Things to Do While Waiting for the Release of Family Tree Maker 2017 on March 31, 2017

originally posted: March 31, 2017 at 4:58 p.m. ET, I fixed a couple errors

Patiently Waiting.

1. Remember there are 24 hours in each and every day including March 31, 2017.

2. Sleep in — that used up a few of those hours.

3. Do some of those non-fun aspects of genealogy.

• Clean up your work area
• Corral those dust bunnies and relocate them to "File 13."
• Organize those paper files and while doing that re-read them — who knows you might learn something you forgot, or something might click with what you know now.
• Organize your electronic files but be careful of those files linked in genealogy programs.

4. Bring up five browser windows and keep hitting refresh so you know what is going on.

• MacKiev's Family Tree Maker FaceBook page (you don't have to be a FaceBook member to take a look)
• Ancestry.com's Face Book page (ditto above)
• MacKiev's Family Tree Maker Support Page FTM 2017 FAQ page
• Ancestry.com's Blog post on the change happening just to keep an eye those comments
• Your email where the email to the Family Tree Maker 2017 download should appear. Keep hitting refresh/check mail.
  
  Nope. Nothing yet.

5. If you have not updated your Research Log lately now is a great time to do so. Heck, it's a good time to start one. What have you found and where? What do you want to look for and where?

6. Have an early dinner with the family. You got to talk to them sometime, now is a good time to catch up.

7. Refresh those browser tabs. Nope nothing yet.

8. Remember patience. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. And that the first time does not always go smoothly. Remember being a kid and those party games? The first in line did not always do the best. Those who came after got to see/learn how to do the task better. So let us all exercise patience and not beat up Software MacKiev — the company saved Family Tree Maker after a whole big lot of us shouted out and expressed our feelings for the program.

9. Write a letter or email an elderly relative questions about what they remember and about themselves. We are all supposed to do this, interview our elders, but how many of us have done this?

10. Take a walk, try number 4 again. If negative then repeat from number 1.

Got to run, I am trying number 6. Wonder where we are going.

©2017 All Rights Reserved, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

A Genealogy Analogy: Do You Get it Now?

If you think of your Family Tree as a House ...

then Sources, Citations and your Analysis are the nails, mortar or glue that hold everything together. Without Sources, Citations and your Analysis your Family Tree may collapse like a House of Cards.

A Family Tree can be like a House of Cards ...

no use of Sources, Citations, & Analysis can lead to a Family Tree Collapse. Don't Build a "Tree of Cards."

I don't know if anyone else has thought of this analogy but it has been running through my mind lately.

P.S. I thought it would take longer but it took less than 15 minutes to build this house of cards and I haven't built one in many, many years. The time for my family tree is another story ...

Where are the Sources?

Tombstone Tuesday

We came across these "genealogy" tombstones eleven years ago in New York and seven years ago in North Carolina; they have always intrigued me. But nowadays when I see them, all I think is: "What are the sources behind those statements carved in stone?" Just because they are carved in stone I wouldn't take them as fact until I did the research myself. 

I guess I'd take the information with a grain of ... granite?

Note: I have not researched either of these families so I do not know the accuracy of these statements. The stone from New York is simply one we came across while searching for a family member's burial plot. The pictures are grainy due to wrong settings used on a new camera. The stones from North Carolina tie into a niece's husband's family that I may or may not get around to researching someday.

in New York (1 of 3 pictures)

in North Carolina (1 of 4 pictures)

in New York (2 of 3 pictures)

in North Carolina (2 of 4 pictures)

in New York (3 of 3 pictures)

in North Carolina (3 of 4 pictures)

in North Carolina (4 of 4 pictures)

in North Carolina (1 of 1 picture)

©2014, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

The Delivery … A Sign that You’ve taken Genealogy Too Far?

Tombstone Tuesday

Earlier this spring my sister had a package delivered. It arrived while I was baking so I didn’t retrieve it directly from the delivery man but waited until I put the tray in the oven. (The snow wasn’t falling yet.) Stepping outside I looked down and said, “Oh!” Then, I giggled as I brought the box inside setting it by the door. I knew what my brother would think when he stopped by that night.

And I was right. His words when he spotted the package, “Don’t you think you guys have taken this too far? Now you’re getting tombstones delivered!”

[The guys he referred to are Mom, my sister and I – the family genealogists.]

My reply to him was, “No, and it is not what you think. It’s a coat from Macy’s and they sent it on the hanger in a box instead of in a poly-bag. I knew the minute I saw the box you would think it was a tombstone!”

Honest, we haven’t gone that far in the deep-end. Though, my birthday present this year was a bit odd.

[Note: Though the package arrived earlier this year, I took a photo of the “tombstone” box in August before we recycled it.]

©2013, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.