Nov 13, 2007

The great "fill in the skylight hole" two-week trauma has now passed. The idea (mine) was to remove a sometimes leaky skylight in preparation for a re-roofing. Unfortunately it rained, or poured buckets, during most of the time that there was a gaping 20 ft X 2 ft hole in my roof. There was plastic everywhere and luckily not much got wet inside. But finding a Hawaii licensed contractor to do the job quickly was a little frustrating. Finally, on Halloween, I waved down a truck (threw myself in front of it?) that was leaving the condos where I live, because it had a "Grand Construction, LLC" sign on the side door. Benny, the contractor, agreed (at my pleading) to pull over and look at my skylight hole, and said he'd get back to me, and gave me his cell phone number. After a few days when I didn't get an estimate, I phoned him and we made an appointment for Nov 5th. After hearing the estimate I thought I might have been rich if I'd been a contractor instead of a nurse! Anyway, the price was actually very good, and after two men worked for three and a half days, I now have a nice looking ceiling and roof. So... back to normal life!

On Nov 10th our Honolulu County Genealogical Society monthly meeting was held. Georgia and Tom Bopp talked about DNA and the pros and cons of the Sorenson Database DNA test. They had the free packets ready for about 11 of us who decided to give up mouth washings samples for the Sorensen Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) DNA database project. It should be interesting to see what, if anything, this test can show....if not now, at least in the future. SMGF says it "is dedicated to building the world's foremost collection of correlated genetic and genealogical information..." for use in world-wide "DNA-based family history research." Their website is www.smgf.org

At the Board of Directors meeting of our genealogical society, I volunteered to set up and moderate a Blog for the society. By 9pm that evening I had the Blog running and my first post made. It's at www.HonoluluCountyGenealogicalSociety.blogspot.com so now I have another thing I like to do, to keep me busy!

I received a notice about another free Family History Fair put on the internet at www.FamilyHistoryLiveOnline.com it is for Saturday morning, Nov. 17th. Because of the time-zone differences, the conference - or genealogy "Webinar" which starts at 9 am Mountain Time, actually starts at 6 am Hawaii Time. But I can drop in later if I'm a late riser Saturday. This is a real-time conference with different talks and interaction from the attendees. This is the cheapest way (free) to attend a genealogy conference -- and do it at home, no less!

I've also found an archived Webinar from and about AncestryPress.com that took place Nov 1st, which I missed. AncestryPress, a part of Ancestry.com, is the branch that makes it easy (?) to organize a professional family history book using information from your family tree, photos, documents, etc. Then you can print it out at home, or they will publish it for a fee, depending on how many pages it has. the video of the conference is at this link Webinar which takes you to a registration page, which one must fill out to even see the archived webinar. But it's interesting.

This morning (7am!) I attended the East Honolulu Breakfast Club - a small business networking organization that has interesting monthly topics and friendly people. The topic was "Personal Community Service - Satisfaction Guaranteed!' presented by Peter Matsumoto and his daughter. Recently they went to Siem Reap, Cambodia with the Metro Rotary Club of Honolulu to celebrate a "Charter Meeting" with the new Siem Reap Angkor Rotary Club. They also visited an orphanage in Phnom Pehn which the Peter's Rotary supports . It's called "The Future Light Orphanage of Worldmate" (FLOW). There he meet his newly "adopted" foster son at the orphanage, as did some of the other Rotarians from Hawaii. I was very interested in Peter's presentation as I was in Siem Reap, Cambodia, just three weeks ago. Cambodia is a wonderful country to visit.