Thursday, November 11, 2010

Randy's Genealogy Day - 11 November 2010

We're back from the high desert where we entertained, fed, clothed and chauffeured two little girls for a week.  We got back on Wednesday morning, but I had to go off to the library for the CVGS Research Group meeting.  When I got back, I found the computer problems.  McAfee Security was missing, and the Internet was messed up - anything with Flash or Java didn't work.  Ergo, Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter, etc. don't work.  A virus or trojan messed things up somehow.  Email works on the desktop, and programs on the desktop like MSWord and FTM16 work, but anything that accesses the Web with Flash doesn't work.  I have my crack PC IT guy on the case...  In the meantime, I'm working on the laptop trying to stay up to date on blogs and writing blogs. 

Today, was on early to read email and blogs, and posted Veteran's Day - Thank You, Gramps then wrote Treasure Chest Thursday - Isaac Seaver's Pension Declaration.  Wrote Ancestry.com has Military Collections FREE from 11-14 November 2010  and November 2010 CVGS Newsletter is Available plus one more post for Friday on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog. 

*  got cleaned up, and wrote Recent Collections Added at FamilySearch Beta  and Target the FAN Club to tackle "Elusive Ancestors" problems and set them for the afternoon.  Ate lunch.

*  Opened up FTM 2010 on the laptop and FTM 16 on the desktop, and worked my way through the M place names - correcting place names, adding counties, deleting my shorthand sources, etc.  Whew.

*  Read everything, worked on the desktop problem for awhile, then went in for dinner.

*  Back online at 6:30 p.m., wrote some emails, printed off the CVGS newsletter, the newsletter mailing labels, flyers for CVGS, and the handout and flyers for my 11/18 OASIS talk at the library.  Will get newsletter printed on Friday and mailed.

*  Worked on the computer problem again, then moved Legacy and RootsMagic files to where I can find them and printed off a report for my friend Linda.  Checked in on Facebook.  Tried to find program to stitch images together - finally used the HP Image Zone software on my computer to do it.  Three look OK, one is messed up.  Will try again another time.  Backed up genealogy databases to the external drive.

*  Worked a bit more on computer problem, then wrote this post.  I'm frustrated working on two different keyboards and screens, but I can manage this for a short while. 

Genealogy today was 11.0 hours - 1.0 hour doing email, 0.5 hour reading blogs, 3.0 hours writing 8 blog posts, 3.0 hours working in the FTM16 database, 1.0 hours working on computer problem, 0.5 hour on Facebook/Twitter, 1.0 hour working on image stitching, and 1.0 hour on CVGS Newsletter and OASIS talk preparation.

1 comment:

Michael Hait said...

A pretty decent image composition program is Microsoft's Image Composite Editor. I downloaded it from Labs a few years ago, and use it all the time. Google might be able to find it.