Category Archives: Random Musings

Hacked

Categories: Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 4 seconds

Well, isn’t this fun? As if I don’t have enough of a backlog of things to do, my site was hacked yesterday.

No, I didn’t republish a dozen posts from 15 years ago and update their publish date. Because I’m not stupid.

The offending IP block has been blocked from accessing my site and my password has been changed. It needed changing, so there’s that reminder. All of the posts had the offending code removed and were set back to their original publish dates.

How has your day been going?

Well anyway, since I’m here, who attended RootsTech? In person or online? I did a bit of both. I was a speaker this year, pre-recorded, and I had a booth that I had to sit at for three days with only a little help. So that was interesting. I did that once before but without the little bit of help. This year, the Utah Jewish Historical Society had a booth. Then I listened to a bunch of the recordings this week. Wait it’s been two weeks? Where does the time go?

And now, back to my backlog of things I haven’t gotten done that are overdue and can I really use RootsTech as the excuse for not getting them done in the past two weeks? *sigh*

2020

Categories: Goals, Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 24 seconds
1 Comment

Well, that was a year. Or eight. I lost track.

When the pandemic shut us down in March, my brain kind of went with it. I’m still trying to recover.

But, time kept ticking along. I had to do some things the hard way as people ordered records. That got easier later in the year when I regained access to a lot of records I usually need access to and had lost in March. Then I started working again. I finished off some work that clients had been waiting for. Record orders got easier.

Everything went to hell more in July when my mother passed away. I had no idea it was coming. She didn’t die of covid. She avoided getting treatment for something diagnosed months earlier, avoiding the hospital to avoid covid exposure. So yeah, she died because of covid, but not from it. I didn’t go to the funeral in Florida just as the pandemic was taking off there. Since I wasn’t unexpectedly traveling, I claimed her Find a Grave page moments after the obituary went online.

I inexplicably stopped reading books for a few months at that point. I had a goal to read 12 books again. Last year, I fell short of that goal by one. This year, well, it depends how I count them. I read 11 physical books and one on Kindle, because it was the third in the series that I didn’t own. And I’m about 2/3 through another. I’ll get that finished in another couple days or so.

2020 Books

In genealogy, I haven’t done much work on my own family research this year, that I can remember. I’ve done some more indexing work and I did some work for clients. I also have 150 emails in my inbox, some are from people asking for research. If you’re waiting, sorry. I’m determined to get them dealt with sooner rather than later. You will eventually hear from me.

After the summer, Dad sent a couple boxes of photos (and some other stuff). I got the two big photo albums (1960s to 1981), the album with the photos other relatives gave her, and a whole bunch of loose photos that she had stashed all over the place. I have been digitizing them for months. I have finished everything but the second big album that I just started. Some of the loose photos were my grandmother’s and my great aunts’ that Mom had. There were some interesting finds. I have many new favorites, but one is of my parents before they were married. I never saw a photo of them before their wedding. (I mean, it was in the album and I might have, but didn’t realize it. It would have been decades ago if I did see it.)

Dad and Mom, September 1963

The stuff that made 2020 suck will continue at least until January 20th, so today isn’t a big turning point. And vaccinations will take longer too, before we can get out again. According to the Utah “plan”, I’ll be in February or March. We’ll see. I can’t wait to get out of here. I haven’t left my house for anything but food and a few other necessities since March 10th, my last trip to the FHL. Those were the days.

2021 Goals

What’s up for next year? Procrastinating is my enemy.

  • Catch up on all those back-logged emails. This will also hopefully involve a lot of research for clients. And don’t let it get stupid out of control again.
  • Keep digitizing the photos and I have some plans for organizing all my photos better. And I need to scan in all of my own and pass some through MyHeritage to see if it can de-blur them.
  • Keep indexing records and getting them online. There’s always more.
  • Read another dozen books. More would be nice. I’ve already cut back on computer games, so I should have more time for that. Maybe start doing audio books to get in more.
  • Travel. I need to travel. I really want to go back to Europe and find more records. When can I get out of here?

I Have A Lot Of Books To Read

Categories: Accountability, Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 48 seconds

I don’t usually share this kind of thing online, but I decided to write it up anyway. You see, I hadn’t read a book in years.

Oh, I read a lot. I read news online, blogs, genealogy magazines and journals. I’ve even read some books on Kindle, though I tend to skim those.

But I hadn’t read a physical book that was sitting on my shelf for years. I’ve lost interest in some of what I had and had gotten rid of them without ever reading them. But I still have plenty left.

So I decided it was time to read books again. I set a goal for twelve books in 2019, one per month. The last book I can remember reading was pretty long and it took me a month, one chapter per night.

I read eleven. I failed. Somehow I stopped sometime around the summer and took a while to start up again. But I’m proud of those eleven. I even rushed to get one more in since I started writing this post about ten days ago, and finished it a few minutes ago.

2019 Books

I read two genealogy books, or rather one genealogy and one genealogy-ish. Two books were about Utah. Three were from the shelf of books I’d kept back to junior high school that I loved and wanted to read again. (I didn’t love them as much the second time as an adult though; they’ll be donated now.) One was actually a lecture, but it was bound like a book and I got it from the free book sale at the library, so it counts. Several of the books were chosen deliberately for being easier reads. They were still books in my house that I needed to read, so they count just like the others.

In any case, I finally read some of the books in my house and getting myself doing that again was the ultimate goal more than the count. I have a lot more to go. Since I didn’t hit my goal, I think I’ll set the same goal, but in the hopes that I read more than twelve, next year.

Happy New Year!

Hello MailChimp

Categories: Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 35 seconds

Goodbye (and good riddance), FeedBurner.

This blog has been running on FeedBurner for a long time. I don’t know all that FeedBurner does, but I was using it to send emails to my subscribers. Google basically abandoned it years ago, but I was slow to leave.

When I noticed an email arrive weeks after I posted to the blog, I was a little concerned. When another arrived one month after posting, it was time to move on.

If you’re reading via RSS feed, like with Feedly or some other program, nothing has changed for you.

If you’re getting this by email, you’ve been transferred to MailChimp. Let me know if you see any issues. MailChimp sometimes needs tweaking.

I’m Still Here

Categories: Conferences, IAJGS, Orlando 2017, Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 18 seconds
2 Comments

Did you miss me? Holy cow, have I been busy.

A woman approached me rather oddly a month or more ago at the Family History Library. She returned a couple times and finally figured out she recognized me from my blog, and mentioned she liked reading it.

“Thank you. I haven’t written in a while.”

But that was OK with her.

I wanted to write just after that, and yet I didn’t. One of the difficulties I have with this blog is that I often write posts that take a long time, like the Nitpicker’s Guides to WDYTYA, but I feel guilty spending so much time writing on my blog when I’m behind on my client work, most especially writing their reports. I haven’t been behind for a bit, but I’ve been busy helping the IAJGS Conference.

That’s right, they pulled me in again.

So tonight is my flight to that conference. I’m just taking a random few minutes in the middle of packing and last minute prep to write a quick note to my readers. I’m sure I have some left. You wouldn’t have deleted me from your feed if I disappeared from it. :-)

And, as always when this happens, I will try to write more. I have a conference next week, so that should give me something to write about. Maybe some short bits. Those are easier to write and publish anyway.

OK, back to the prep work. My main computer is a desktop, so there are things I can’t do once I leave. See some of you in Orlando.

I’ve Been Doing Genealogy

Categories: Genealogy, IAJGS, Random Musings, Seattle 2016
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 0 seconds

What’s been happening at IDoGenealogy.com? I’ve been doing genealogy. I haven’t blogged in a while, so I figured I should say something.

1. I’ve been trying to finish up my Bernie Sanders research. I’m very sad he lost the primary. I think I’ll survive. I was trying to get one last piece of information before finishing up that post, when I realized that there was more for me to do in Polish records. I still have to do that.

2. I wanted to write about WDYTYA. Rather than a blog post for each episode, I had things I felt like I needed to say about the last three episodes of the last season. I still need to write that.

3. I’ve been busy with some client work. I’ve gotten a few clients lately that needed research (as opposed to digitizing or just look-ups) so I’m happy about that, but I don’t blog about their families. I still have one waiting for a report and another waiting until next month for me to get started.

4. I’ve been trying to get a new family newsletter issue put together. I have so much stuff for it, but I haven’t gotten it all neatened up yet. I don’t know if that will happen this week, and then it will have to wait a few more weeks until I can get back to it.

5. I’ve been doing unpaid work for the past few weeks in preparation for the IAJGS Conference. I am quite behind in my prep for the lectures I need to give. One of them needed a whole lot of genealogy research conducted, and I’m still working on it.

6. And next week is IAJGS. Of course I go to that conference every year. I’ve been researching for it (see #5) and I need to get things finished up and my presentations put together in the next three days. I think I can do it.

And that’s where I am now. I expect I’ll be blogging from the conference as I usually do, so my blog will finally be active again. Hopefully that will get me going with the other blog posts I need to get written. But at least now, anyone following my blog knows I’m still here and where I’ve been lately.

Utah Caucus 2016

Categories: Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 42 seconds

Getting away from genealogy for this post, I got home a little while ago from voting in my caucus.

What’s a caucus? It’s what happens when the state is to cheap or too lazy to have a proper primary vote, apparently. The caucus is run by volunteers, whereas an actual vote would have the mail-in voting, which I am signed up for. It would have saved me four hours tonight.

In 2012, there was a vote for something by ballot, then we were all in the high school auditorium and chose precinct delegates for the county convention. I was the only person in my precinct, so I got the job.

One hallway. Imagine this kind of crowd filling every hallway of an entire school. And then some.
One hallway. Imagine this kind of crowd filling every hallway of an entire school. And then some.

This time, there was a long line. It started down the block, snaked around the school hallways, passed two other lines, went out the back of the school, and split into those two lines, which then snaked around again. We had to pick a line based on our house district, but the map was at the front door and they rushed us past it.

And the web sites were all crashing while people in the line were trying to verify they were in the right place. I was lucky that I looked up my district before I left home, though I had to count on the lines not moving from four years ago, which they hadn’t.

And then, the other lines didn’t move. They would move in small batches, like they took 10 or 20 people at a time. Then we would stand. And it was cold outside. And then the sun started setting.

Winner of the door decoration contest. I was joking they should have had a contest and we would vote at the end. This was the only decorated door.
Winner of the door decoration contest. I was joking they should have had a contest and we would vote at the end. This was the only decorated door.

Someone said “I have a fireplace,” so I asked, “Did you bring it with you?”

They finally got everyone inside before it was dark. At least, they got my line and many people behind me inside. Our line snaked through two more side hallways that they opened up for us. More people were still outside and they were brought into the gym to sit and wait. We passed them in our last half hour.

With me in line was a 20 year old young woman who was voting for the first time who had been at Bernie’s rally at This is the Place Park last week. Behind her was a couple, one wearing a red U sweatshirt. He left while we were outside and came back to find us inside. He brought back hot chocolate, enough for all four of us.

I had almost arrived at Beehive Elementary school at 6pm when the caucus was supposed to start, but the traffic was mad. After taking a turn through the full parking lot, I picked a street and headed away, finally finding somewhere to park. So I was in line before 6:30pm, and I voted at 10pm. It was supposed to be 6-8:30pm.

After filling out my ballot, I asked about the caucus and was told it was in the gym, but I already knew the gym was just the end of the line, so I was out of there. I participated in the caucus four years ago and didn’t feel the need to wait until probably midnight for this one.

I finally saw this wall about 20 minutes before I voted.
I finally saw this wall about 20 minutes before I voted.

I used to laugh and wonder about the incompetence of places that made people wait for hours, never expecting to be in one.

Here’s what I learned, some after I got home. That part I mentioned earlier about having a caucus instead of a primary, that’s on the state.

The state and county web sites crashed under the weight of people looking up their polling places — or in our case, the district number.

The voting process was stupid. They verify you on the list with your ID and hand you long form to fill out. So everyone stops right there and fills it out, with just the one vote at the bottom after all the identifying information (which they already have) and half a dozen questions about what we would volunteer for. There wasn’t even a ballot “box” to put it in, we just handed it back.

What I think they should have done?

  1. Put that form online and let people fill it out in advance. That would have saved so much trouble. Or ditch the long form and let us vote with less handwriting.
  2. Expect that when a single rally, for just one of five candidates, draws over 14,000 people, that the voter turnout is going to be high.
  3. Do not put multiple districts at the same location. Just trying to figure out what district we were in after trying to figure out the polling place was nuts.
  4. If the 2012 caucus filled the high school auditorium, why was the 2016 in an elementary school? They went from a bigger school to a smaller one on a minor street that was overcrowded with cars like it’s probably never seen before, and a major shortage of parking. Some people suggested they should have had us in the Olympic Oval. There was probably plenty of room there, and parking.

Update: I just read this from the Salt Lake Tribune: “Democrats wanted the state to run a full primary, but the GOP-led Legislature declined when the Republican Party said it preferred a caucus.” Yep, kind of what I figured.

A Memory, Because of Leonard Nimoy

Categories: Memory Monday, Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 57 seconds
1 Comment

Leonard Nimoy at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention 2011. Photo by Beth Madison, found on Wikimedia Commons.
Leonard Nimoy at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention 2011. Photo by Beth Madison, via Wikimedia Commons.

I haven’t blogged on the usual themes in a while, but I didn’t want to save this one for Monday.

With lots of tributes going around the Internet on the day of his death, I just watched a video of Leonard Nimoy in which he explains where the Vulcan hand salute came from. Here is the video.

Growing up, I watched a lot of TV shows that I don’t remember. I remember which shows, but none of the episode content.

One that stands out is Star Trek which I used to watch with my dad. I had to watch the whole series as an adult to remember any of the episodes, but I know I watched them as a kid.

And then came college, when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out. Well, it actually started when I was 14, but I didn’t watch it until college. At the time, it was playing on several stations, several times per day. While flipping channels, I saw something just before a commercial break and I had to know what happened next. I was immediately hooked.

I didn’t watch sooner because Dad was loyal to the original show. He insisted that Kirk was the only Captain of the Enterprise. (Psst, hey Dad, what about Pike?)

It turns out, however, that we must have watched the pilot, at the very least. As the series finale approached, I had to rent the pilot to be sure I had seen it, as I knew they were closely related. And I remembered that the station was actually an alien, so I had obviously seen it before.

Back in those days, there were lots of smaller Star Trek conventions. A few ran in South Florida and for a few years, I went to all of them that were within a few hours’ driving distance.

At the time, I had a Star Trek themed bumper sticker. I remember it was green and said “My Other Vehicle is a Federation Starship”. I was driving south to Fort Lauderdale for one of the conventions and I noticed another car on the highway with a Star Trek bumper sticker. I passed the car, the car passed me, back and forth a couple of times.

We both pulled off at the same exit, as I expected, and pulled up next to each other at the traffic light. We looked at each other and I smiled and waved.

The guy in the other car waved with a Vulcan salute.

Whoops. I quickly changed finger position before the light turned green.

And I’m pretty the main actor at that conference was Tim Russ who played Tuvok, the Vulcan on Voyager. (Yes, I liked Voyager too.)

One of my favorite tweets today has a genealogy twist to it.

Leonard Nimoy’s Twitter account is retweeting many messages sent out today, but his final tweet…

Thank you Leonard Nimoy for the memories. Live Long and Prosper.

So Much For That

Categories: Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 29 seconds

Well, I think that about does it. Three weeks of restricted vegan and I don’t see it. I did drop five pounds at one point, but went back up two. I couldn’t stay away from making the chocolate mug cake. Maybe that killed any chance of the diet working, but besides the wheat and sugar, it was allowed.

And for everyone who says their skin improves when they go vegan, screw that. Mine got worse.

No, I don’t feel any better. Even when I eat a lot of junk food and then eat healthy, it’s not a huge difference unless it’s been only junk food for a while. I eat relatively healthy most of the time. Healthier does nothing for me.

I’ve been thinking about those pizza rollers, or whatever they’re called from Pizza Hut for a week now. Maybe it’s time to order them. And some pasta. I did find brown rice pasta in the bulk section at Winco, but it was without meat or cheese.

I really can’t see staying on a restricted vegan diet any longer. I just thought I’d add more to my private blog. Why the hell not? It’s here. I started it more as a journal, just to try it out. I might as well keep using it like one.

Now, how do I get someone to fix the leak in the copper tubing so I can turn on the water to the swamp cooler? I’m so tired of people telling me they can help, but never do. I’m on my own for everything. No amount of diet or exercise is ever going to change that.

McDougall Diet Begins

Categories: Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 39 seconds

Following a Facebook link, I ended up watching a whole movie and decided to try a different type of diet than all the others out there. It’s a vegan diet, but even a little more strict, limiting no oil, no tofu, and some other things that I may or may not follow.

I just spent most of today reading through even more on the web site and looking for recipes. And I successfully finished a full day eating vegan. No cheese, no meat, no milk, no eggs. And I survived it.

I poured a whole can of beans into a serving of rice for lunch, and added more veggies. I overdid it with the beans in that one, but about half way through, I was full and stopped eating. (I finished it later.) The no-carbohydrate diets never let me stop. The only time I wouldn’t finish was if something wasn’t that good and was even worse as it got colder. Well, this dish was kind of like that too, but I easily pushed it away. I hope that was in part to including carbs. I overdid it with the pita bread later.

I’ll just have to see how long I can last on this plan and if it does me any good. I just couldn’t stand to count calories after so many months of it while at the same time eating out with Ike so much as to reverse my progress doing that. It was just too many months with nothing to show for it. I’m right back up where I started late last year. Now I’ll find out if eating vegan can be good for me. Hopefully I won’t gorge on pita bread or anything else again.

And boy have I collected a lot of recipes. I have to try them out now. Slowly.