and forces me to learn to trouble-shoot my own problems. Having more room is really a plus, because we no longer have to store our files off the site at places like Picassa or Mac's iDisk.
Some changes:
Perhaps the first thing that you'll notice when you log on is the community features have been expanded. You will notice the new features in the "My Stuff" menu that appears when you log in. The menu shows you at a glance the photos you've added, the articles you've added and your favorite ancestor's if you've bookmarked any. I've added a Private Messaging System (a different kind of PMS) so we can leave each other notes which is much faster than emailing. The first time you log in it will tell you, you have a message (even if its a generic message saying Welcome to the PMS).
I've made it easier to share, bookmark, and search the photographs.
I've also uploaded all of the cemetery photographs. I haven't linked them all, but I've been told by some cousins that they will help with that. If you're interested in doing that, email me (or PMS me) and I'll send you instructions on how to link individuals in the database to the photographs of their tombstones.
Upcoming features that I haven't had time to do yet include inputting all the extractions into a searchable database.
Anyway, I hope you don't run into too many bugs because of the move and I thank you all for the wonderful feedback and the corrections to the family tree.
The down side is that I had such excellent support from the previous server. He held my hand when ever things went buggy, let me slide when the bills came due, and kept the bandwidth high enough to let me run amok. The upside is that the new server has more room to run amok and forces me to learn to trouble-shoot my own problems. Having more room is really a plus, because we no longer have to store our files off the site at places like Picassa or Mac's iDisk.
Some changes:
Perhaps the first thing that you'll notice when you log on is the community features have been expanded. You will notice the new features in the "My Stuff" menu that appears when you log in. The menu shows you at a glance the photos you've added, the articles you've added and your favorite ancestor's if you've bookmarked any. I've added a Private Messaging System (a different kind of PMS) so we can leave each other notes which is much faster than emailing. The first time you log in it will tell you, you have a message (even if its a generic message saying Welcome to the PMS).
I've made it easier to share, bookmark, and search the photographs.
I've also uploaded all of the cemetery photographs. I haven't linked them all, but I've been told by some cousins that they will help with that. If you're interested in doing that, email me (or PMS me) and I'll send you instructions on how to link individuals in the database to the photographs of their tombstones.
Upcoming features that I haven't had time to do yet include inputting all the extractions into a searchable database.
Anyway, I hope you don't run into too many bugs because of the move and I thank you all for the wonderful feedback and the corrections to the family tree.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Happy New Year!
It seems that about this time of year I'm stunned with the fact that another year has gone by. I take stock and wonder if I've done enough, or if there was something that I would have done differently, and attempt to set resolutions for the coming year.
This year begins the tenth anniversary of the Heycuz newsgroup, and as I peruse the 19,488 messages and counting, made by Heycuz members since December 2, 1998, I'm overwhelmed. It occurred to me that I can trace the major ups and downs of my personal life just reading our messages. It reminds me that we don't have just an online newsgroup about genealogy but a huge extended family.
I'm so thankful that you've been a part of my life. I can be as emotional as the next gal, but when reading over the messages, I get unusually chocked up. One moment, I'll be laughing about cousin Gale Ford's experience with a bull in a cemetery and the next I'll recall the grief we all felt when James Bradford admitted how difficult the holidays were for him since his beloved wife Kathy had passed. I can "hear" the excitement in our voices when reading the messages about our Heycuz reunion or the Harp cemetery trip and their unorthodox use of dousing rods.
Over the years, we've lost cousins and gained new ones. We've welcomed new grandchildren and babies. We've shared jokes and family stories. In addition, we've shared a lot of research. In case, you're interested you can access the Heycuz archives online at Yahoo groups, if you're a member of Heycuz. I also have saved a copy of every message on a CD. If you have Microsoft Access, or if you can handle a csv file, I can send you a copy of the archives.
Just to think it all started when a couple of us cousins wanted an easier way to share our research without having to remember to copy all the others in our emails. Still, it seems like there's so much still to do.
And yet, I'm baffled on how to begin a list of resolutions for Heycuz: There's brick walls we need to overcome, plans for another reunion, organizing photos and sources, and so much more. Here are some of my genealogy resolutions for the upcoming year:
Getting Organized: One year, I had a hard drive failure and ever since then I've become the backup queen. Unfortunately, now I have drawers and boxes of CDs, DVDs, clippings, census records, notes, deeds, etc. I've swung too far in the other direction. I need to put them into some manageable order so that I can find anything.
Go to the Family History Center: Ever since we moved, I have not yet been back to an LDS family history center, even though there's supposedly one in our town. There are also other local resources I want to check out.
Make a schedule: It seems that I'm letting events of my life run me, when it should be the other way around. It feels like I'm jumping from one unplanned event to the next without rhyme or reason. I feel like I'm constantly just putting out fires. I need to set down and figure out a plan, a schedule, where I can actually say on such and such a day of the month, I'm going to work on something specific. For example, I will work on a specific brick wall in my family tree on the second and fourth Tuesdays for one hour minimum.
Anyway, I'd be very interested in hearing your goals for Heycuz. What direction would you like to see Heycuz go? Do you have any genealogy resolutions?
Finally, I want to wish a very happy new year to all of my cousins. May each of us find just what (whom) we're looking for in 2009!
Your Cuz,
April
This year begins the tenth anniversary of the Heycuz newsgroup, and as I peruse the 19,488 messages and counting, made by Heycuz members since December 2, 1998, I'm overwhelmed. It occurred to me that I can trace the major ups and downs of my personal life just reading our messages. It reminds me that we don't have just an online newsgroup about genealogy but a huge extended family.
I'm so thankful that you've been a part of my life. I can be as emotional as the next gal, but when reading over the messages, I get unusually chocked up. One moment, I'll be laughing about cousin Gale Ford's experience with a bull in a cemetery and the next I'll recall the grief we all felt when James Bradford admitted how difficult the holidays were for him since his beloved wife Kathy had passed. I can "hear" the excitement in our voices when reading the messages about our Heycuz reunion or the Harp cemetery trip and their unorthodox use of dousing rods.
Over the years, we've lost cousins and gained new ones. We've welcomed new grandchildren and babies. We've shared jokes and family stories. In addition, we've shared a lot of research. In case, you're interested you can access the Heycuz archives online at Yahoo groups, if you're a member of Heycuz. I also have saved a copy of every message on a CD. If you have Microsoft Access, or if you can handle a csv file, I can send you a copy of the archives.
Just to think it all started when a couple of us cousins wanted an easier way to share our research without having to remember to copy all the others in our emails. Still, it seems like there's so much still to do.
And yet, I'm baffled on how to begin a list of resolutions for Heycuz: There's brick walls we need to overcome, plans for another reunion, organizing photos and sources, and so much more. Here are some of my genealogy resolutions for the upcoming year:
Getting Organized: One year, I had a hard drive failure and ever since then I've become the backup queen. Unfortunately, now I have drawers and boxes of CDs, DVDs, clippings, census records, notes, deeds, etc. I've swung too far in the other direction. I need to put them into some manageable order so that I can find anything.
Go to the Family History Center: Ever since we moved, I have not yet been back to an LDS family history center, even though there's supposedly one in our town. There are also other local resources I want to check out.
Make a schedule: It seems that I'm letting events of my life run me, when it should be the other way around. It feels like I'm jumping from one unplanned event to the next without rhyme or reason. I feel like I'm constantly just putting out fires. I need to set down and figure out a plan, a schedule, where I can actually say on such and such a day of the month, I'm going to work on something specific. For example, I will work on a specific brick wall in my family tree on the second and fourth Tuesdays for one hour minimum.
Anyway, I'd be very interested in hearing your goals for Heycuz. What direction would you like to see Heycuz go? Do you have any genealogy resolutions?
Finally, I want to wish a very happy new year to all of my cousins. May each of us find just what (whom) we're looking for in 2009!
Your Cuz,
April
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Merry Christmas Cousins!
They say that every seven seconds or so, the phrase 'Merry Christmas" is posted on the internet. Well let me join in on the Chorus and wish all of you a very, merry Christmas!
Your cuz,
April
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Never to Old to Avoid the Trekkie Redshirt Effect.
I ran across the link for this at Huffington Post. It is hilarious. But, it reminded me of a lesson I'd learned from my teen-aged son. To confess, I never considered myself a Trekkie--sure I loved the series and had seen all of them along with the movies but I wasn't hard core. I did, or so I thought, know a lot more about Star Trek than my son. But at one of the ComicCon's or other comic convention we attended, I was about to purchase a Star Trek T-shirt, when my son took it out of my hand and told me absolutely not. Puzzled, I looked up at him and he said, "Mom, the red shirt always dies." Don't laugh, but I'd never heard that before, nor had it occurred to me. I'm embarrassed to find out that its common knowledge. Apparently, redshirt is a writer's slang term for a minor character who's sole purpose is to dramatize a dangerous situation with his brutal death. It was apparently first used in Star Trek, but has become such a common technique among writers that it has a Wiki named after it, a book about it, and so on. Just goes to show me how much I don't know.
Logmein.com
This is a site I'd heard about before, but really had no need for it nor did I want others to have the ability to access my computer. Now that my parents-in-law have bit the bullet and gotten a computer, I have found out the need to be able to see their computer when they call. Being able to move the mouse is a major accomplishment for them, so to say the least they are in need of a lot assistance. The only problem right now, is I'll have to go down there and install the logmein software before I can test it out. So stay tuned.
Note: I did install it on my laptop. I had one tiny glitch. I'd forgotten to turn off norton's firewall and the first install failed. Once I'd given the permission to open a port on the network (sorry I didn't write down which one), I tried again to install and it went well.
Check out logmein.com (its free unless you want more features).
Note: I did install it on my laptop. I had one tiny glitch. I'd forgotten to turn off norton's firewall and the first install failed. Once I'd given the permission to open a port on the network (sorry I didn't write down which one), I tried again to install and it went well.
Check out logmein.com (its free unless you want more features).
Creating a Blogger Template with Artisteer
I decided to test out the blog template creator using the great program called Artisteer. It took some trial and error, but I got it to work. First, I tried to re-create the PastisEnterprises.com look, keeping the same color scheme and header features. That wasn't too difficult. Then I saw that Artisteer supported flash now. (Honestly, I don't care for lots of bells and whistles, but since I was playing around I used it.)
Next, I tried to publish straight to blogger, using Picassa to hold the art work. This is the default in the Artisteer program. It does give the option to export the files to ftp or ImageShack. Since I just wanted to test it out, I went with the default option. Unfortunately, it failed. It didn't like the flash header, so I dropped it and tried again.
The software said it had been published. So I clicked on the view page and the template was there. All the posts were gone, though. So, I bit the bullet and took a look at the code. All appeared to be alright. Sure, Artisteer puts a lot of extra stuff and left out some of the new blogger features, but I can live with that.
So, back to Artisteer. I took out the menus, and other extra's and this time saved the file to my computer instead of publishing directly to my blog.
Then, back on blogger, I went to my dashboard. Then to the Design tab, then selected Upload file. Found the blogger.xml file that Artisteer had exported to my computer, and followed those commands.
It worked.
That piqued my curiosity. Maybe it was just my layout and Artisteer could publish it directly? So, again, with the trimmed version of the layout, I attempted to publish directly to blogger. Once again, it said it was successful, and once again, there were no posts in the blog. So, I reverted to the old layout out.
To make a long story short, if you're going to use Artisteer to create Blog templates, export the file instead of trying to publish it automatically. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes and you'll have a functional and, completely personalized, template for your blog.
I think you'll be able to add additional widgets after you get your Artisteer-created template up and running. To do that, you go through your blogger account dashboard and click design, edit pages and then add widgets.
Note: I am using Artisteer version 2.4.0 and there has been an update since then that may have fixed the problem of publishing directly to blogger. I just am short of funds at the moment, but that's another story.
Next, I tried to publish straight to blogger, using Picassa to hold the art work. This is the default in the Artisteer program. It does give the option to export the files to ftp or ImageShack. Since I just wanted to test it out, I went with the default option. Unfortunately, it failed. It didn't like the flash header, so I dropped it and tried again.
The software said it had been published. So I clicked on the view page and the template was there. All the posts were gone, though. So, I bit the bullet and took a look at the code. All appeared to be alright. Sure, Artisteer puts a lot of extra stuff and left out some of the new blogger features, but I can live with that.
So, back to Artisteer. I took out the menus, and other extra's and this time saved the file to my computer instead of publishing directly to my blog.
Then, back on blogger, I went to my dashboard. Then to the Design tab, then selected Upload file. Found the blogger.xml file that Artisteer had exported to my computer, and followed those commands.
It worked.
That piqued my curiosity. Maybe it was just my layout and Artisteer could publish it directly? So, again, with the trimmed version of the layout, I attempted to publish directly to blogger. Once again, it said it was successful, and once again, there were no posts in the blog. So, I reverted to the old layout out.
To make a long story short, if you're going to use Artisteer to create Blog templates, export the file instead of trying to publish it automatically. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes and you'll have a functional and, completely personalized, template for your blog.
I think you'll be able to add additional widgets after you get your Artisteer-created template up and running. To do that, you go through your blogger account dashboard and click design, edit pages and then add widgets.
Note: I am using Artisteer version 2.4.0 and there has been an update since then that may have fixed the problem of publishing directly to blogger. I just am short of funds at the moment, but that's another story.
Note to self
Self,
You keep complaining that you can't find the notes you made about such and such. So, I started this blog to send yourself notes. I've installed the Safari Extension and the Firefox Addon for Scribefire. Now, when you're surfin' and run across a cool feature or anything else you take notes on, you just hit the little note bubble next to the url and start typing.
Hold on, hold on. I know you also surf with Google Chrome, but I haven't had a chance to look for the extension for that. First thing's first. Scribe fire's extension requires you to put in a url so there's somewhere to put the information in. So, I'm just setting it up right now.
Love,
me
We've Moved, again
You may have noticed that something's a bit different about Heycuz. We have moved to a new server. I had to do a little reshuffling of my finances and could no longer afford to keep 12 different servers but had to combine them to decrease the bills.
The down side is that I had such excellent support from the previous server. He held my hand when ever things went buggy, let me slide when the bills came due, and kept the bandwidth high enough to let me run amok. The upside is that the new server has more room to run amok and forces me to learn to trouble-shoot my own problems. Having more room is really a plus, because we no longer have to store our files off the site at places like Picassa or Mac's iDisk.
Some changes:
Perhaps the first thing that you'll notice when you log on is the community features have been expanded. You will notice the new features in the "My Stuff" menu that appears when you log in. The menu shows you at a glance the photos you've added, the articles you've added and your favorite ancestor's if you've bookmarked any. I've added a Private Messaging System (a different kind of PMS) so we can leave each other notes which is much faster than emailing. The first time you log in it will tell you, you have a message (even if its a generic message saying Welcome to the PMS).
I've made it easier to share, bookmark, and search the photographs.
I've also uploaded all of the cemetery photographs. I haven't linked them all, but I've been told by some cousins that they will help with that. If you're interested in doing that, email me (or PMS me) and I'll send you instructions on how to link individuals in the database to the photographs of their tombstones.
Upcoming features that I haven't had time to do yet include inputting all the extractions into a searchable database.
Anyway, I hope you don't run into too many bugs because of the move and I thank you all for the wonderful feedback and the corrections to the family tree.
The down side is that I had such excellent support from the previous server. He held my hand when ever things went buggy, let me slide when the bills came due, and kept the bandwidth high enough to let me run amok. The upside is that the new server has more room to run amok and forces me to learn to trouble-shoot my own problems. Having more room is really a plus, because we no longer have to store our files off the site at places like Picassa or Mac's iDisk.
Some changes:
Perhaps the first thing that you'll notice when you log on is the community features have been expanded. You will notice the new features in the "My Stuff" menu that appears when you log in. The menu shows you at a glance the photos you've added, the articles you've added and your favorite ancestor's if you've bookmarked any. I've added a Private Messaging System (a different kind of PMS) so we can leave each other notes which is much faster than emailing. The first time you log in it will tell you, you have a message (even if its a generic message saying Welcome to the PMS).
I've made it easier to share, bookmark, and search the photographs.
I've also uploaded all of the cemetery photographs. I haven't linked them all, but I've been told by some cousins that they will help with that. If you're interested in doing that, email me (or PMS me) and I'll send you instructions on how to link individuals in the database to the photographs of their tombstones.
Upcoming features that I haven't had time to do yet include inputting all the extractions into a searchable database.
Anyway, I hope you don't run into too many bugs because of the move and I thank you all for the wonderful feedback and the corrections to the family tree.
Happy New Year!
It seems that about this time of year I'm stunned with the fact that another year has gone by. I take stock and wonder if I've done enough, or if there was something that I would have done differently, and attempt to set resolutions for the coming year.
This year begins the tenth anniversary of the Heycuz newsgroup, and as I peruse the 19,488 messages and counting, made by Heycuz members since December 2, 1998, I'm overwhelmed. It occurred to me that I can trace the major ups and downs of my personal life just reading our messages. It reminds me that we don't have just an online newsgroup about genealogy but a huge extended family.
I'm so thankful that you've been a part of my life. I can be as emotional as the next gal, but when reading over the messages, I get unusually chocked up. One moment, I'll be laughing about cousin Gale Ford's experience with a bull in a cemetery and the next I'll recall the grief we all felt when James Bradford admitted how difficult the holidays were for him since his beloved wife Kathy had passed. I can "hear" the excitement in our voices when reading the messages about our Heycuz reunion or the Harp cemetery trip and their unorthodox use of dousing rods.
Over the years, we've lost cousins and gained new ones. We've welcomed new grandchildren and babies. We've shared jokes and family stories. In addition, we've shared a lot of research. In case, you're interested you can access the Heycuz archives online at Yahoo groups, if you're a member of Heycuz. I also have saved a copy of every message on a CD. If you have Microsoft Access, or if you can handle a csv file, I can send you a copy of the archives.
Just to think it all started when a couple of us cousins wanted an easier way to share our research without having to remember to copy all the others in our emails. Still, it seems like there's so much still to do.
And yet, I'm baffled on how to begin a list of resolutions for Heycuz: There's brick walls we need to overcome, plans for another reunion, organizing photos and sources, and so much more. Here are some of my genealogy resolutions for the upcoming year:
Getting Organized: One year, I had a hard drive failure and ever since then I've become the backup queen. Unfortunately, now I have drawers and boxes of CDs, DVDs, clippings, census records, notes, deeds, etc. I've swung too far in the other direction. I need to put them into some manageable order so that I can find anything.
Go to the Family History Center: Ever since we moved, I have not yet been back to an LDS family history center, even though there's supposedly one in our town. There are also other local resources I want to check out.
Make a schedule: It seems that I'm letting events of my life run me, when it should be the other way around. It feels like I'm jumping from one unplanned event to the next without rhyme or reason. I feel like I'm constantly just putting out fires. I need to set down and figure out a plan, a schedule, where I can actually say on such and such a day of the month, I'm going to work on something specific. For example, I will work on a specific brick wall in my family tree on the second and fourth Tuesdays for one hour minimum.
Anyway, I'd be very interested in hearing your goals for Heycuz. What direction would you like to see Heycuz go? Do you have any genealogy resolutions?
Finally, I want to wish a very happy new year to all of my cousins. May each of us find just what (whom) we're looking for in 2009!
Your Cuz,
April
This year begins the tenth anniversary of the Heycuz newsgroup, and as I peruse the 19,488 messages and counting, made by Heycuz members since December 2, 1998, I'm overwhelmed. It occurred to me that I can trace the major ups and downs of my personal life just reading our messages. It reminds me that we don't have just an online newsgroup about genealogy but a huge extended family.
I'm so thankful that you've been a part of my life. I can be as emotional as the next gal, but when reading over the messages, I get unusually chocked up. One moment, I'll be laughing about cousin Gale Ford's experience with a bull in a cemetery and the next I'll recall the grief we all felt when James Bradford admitted how difficult the holidays were for him since his beloved wife Kathy had passed. I can "hear" the excitement in our voices when reading the messages about our Heycuz reunion or the Harp cemetery trip and their unorthodox use of dousing rods.
Over the years, we've lost cousins and gained new ones. We've welcomed new grandchildren and babies. We've shared jokes and family stories. In addition, we've shared a lot of research. In case, you're interested you can access the Heycuz archives online at Yahoo groups, if you're a member of Heycuz. I also have saved a copy of every message on a CD. If you have Microsoft Access, or if you can handle a csv file, I can send you a copy of the archives.
Just to think it all started when a couple of us cousins wanted an easier way to share our research without having to remember to copy all the others in our emails. Still, it seems like there's so much still to do.
And yet, I'm baffled on how to begin a list of resolutions for Heycuz: There's brick walls we need to overcome, plans for another reunion, organizing photos and sources, and so much more. Here are some of my genealogy resolutions for the upcoming year:
Getting Organized: One year, I had a hard drive failure and ever since then I've become the backup queen. Unfortunately, now I have drawers and boxes of CDs, DVDs, clippings, census records, notes, deeds, etc. I've swung too far in the other direction. I need to put them into some manageable order so that I can find anything.
Go to the Family History Center: Ever since we moved, I have not yet been back to an LDS family history center, even though there's supposedly one in our town. There are also other local resources I want to check out.
Make a schedule: It seems that I'm letting events of my life run me, when it should be the other way around. It feels like I'm jumping from one unplanned event to the next without rhyme or reason. I feel like I'm constantly just putting out fires. I need to set down and figure out a plan, a schedule, where I can actually say on such and such a day of the month, I'm going to work on something specific. For example, I will work on a specific brick wall in my family tree on the second and fourth Tuesdays for one hour minimum.
Anyway, I'd be very interested in hearing your goals for Heycuz. What direction would you like to see Heycuz go? Do you have any genealogy resolutions?
Finally, I want to wish a very happy new year to all of my cousins. May each of us find just what (whom) we're looking for in 2009!
Your Cuz,
April
Merry Christmas Cousins!
They say that every seven seconds or so, the phrase 'Merry Christmas" is posted on the internet. Well let me join in on the Chorus and wish all of you a very, merry Christmas!
Your cuz,
April
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