Really? A Month? Yeah A Month! BUT....

It was worth it, at least for me.  I have gotten so much done in my office.  I've now gotten EVERYTHING that was laying around all scanned.  Much of it is named, cropped and linked.  But there is SO MUCH MORE to do yet.

I do have some "non genealogy" stuff around that needs to get put elsewhere.  I did get my closet all re-organized which I've been needing to do since I moved in 7 years ago.  I love my plants so there's probably way too many of them in here as well.  Everything in this office is "me"... plants, photo's ... you know, STUFF.

How much stuff do you keep in your office that isn't genealogy?  We won't even go into the book shelves, full of all my genie books.  I need to go thru those next...

NEXT?  Yes, there's always another project in the works?  Mine include cleaning up my sourcing and  going thru all my books to see if I missed any gold mines since my last flip thru.

I "attended" the Legacy Family Tree Webinar on sourcing in Legacy.  I never knew it was so easy.  My sources were done on my own, and now after seeing how easy Legacy has made it,  I want to convert all of mine over.  Sadly, that project will be one slated for another time, as it will be a major undertaking.

Maybe all this is the forerunner to my spring cleaning - with all the snow we had its made for a long winter here in Michigan.  I'm looking forward to spring SOON!

Thanks for waiting for me to return!  What have you been up to while I was working on my project??

Monday Musings

As many know I've moved most of my computer "stuff" over to the Mac world.  I'm actually quite comfortable there.  A small learning curve was required but with the help of my techy son, Eric, I've managed to get it together and be comfortable there.  EXCEPT in the genealogy realm.  That I'm afraid is not going so well.

I have two Mac genealogy software and to be honest neither is making me happy.  Maybe I'm just too spoiled with Legacy?  I even joined the beta test for Heredis thinking maybe that would be helpful. NOT.

Here's the scoop -  I have Reunion and I have Heredis.  Both great pieces of software. EXCEPT that neither works for me.  To use either one I would have to spend an eternity repairing and replacing things to make the software work for me.

Custom facts would have to be redone,  ALL sources would have to be totally reworked, note fields replaced/moved....  and that's just in Reunion.  In Heredis any location that doesn't have a city name would show up in my reports as  ?, Oakland County, (Michigan).  I still don't understand why that is the way it needs to be.  All states end up in ( ), no choice, its just the way it has to be.  Every note and every source is the at the bottom of every page,  no choices there either.  That doesn't work for me.  Reunion does see my photo's, not all, just the ones linked to the individual. Forget anything linked to a fact.  Heredis sees no photo's at all.  With many thousands of photo's not showing, just relinking all my photo's would take forever... 

What it boils down to basically is I'm going to be using Legacy for a very long time unless someone can show me a way to make a Mac genealogy software work for me without having to totally rework my file.  I really like both pieces of software, don't get me wrong.  But I'm a researcher,  that's what I do.  Why spend the rest of my life making all those changes when I can stay in Legacy?  I'd love to move to the Mac side with the genealogy but...  you get the picture...

Anyone else out there have any suggestions?  If so I'd love to hear them!

Monday Musings...

Wow, Monday again so soon?  This was a busy weekend here. Our son was in from Texas and we got to spend some time with him.  We all got together for dinner at his house on Sunday night.  We had a great time.  There were times when the son & daughter were younger, I never thought I'd see the day when they could get along.  Happily it appears that time indeed does make things better.  To see the two of them together now you'd never know they almost killed each other a couple of times when they were younger.

We spent the day in Ft Wayne on Saturday researching at the Allen County Public library.  What an awesome place.  I can't get enough of it.  I've decided I'm probably going to drop in at the library on the last day of next month's big conference there.  Mr. Brown Eyes wants to play bridge that day so It would be a good time for me to go.  Are you going?  Would be great to meet some of the people I see on line all the time.  Should be interesting!

The switch to Reunion is not going well.  In fact I was so discouraged that I've gone back to Legacy in Parallels.  I know alot of people love Reunion but to be honest it just didn't work out for me.  First of all, with almost 70,000 people transferring in, the amount of work required to fix my file was just astronomical. When you consider that EVERY obituary, land deed, tax record, will, occupation and death certificate came in as a strange fact and was misplaced...  that in itself was just over whelming.  Not that everyone in my file had ALL those things, but still even if 500 people had all those things, the corrections required number into the thousands.  Don't forget to toss in all the images that were linked and are now unlinked and need relinking.  Its just not feasible. 

I did keep excellent records so everything that I had added to Reunion has now been added to my Legacy file.  Maybe some day I'll pick it back up -  maybe I'll find another software that will not cause me to make THOUSANDS of corrections to make the file useable.  Until then, its going to be back to Legacy. 

Have you ever made a change in your software and decided it just wasn't worth it? 

And The Beat Goes On...

The work continues here with the transition from Legacy to Reunion.  I've almost got all my vital records relinked and the facts fixed,  the newspaper file is a bit slower but its coming along.  I figure of the 12,000+ newspaper images I have,  about 4,000 are relinked.

Actually its not a bad process, its giving me the opportunity to make sure that EVERYTHING that can be linked is linked.  Fixing facts and sources is coming right along as well.  I've discovered that the source work is not as bad as anticipated -  upside is that I can customize the information I want included with the basic source information.  Which is really a good thing.

A girl can only work so long before she has to take time out to research.  Remember that old adage about, "All work and no play"?   So everyday I take time out to do a bit of digging for something.  With a 7 day research trip coming up I'm also working on my to do lists and fine tuning the things I needed to complete from our last trip to SW Ohio. 

Yesterday I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. The middle grandson fell off a play structure at summer camp and got to spend some time in emergency.  A couple of staples and he's good as new.  Irritated that play structures & bikes are off his radar for a while, but he'll live.  Sure gave grandma a scare when she got that call and heard words like "fall" "blood" and "ambulance".  

And summer has just begun!   Happy Researching!

Talk About A Learning Curve!

The change from PC to Mac is hard enough but toss in the switch from Legacy to Reunion and boy do you have a learning curve.

Hence my not having regular posts up this past week.  The move to Reunion has been challenging to say the least.  I'm at least comfortable navigating my way around Reunion now, although there are still some challenges.

The two biggest I am working with right now are all the linked images that WERE linked in Legacy but are now just hanging around in the photo file waiting to be RELINKED.  Problem that made things challenging is that in Legacy I can could link my images to my facts.  HUH? you say...  well its like this -
If I have a will I can could link the scanned images of the will to the WILL FACT.  That was Legacy. In Reunion,  there is no linking to facts, everything is linked to the person.  So all my images for any given person, whether the images are a birth certificate, a will and some land deeds, they all are linked to his one and only image file.  Only ones that can be linked separately are items to do with the marriage.  

I must say I really am not fond of this feature, it bugs me.  But, not only can I not link them back to my facts, but unless the image was a preferred image linked to the PERSON when it was in Legacy, I have to go back in to each and every person and relink all the wills, deeds, newspaper articles etc that were previously all nicely linked.  NO LIKE!  

The other big issue that I am dealing with is the SOURCE list.  Anyone who knows me knows that sourcing is a big deal.  So I have about 1800 source items.  It has them all as "free form".  I am having to go into each one, classify it as a book, periodical or something else.  It then gives me choices of what items to list - call number, author, library etc etc.   Not the most fun I've had in a long time.  Another feature that has me miffed.  NO LIKE!

The programs available to genealogists for the MAC are just so limited so you get to pick the lesser of the evils and make the best of it.  I'm sure that in time, once I get these little "miffs" taken care of my thoughts on how irritating this whole process was will pass.  Until then....  well, lets just say,  the hormones aren't the only thing driving me crazy!

Happy Researching!

Happy New Year!

We're back!  I know I said it would be January 2nd but I thought I'd toss this out anyway.   Hope your new year is off to a safe & healthy start! 

Did you make any new year resolutions?  Honestly I try not to, but I do have a few goals in mind. Of course one or two are genealogical in nature -

--I'd love to see my McCune brick wall come down.  The only real brick wall I have in my mom's line down in Montgomery County, Ohio.  Who is the father of John McCune?  At one point I thought I had it but further research just didn't work out and John is still parentless.  You'll see a blog on this in the future.

--Seriously hoping to find time to do more indexing for FamilySearch.  I think the work that is being done there, the free records that are available to genealogists is outstanding.  Doing indexing there is just one little way to give back to a community that gives so much to everyone.

--Hoping to continue with the continuation of reorganizing my office and updating my files.  Using my scanner to scan documents and linking the images in Legacy is an ongoing project but one that I find to be very rewarding.  Locating sources for the items that entered when I began this journey over 20 years ago and didn't source them is another big focus for me.  I can't begin to stress how important sourcing is!

I'm a homebody at heart (despite all my traveling), and the rest of my "goals" are primarily things that involve my home and other hobbies such as my sewing and flower gardens.  So I've got plenty to keep me busy in 2013.

What "goals" did you set for 2013?

Changes In Attitude...

I don't know if that title really fits or not, its not an attitude thing its a rethinking thing. I've been doing genealogy now for give or take a year here or there 20 years.

When I started genealogy I did things one way. I was "young" in genealogy and didn't have the data base or knowledge that I have now. Now that I am "older" - and I'm only referring to my "genealogy" age not my personal age (heaven forbid - me OLD?), I find myself rethinking things that I do.

Its not that when I was young I did it wrong, its just its not what I would like it to be now.

One example - when I first started, I began collecting death certificates. BUT I never made a fact or named exactly what the cause of death was -- until now. Never before did my software make it so I could put the "cause of death" on my data entry screen - in full site!

Now that I am using Legacy for my genealogy I find that I can put the cause of death right on my data screen and I love it. SO, the challenge now is going back thru all my death certificates and entering that information. It fits into yet another project I've been itching to do... take all the "documentation" I've been saving in my "family notebooks" and scan them to my hard drive... what a project that promises to be.

But then, what else does a body do when the weather turns cooler and winter comes to Michigan... yep, got myself a project for this winter when all you want to do is cocoon in your nice warm cozy house and wait for spring.

What genealogy projects do you have planned for this winter?

Happy researching...
Karen