October's Here

I've been a bit out of commission with a few things happening.  With half my bathroom remodeling finished, I have a few weeks before the vanity cabinet arrives and the workers come back so  I'm catching up with some things.  Although I'm now on my laptop instead of my PC (more on that later).  So in this time before I get the new glass sliding doors installed I should have time to get things done?  Rennovation week was a week of turning my attention to multiple trips to Home Depot, City Mill and Lowes.  While they were chipping tiles upstairs I was busy transferring my 1995 videotapes of my adventures with the Polynesian Voyaging Society to DVD's.  It seems I have so much to digitalize I'll never seen the end of it, even more than for genealogy.  I received a letter asking for materials from the historic voyage I took on the recreated Hawaiian voyaging canoe, Hawai'i Loa, a trip from Tahiti to the Marquesas in 1995.  Honolulu Community College has a grant to digitalize and put on line, for the benefit of everyone, especially the Hawaiian community, documents, photos, journals, etc. etc. of all the almost 35 years from the building of the Hokule'a voyaging canoe to the many years of voyages it and other canoes have taken in the Pacific.  As a natural documenter, I have many things I'm happy to have preserved for the future.  So that is keeping me busy. 

I was happy to sign into the last genealogy "Scanfest" the other day, and although my PC was at "SuperGeeks" getting fixed, I  enjoyed the conversation via my laptop -- actually a tiny Acer Netbook.  Up until I decided to have my PC "tuned up" I was diligently scanning the old documents I'd kept in a fire safe box, and had not thought of digitalizing.  I still have a little more to do --- let's see a 1915 North Dakota Mortgage of Marshall Akins and some probate documents from Polk County when James Hague died in the late 1800's.  When I brought my PC home Thursday I went through a bit of anguish when strange things happened at start-up and then my SeaGate External Hard Drive -- which had been acting strangely anyway-- disappeared from being found on my PC.   So in haste I have paid for a year's backup storage on www.Mozy.com  and have been backing up my most important Surname files and photos -- 40 gigabytes worth -- for the last 26 hours.... Evidentlly I have about 6 more days of constant backing up before all the files are " up there" and safe.  I've had my Family Tree Maker  family tree stored online at Mozy for the last couple years... for free.  You can store up to 2 GB for free on Mozy.   Although I have most of my photos additionally on CDs, I think now is the time for me to have online backup.  It costs about $4.95/month.  To speed the upload of my 40 GB, I'm trying to use my laptop to do my e-mail, etc.  I don't want to disturb the process... heaven forbid, that after 5 days, some wrong key got clicked and I canceled the upload!

Of particular concern to me lately (besides my grandchildren getting the flu at home in Arizona) is the terrible natural calamities in the Pacific:  The typhoons and flooding in the Philippines, the Earthquakes in Indonesia, and the Earthquake and Tsunami in the Samoas.  My friend, Lucille James is now in American Samoa as a Red Cross worker.  She is also a nurse, and has had experience organizing shelters in Hawaii during flooding or possible hurricanes.  I'm sure Lucille is going to have a very positive impact for the people who have lost their homes and family members.

Still on the horizon is a visit by my nephew, Joe Hague, from Las Vegas on the 12th, and then the tenting of my building and fumigation with deadly gas on the 21st.  Luckily Joe hadn't planned to be here on the 21st! 

Back to genealogy, as always, I discovered that new on www.labs.familysearch.org are the 1865 New York census images - available for browsing.  I don't think I've looked at them before,  so was happy to find a few of my families in Chautauqua County.
That's about it for now.  Aloha.