SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting
September 1, 2009
114th Meeting
1. Roll Call.
2. The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, October 6, 2009. So, everyone please mark their calendar.
3. Is there any other Old Business or New Business that we should take care of before moving on?
4. There was no meeting held in the month of August for the San Mateo County Genealogical Society.
5. The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 7:30 P.M. in the Main Conference Room of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The speaker will be Ron Arons, and the title of his talk will be “Mapping Madness”. In this talk, Ron will be discussing websites that provide historical maps and several online mapping tools. Ron demonstrates how both Microsoft Maps and Google Maps operate. The presentation also covers Microsoft’s Map Cruncher Tool, which mashes two similar maps together. Ron will also briefly cover IBM’s Many Eyes, Muckety.com, and Whitepages.com. Come early at 7:00 P.M. to visit and enjoy delicious refreshments before the meeting. This should be an extremely interesting meeting. Since the Fall Seminar for the San Mateo County Genealogical Society is going to be held in October, there will be no General Meeting of the Society in October. There will be only one last general meeting of the Society after the September meeting, and that will be in November.
6. To bring you up to date on the San Mateo County Genealogical Society contractual agreement with La Cañada College to have their library housed in the library at La Cañada, the Grant Agreement for this move is now signed by both parties. There became a snag in the proceedings in which La Cañada College has decreased the number of book racks that will be available to the Society, which is a serious problem. Discussions are now going on to try and solve this problem. Maybe Bob Shoemaker knows more about this.
7. As I have announced previously, the San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s Fall Seminar will occur on October 24 of this year, at the 1st Presbyterian Church, 25th & Hacienda Avenues, in San Mateo. That is next month, so mark your calendar so you will be sure to remember it. The speaker will be Karen Clifford, who is an accredited Genealogist Professional in Midwestern and Southern States Genealogy, and President/CEO of Genealogy research Associates, Inc. She has been a college curriculum developer and instructor in Genealogy and Computer courses at Monterey Peninsula College. Karen has authored 7 college textbooks on genealogy and published numerous family histories. She is the former President of the Utah Genealogical Association. The seminar will feature four lectures which will be given between 9:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M. There will be a 1-hour break for lunch at 12.00 noon. Registration for members is $25.00 and $28.00 for nonmembers. Lunch is $8.00. I have some copies of the Registration Forms for your use in signing up, in case you didn’t get at the last meeting.
8. The Family History Center in Menlo Park has announced a lecture series consisting of Four General Family History Topics which will be discussed at the intermediate level. The meetings will be held on Saturday afternoons from 1:30 P.M. to 4:00 P.M. and will consist of two presentations of 55-60 minutes with a 30 minute break between them during which problems and questions can be discussed with the instructors. All meetings will be in the High Council Chamber of the LDS Church located at 1105 Valparaiso Avenue in Menlo Park. All instructors are Senior Staff Members of the Family History Center. These lectures are open to the general public and are free of charge. Pre-registration is requested in order to guarantee seating. The meetings will be held on May 2, 2009, May 30, 2009, June 27, 2009, July 25, 2009, August 22, 2009, and September 19, 2009. The topics will primarily be on “United Kingdom Family History”. The first five lectures of this series is now history, and there are only one left. For registration and other information, call Tom Fletcher at 650-366-9904. They are currently planning the lectures and speakers for three additional Series on “Writing Your Family History”, “The Three Empires of Greater Germany”, and “United States Migrations”. These lectures are extremely well done and worth while attending. I had passed out copies of the announcements to everyone at our previous meeting.
9. The series of lectures that was given by the Family History Center entitled “Introduction to Genealogy”, are now history. I had announce the details of these lectures in my previous meetings. This was a series of lectures for beginners in genealogy, and was well worth while attending. For those who have missed them, the series will probably be repeated next year.
10. I had reported last month that the Family History Center in Menlo Park now has a website which can be reached on one’s computer by entering the internet address www.mpfhc.org. I thought it would be worth while to everyone if I noted it once again. The site is not very detailed yet, because it is only a few months old. But it appears that it could be a great source of genealogical information in the future. The important information gives the days and the hours in which the Center is open, which has changed throughout the years. They have links to Lecture Series that they will be presenting giving detailed information of what will be covered. A very important link is to a description of how one should get started in his or her Family History, which is a very useful document. If you are planning to visit the Family History Center, it would be advisable to check the internet connection first to see that they will be opened on the day that you are planning to go.
11. Rick Dusine E-Mailed me an extremely interesting article from Eastman’s Online Genealogy on the internet on how you can tell one’s Second Cousin Once Removed. The internet address is: http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/07/what-is-second-cousin-once-removed.html. I will read a copy of the article that I have retrieved of Eastman’s site. His site is full of a whole lot of Genealogical information and is well worth while pursuing.
12. And to now to continue on with the ongoing saga of being able to store pictures in ones computer, which brought me to this frustration when I installed the new version of the Family Tree Maker 2009. As I reported in the last two sessions of this group, it all started when Family Tree Maker took out the feature for storing photographs and other pictures as was done in their older versions of Family Tree Maker. All pictures are now inserted into Family Tree Maker by means of links to another program which stores the pictures. I went down to Frys and asked their management if they had any program which stored photographs with any and all extensions, such as jpg, doc, pdf, spp, etc., which could read the photographs without linking to another program, which could produce an album for any set of pictures that one chooses along with titles for the pictures, able to convert extension files to any other extension file by only a few clicks of the mouse, and be able to touch up and enhance any photograph within the program. Frys informed that they had no such program, and they new of no one else that had such a program. I then spent several days searching the internet for such a program, or some program that might be close to it, with no such luck. There wasn’t anything that was even close. So with some luck, I found a program that was place into my computer called “Pictures”, which I think came with the Microsoft Office system. With this program, I could install any photograph with any extension, which is possible with most any program, but with this one I was able to read the picture from the same folder, which most other programs will not do. The reading was made possible by linking to another program that could read that particular file extension, which was done with only one click of the mouse. This was a great improvement. However, there is still a link, which might lead to a problem, such as if you ever deleted the program that was able to read a particular file extension for some reason or other, you probably could not be able to read these files any more. In the pictures folder, one can not put any Album together, nor can any touch up be done. This folder is also linked to the Picasa Program for reading of some of the pictures, and is referred to this program for any Albums that one wishes to create. Unfortunately, the albums in Picasa are not the greatest things on earth. I have not been able to build an album in Picasa for any set of pictures that I would like. Picasa builds their album by obtaining pictures from anywhere in one’s computer, and they do not accept all extensions. So the result is a random set of pictures, many of which you probably do not want in a particular album. If you try to eliminate any particular picture in the album that was created, you get a nasty message informing you that this may eliminate the original picture from where this picture is linked to. So, at least we have something where we can store all pictures, regardless of extension. If one wants to use this technique, I would suggest making a separate folder for each extension, such as DOC Folder, JPG Folder, PDF Folder, etc., so that the extension files do not get mixed up. This picture folder entitled “Pictures” can be found as a subfolder of one’s Local Disc folder. I also downloaded from the internet a program that would convert DOC files into JPG files. That was the tile of the program that I downloaded, but after downloading it that is not what it could do. After many hours of frustration, I removed the program from my computer. The program listed about 30 extensions which I had never heard of, but not one DOC, JPG, HTML, etc. I then tried once more downloading another program from the internet, which definitely stated that I could convert DOC files to JPG files, which it looked like it did. When I asked to convert a sample, an error message came up stating that I had not downloaded the driver. What driver? I thought that the program was complete. So, I downloaded the driver like it asked. When I asked the program to convert again, the program couldn’t find the driver. Neither could I. So I gave up, and eliminated that program also. Unfortunately, neither of these programs had a removable option, so I had to remove everything by hand. This probably left remnants of these programs throughout my computer and in the registry, which does not make me very happy.
13. Back to some knowledge about computers. Has anyone had the problem of scrolling your text uncontrollably upward and highlighting the text as it is scrolling? There is a fix that one can use to solve this problem. There is a button on your keyboard on the top row of buttons and one button from the right-hand side labeled “Scroll Lock”. By pressing this button, a green light will come on at the far right side of your keyboard which is also labeled “Scroll Lock”. When this light is lit, you will have no more problem with scrolling uncontrollably. Unfortunately, you must press this button each time you start your computer. So far I have been unable to find a means to set this fix permanently or as a default.
14. This is an important financial quote that I would like to read:
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED IN 2,064 YEARS?
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled,
public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should
be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands
should be curtailed lest we become bankrupt. People must again learn to
work, instead of living on public assistance."
Who wrote this? Cicero -55 BC
So what have we learned: Apparently Nothing.
15. There is another important Financial article that I would like to read to you regarding protecting your savings from Failing Banks. This article was published by Bob Livingston, a Financial Specialist. It is something to think seriously about.
16. There is another important article on our nations economy and financial system that I would like to read to you. This article is from a widely distributed Newsletter that most people do not get to read, so please pay strict attention because it may affect you personally.
17. In closing, I thought it would be interesting if I read the following timely article about seniors entitled “Seniors on a Trip”.
18. One more interesting story that I couldn’t resist, entitled ”The Prophet Mohammed”.
19. Is there any questions or more information that one wishes to bring before us
20. I have placed all of my meeting discussions onto the SIR’s Website in case you would like to refer to some of them. They are found in the Genealogy Group on the Website. Scroll down until you see the title “Monthly Genealogy Meetings”. Under this title you will see the dates of our past meetings. Click on any one of these dates and you will see the discussions that we talked about at each of these meetings. I have changed the format at this point a little, and have placed all the Monthly Genealogy Meetings for 2008 into a single folder titled “2008 Genealogy Meetings”. The monthly meetings for 2009 will be shown individually until the end of the year, and they also will be placed in a 2009 folder. This will save a great deal of space and make it much easier to look up the meetings.