Category: Uncategorized

As of 3:36 Sunday afternoon, I am currently without internet service. Due to the severity of the power issues in St. Mary’s County, I am unsure if my Diary of Llewellyn series will continue on September 1st.

I do have power at my house, thank you SMECO! However I don’t know if the Internet will be back in time for my entries to continue after the last day of the month. I usually write up two weeks worth of entries at a time. My current scheduled entries end August 31st.

There is still plenty of time for it to come back, I am just giving you advance notice of the situation. The way my life goes, the second I publish this entry, the internet will come back. If the Internet does not come back in time, I will just continue my one entry a day posting until we catch up. Heck I might use the nifty app I’m using to type this entry.

If you are a family member who regularly keeps up with Llewellyn’s diary, drop me an email at leeny.moore (@) gmail.com. I am going to start putting together a regular Word document transcription to share with family members who are also researching the Love and Thorward families. I just want to have a bit of control over who the diary goes out to.

Good luck and stay safe everyone who is dealing with this hurricane, she was a nasty one!

I made a decision and stuck with it, not like that whole not renewing Ancestry.com thing. (I may or may not have renewed it at 11:30pm last night. I’m weak.) After researching too many printers then I should have the other day, I finally found my replacement. I decided on the Epson Stylus NX625. At first I was going to get my first choice, but in the time I took to think about it and when I decided to get it, the website had taken it off sale. Having decided that happened for a reason, I went back to the drawing board and was going to get the Epson Stylus 420. Upon further review, I noticed that the 625 was actually only $20 more expensive and I knew I had $10 in reward points I could use. So I went with the 625.

Here are the things I like about it:

• It set up wirelessly so easily. It gave me a little trouble but I ended up hooking it up temporarily with a USB and setting it up. Once it was installed, I unplugged the USB, set up the wireless and nothing could stop me! All my computers now print to the one printer and I can have my desktop off and print from my laptop. That’s a big thing for me because I like to shut off my desktop and use my laptop when I want to actually focus on genealogy.
• The print quality is much better then my previous printer! I didn’t see anything wrong with my previous printer’s quality. However, the new one is much crisper and faster then the old one.
• The paper loading is much easier. There is a paper tray on the bottom that pulls all the way out so I can load the paper. My old printer didn’t have a tray. You just kind of laid the paper in place and hoped it was correct.
• Double sided printing. This is by far my favorite thing. I can print on the front and back of the paper without doing anything but clicking a box! It’s beautiful and marvelous and fantastic all in one.

There aren’t many but there are a few drawbacks so far:

• The price of the color ink is a bit high for my tastes, but so far I think it’s going to last longer then the old printer did. So I don’t mind paying a bit more. The high prices are even for the high capacity ink. So I have a feeling it will definitely be worth it.
• The SD card doesn’t automatically transfer pictures. I can manually do it, but before when I inserted my memory card into the reader, Windows would pop up and ask if I’d like to import pictures. So while this isn’t a deal breaker, it might mean I transfer pictures a little less.

Overall, I think I made a good purchase and I can’t wait to dig in and finally print out some things I haven’t been able to!

Note: I was not asked to write this review. I was not compensated by either company to write this review.

In November of 2010 I wrote up a post about how much I loved my Kodak ESP Printer/Scanner combo. Well, the time has come to replace my printer. I’ve been telling my family it’s gone “Skynet” on me. (Sorry for the Terminator reference, I’m a nerd.) I’m also hoping to take advantage of the back to school sales around town.

When I say Skynet, I mean it’s going absolutely crazy. It won’t print, it barely scans, and it won’t let me do any of the “maintenance” to try and fix it. It basically does what it wants, when it wants. Including shooting paper out at me. So I’m just done with it. I’ve had it for a couple of years, and I’m curious to try a wireless printer so I doubt I put my all into troubleshooting.

Continue reading “It’s time to research an Upgrade” →

As if life wasn’t hectic enough, the universe threw us for another loop. It’s really amazing how your perspective changes when adversity strikes. It really made me see how important the people in my life are. I know you can’t tell through the computer, but I’ve mellowed out so much in the last few months. My perfectionism is limited to my quilting and I go days, sometimes even more then a week without sitting at the computer for more then a half hour.

Last night I was in need of a break from my current reality. My sister needed it too. So we got into our pajamas, booted up our laptops and we had “sister time”. For us that means watching a movie and futzing around on the internet. She was trying to “build” a new car after hers was totaled on Tuesday and I decided to pick up my genealogy. Thanks to a bookmark in Family Tree Maker, I knew exactly where I left off.

It was wonderful. It was relaxing. It was the Mays Family! How is that possible? In fact it was so much fun that I decided to carve a few hours out of today for a little more. I guess sometimes absence does make the heart grow fonder because I was pretty fed up with deciphering the Mays family!

Do you want to know the even better news? I might almost be DONE with getting the Mays family re-entered into my database. I can’t say for certain because I have to research the leads I have on the other children of William Mays and Frances Adkins. Currently, I’m not putting them in my file or onto my website without some kind of documentation. So I might have a lot more, or I might be almost done. This genealogy thing is always changing!

I haven’t had much time for my genealogy lately. It’s the chaos of summer and quilting that has me busy as a bee. Hopefully things will calm down now that all the trips are done with and Grandpa is settled. I’ve discovered quilting really relaxes me so I’ve been working on that a little more then genealogy. I’ve got the itch to have a genealogy day soon though! My research didn’t happen this summer because of circumstances, so I have a little more time now to sort through my family files and get them straight. I’m still transcribing Llewellyn’s Diary, and I have an inbox full of emails to answer today. So don’t give up on me yet! It’s just a sign of summer.

You may or may not be wondering where I have been lately. It just so happens I’m on active jury duty. I finished up a trial yesterday and I’m free today, after that, only the judge knows!

In the midst of all this, my grandfather moved to Southern Maryland. So to say my life has been hectic would be an understatement! It’s all going good though, I just have a busy few weeks ahead of me. I’m hoping to settle back into my routine in the next week or so, or at least finding a new one. I haven’t had much time for computer related things. I’ve been falling asleep much earlier then I used to! I guess that’s the results of a busy lifestyle!

The great thing is that I’m getting plenty of stories from Grandpa. Even some new pictures!

Boy am I behind on everything! The good news is I had a blast with ‘The Aunts’. Which is what my cousin Summer and I kept referring to them as. Summer from Ohio, me from Maryland. It might take me a little bit to get back in the swing of things but I thought now would be a great time to pull out some of the search terms used recently by people. Hopefully what landed them here was close to what they found.

“obituary for jacob crisp” and “jacob crisp”

Yes you can find Jacob Crisp’s obituary on my blog here. I’m pretty sure that it was Jacob’s grandson who commented on my blog who was searching for the obituary. So score 1 for my blog!

“how we remember marshall taylor today”

I’m not sure what Marshall Taylor the searcher was looking for. I have several in my Taylor tree. None of my Taylor information has been added into the website database yet, but you can read some of my Taylor blog entries here.

“hammett family burial in lexington park mall parking lot”

I knew this would happen! Everyone wonders about it but there’s practically nothing online about it. My website is apparently now the #1 Google item when searching for this search term. You can read about the San Souci Shopping Cemetery here.

“elliott family of rowan county”

I don’t know about the Elliott Family but if you need to know about the Mays, Slusher, Click, Crisp, Adkins, Rowe, and a million others, you found the right place.

“grandma’s kitchen recipes blog”

When I started this blog, I had every intention of going through my Grandma’s recipe book and sharing some. Things happen though and it just didn’t come through. You can still read about her famous fudge recipe here though. There are some Grandma’s Recipe Blogs you can find though, The first few are: here, here, and here.

“brooklyn daily eagle online”

Words can not express how much I love the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. It was vital in breaking down a mystery for me on my Brooklyn Moores. You can read my write up about the paper helping me here. Or you can just go straight to the source: here.

“tng templates”

This is the top search term for my website. You will land on my writeup of the TNG Software I use. I do not have any links to templates, but it comes with 8 now and they are very customizable! The website for the software is here.

I’m having indecision problems again. The problem is I’m never sure I’m doing things correctly. I’m sure the most important thing in my family file is that everyone is documented and well sourced. I’m sure that I’ve tried to do that. However, it gets very hard the more information you gather and learn. I say that because every blog or article I read all have different opinions! There doesn’t seem to be any 100% correct way to do it, which isn’t bad but what are beginnings and newbies supposed to do? I’m a perfectionist, so it’s inevitable that I’ll start second guessing myself and my methods. That’s why I’m writing here today.

If you are like me and you eventually start second guessing yourself, I have some advice. Take a break from what you’re worried about. Take a whole day off from the computer for example. Heck, I’d take a week if I didn’t think it’d trigger an apocalypse. I’m sorry for the over exaggeration, I’m addicted to my computer.

Tell yourself that it’s all going to be alright! The important thing is that you are comfortable with what you have. I’m not saying forget all rules and just merge to your hearts content, but really if you aren’t sharing your tree with the whole internet, if you are still in the process of learning and understand that… Just relax. You’ll figure it out and you can’t please everyone, so find a method that works for you.

Continue reading “The Indecision Monster is Back” →

I’m the youngest child in my family. This has made me be very flexible in everything I do. Sure there are perks to being the youngest as I’m sure any older sibling will be glad to highlight. As a child, I wouldn’t call these life lessons perks, but now that I’m grown, I can appreciate some things I’ve learned. I didn’t need that cookie anyway, it was going straight to my hips. I don’t need to play that video game, because it’s much more fun watching my older siblings play… honest! Basically I’ve learned to roll with the punches in life. There is no doubt life is going to throw me a few lemons. It’s my job to be persistent and not give up. Eventually, I’m going to get a cookie and my turn will come around on the video game. Sure I won’t be as good at them as my sibling are and I’ll end up playing by myself (they were done with the game by this hypothetical time) but my turn is coming!

When I started this blog, I quickly modified a template that allowed me to somewhat match my website design that was already in place at the main website. As time grew, I also grew as an amateur web designer. I’ve learned all kinds of new tricks and it’s always bothered me that I modified a template I didn’t create myself. It was the same when I wasn’t blogging. I was constantly trying to make my own template for TNG. I’ve finally conquered that and now I’m onto conquering WordPress.

What you see above is how far I’ve come on my new design. As you can see, I figured out a lot of the quirks of designing my WordPress template from scratch. However, I have to go back to the drawing board because while I like aspects of the design. Once I had all three columns lined up, it looks too busy for me. Once I started looking at how busy it looked I don’t like many more things about it.

Why am I taking the time to blog about this? Well why not? I love sharing all the aspects of this website on my blog. Mostly because I’m a rambler. I like to talk a lot. Most people think I’m very quiet but if you engage me in website or genealogy talk, I can go for hours. In all honesty I feel like this blog is a glimpse into my life whether it be talking about my Fisher Price Little People, using Google Earth to travel from the comfort of my pajamas, and over-sharing about my website foibles.

So what am I going to change in the new design? Definitely the number of columns. If I stick with three columns (which I doubt), I’ll have the thinner columns on the same side. I really think I’ll go for the 2 column look though. I already have some ideas on how to incorporate the things on the left into the right column.

I refuse to give up though. More than once I’ve wanted to just chuck all this product testing and find a template to use. I won’t learn anything from that though. So my training as the youngest in the family is kicking in and I’m learning patience again. Not to mention this website is something that I’m really proud. I’ve learned a lot about myself by teaching myself everything that I’ve put up here. It’s something that I’ve done that impresses my siblings and my parents. Any younger sibling will tell what a feat that is! I’ve impressed them! They think I’m a little bit cool!

So that’s the latest chapter in my website soap opera. Now it’s time to go to PhotoShop and start messing around with colors and design. That’s the fun part!

The last time I posted my statistics was in October, oy!

Okay, so I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. I won’t make excuses. It just didn’t happen! My individual count is up by 63. I do have to say though, ALL 63 are completely cited. Nothing is in the file without a source citation. So 63 is a bigger number then what you first think.

Continue reading “Statistics: February 2011” →