What falls under this category?
The posts all fall into the category of organization. That could mean document, digital, or photo organization. This blog has been going for a long time. That means things that I’ve tried have either worked or not worked.
How will we know if it works or not?
All methods are what I’ve tried personally. Everyone works differently. If you’d like to know if I’m still keeping up with something, you can contact me privately or through the blog and I will update you on whether something worked or not. I am by no means an expert, but I do like to try different things.
The series of posts I will be writing is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂
This post is about the procedures and guidelines I am setting up for myself. I even made pretty Word documents, because if I make a list, that means I mean business! I hope at least!
Continue reading “Genealogy Go-Over: Setting Guidelines”The series of posts I will be writing is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂
Okay, so the best way to get through things is to just jump right into them. I’ve learned that about myself over the years. Starting on Thursday of last week, I started getting things ready for my Genealogy Go-Over. The first section of the Do-Over/Go-Over is to clear your slate. I know myself, which means I’m going to have some problems keeping my fingers out of the cookie jar. My intention isn’t to start completely over from scratch. What I do want to do is revisit my current family file person by person. One of the big things that I wanted to happen in my Family File Cleanup was I wanted a good sync between my Ancestry.com DNA Family Tree, my computer database and my website database. I don’t want to have one thing in one, and have to use another for something else.
Continue reading “Genealogy Go-Over: Getting Started”
I have been equally overwhelmed and inspired since returning from my genealogy break. Coming back from a long break has left me with fresh eyes, and a mostly fresh brain. What isn’t fresh, is my computer files. After all the stress and heartache of 2014, I just didn’t have it in me to continue trying to fix the mess my computer swap left me. I basically just walked away from the task and didn’t think about it anymore.
I previously talked about it in a March 2014 post. So now here I am. Wondering how I’m going to get started again. Sure I’ve been researching, but I am limping along. My digital organization is working alright, though I’m still trying to better it. I have an overabundance of files after my computer switch and then a software switch after The Unforgivable Act (TUA). Honestly, I don’t even know if I got around to telling you the details about that aftermath. In the interest of saving web space, I will just briefly say that I was using Family Tree Maker and was test driving Legacy Family Tree. Family Tree Maker crashed for the thousandth time and corrupted my file. I restored it just fine but I officially signed off Family Tree Maker that day and started to use Legacy full-time. I was just done with dealing with it.
Continue reading “Genealogy Do-Over or Go-Over?”I get a lot of e-mails about what kind of information I have about all the names I talk about here on the blog. My database website is pretty outdated with the information I currently have. So I wanted to show the easiest way to find out what is new on my database website.
If you go to my main moore-mays.org website, there is a Database Additions link in the sidebar. I will be putting some serious time in over the next couple of weeks to try and get that as updated as possible with information and documents.
Five years ago, I posted the ongoing adventures of trying to get all my paper organized. At the time I thought I was going to do great! Well, five years later, I no longer use those crates, hanging file folders or even that blanket or bed frame. I guess it was a clean sweep!
Continue reading “My Current Digital Organization”It has been 659 days since my last real blog post. I had no plans to abandon my blog. Life sort of just happened to me. Shortly after my last blog post, one of my Aunts suddenly passed away. I didn’t know it at the time, or even until recently, but I believe I fell into a depression. I wasn’t diagnosed, I didn’t talk to anyone but my family about it, but I completely lost my passion for life for a long time. It’s only now that I’m starting to get back to doing things I love like genealogy, and hopefully soon quilting.
I have made a lot of changes over the time I’ve been away from the blog, including a switch over from Family Tree Maker to Legacy. This was long before the announcement recently about Family Tree Maker. My reason for switching was mainly because the program kept crashing and corrupting my file. I’d have to “clean” it up all over again after downloading the synced version from Ancestry. I haven’t regretted the change but as with all software changes this has come with a learning curve. Not to mention, again cleaning up the sources after the import process.
I don’t have plans to regularly post on the blog yet. Only because now that my computer situation is finally stable, I am cleaning up and organizing. I haven’t felt much like devoting that kind of time to that process in a long time but I’m finding it very helpful in getting my motivation back.
I hope everyone who is reading this is doing well and I hope to write again soon!
Well, I did it. I got through all my census citations. They’re all back to what they were before the computer switcheroo. Now I’m onto the other 80 sources that duplicated themselves in the merge.
Last Friday, my goal was to cleanup the 1880 US Census source citations in my family file. I accomplished that and more! I ended up cleaning up 1880 US, 1881 England and Scotland, 1892 New York and 1895 Kansas and New Jersey. Granted those other ones are smaller amounts in my file but progress to me is progress.
Unlike last week, I think this week’s goal will have to be done bits at a time throughout the week. This week’s goal is the 1900 census.
Fridays are my new Genealogy time. For some reason today I realized that when I watch the Ancient Aliens marathon on History 2, it makes me want to do genealogy. I might as well take advantage of the boost in inspiration!
Most of my week is starting to fill up with sewing projects, so by the time Friday rolls around I’m ready to be stationary for awhile. Anything that doesn’t involve wrestling quilts is ideal really.
So today, I’ve already started to answer some of those emails that have built up and I’m going to be working in Family Tree Maker also.
The main goal is to get my sources all cleaned up. When I downloaded my tree from Ancestry, they had created a separate source for each event on each person. I usually link all facts/people to the one source citation. It goes quicker than you might imagine but I can’t do it too much at once. Today my goal will be to just get the 1880 census fixed up.
When I get tired of this for the day I will start cleaning up my paper files. Even though I’m trying to go as paperless as possible, my paper has piled up. Mostly because I’ve needed to print something for someone or because I needed to see it not on a computer screen. My documents have gotten a bit messy. Not after today, today they all go back to where they belong!
First of all if you’re reading this, back up your files…
It seems I’m always apologizing to my blog for being neglectful. Here I am again. I can’t tell a lie to my blog or what blog readers stumble across me here. These computer issues really threw me for a loop.
So to sum up, in September I made an expensive decision to finally replace my aging desktop computer. At the time my computer was still limping along and I thought it was the perfect time to actually prepare for a computer swap before it needed to happen. Then the computer got delayed in production… Yikes.
About the time of the delay, my old computer did the unforgivable, it crashed unexpectedly and uncharacteristically, and it corrupted my working family file. I still cringe thinking about it. Luckily my new computer got here and I was able to start slowly working my way through getting things moved in an organized way.. Then….
If you’ve made it this far, back up your files…
Continue reading “Hello Out There!”