Month: April 2008

Genealogy

Christian and Henriette

Shelly

I mentioned that I had found the names of Henry Meineke’s parents in the 1925 Iowa census, and that I was almost certain I’d found the same family in the 1870 US census, living in Illinois. Well, I later found that the Auguste on the 1870 census was a daughter, not a son, as I’d assumed. She married ended up in Iowa. I know this, because I stumbled across Auguste in the 1925 Iowa census, married to a man named Henry Sheppelman. She was born in Illinois, and her parents were Christ Meinicke and Henrietta Liddke.

At that point, I was convinced that the folks in the 1870 US census belonged to Henry. Now, the question was to find their emigration information. When did they come over? According to the 1900 census, they (or Henry, at least) emigrated in 1871, which would make it impossible for them to be listed in the 1870 US census.

I did some more digging, and was about to give up, because I just wasn’t finding anything at all close to what I needed. But, then, I thought I’d go check the LDS website. The information there is limited, but their genealogical index sometimes has little nuggets that aren’t available elsewhere.

I turned up a record for an Auguste Dorothee Christine Meinecke (b. 3 December 1867 in Lebenstedt). Her parents were Johann Georg Christian Meinecke (b. 14 August 1813 in Lebenstedt) and Sophie Henriette Elisabeth Lueddecke (b. 16 December 1826 in Lichtenberg). Aha! Not only is it more confirmation that I’m on the right track, but it provides a few more useful clues.

With the proper (or at least an alternate) spelling of Henriette’s last name and more options for first names for both her and Christian, I was finally able to find an abstract of the emigration record for the family. It’s sparse, but they did indeed come over in 1869, as I’d suspected. The record also lists complete names for everyone in the family, including three more children and an unnamed stepchild.

I still can’t find any further information on Christian and Henriette, aside from the immigration record, the 1870 census, and the LDS record. In addition to that, for Henriette, I found her in the 1900 US census, widowed and living with Auguste and Henry Sheppelman.

Photography

Avon

Shelly

IMG_0786

I got these in a box of junk at a yard sale. I think all of them still have old cream perfume in them. They’re in pretty bad shape, but I kept them because I thought I might use them in an art project. So far, all they’ve done is sit in a drawer. I came across them this afternoon and thought, at the very least, I ought to take a photo of them.

Crankypantsing

Saturday Technology Report

Shelly

I’ve had this on-again, off-again problem with my computer not seeing my printer. I’ve torn my hair out over this, because it seemed so arbitrary. At first, I blamed ZoneAlarm for blocking my USB ports[1], and in temporarily disarming ZA, I ended up getting my check card information stolen. So, that didn’t end well, though I thought I had the problem narrowed down to ZA.

Not so.

I turned everything on this morning, and once again, my printer was off-line. Aaack! I tried everything I could think of, retracing my cybersteps yesterday to try to figure out what might have made my printer invisible. Bupkis. So I did a system restore to yesterday. Printer still off-line. Undid the restore and picked a point further back. Printer still off-line. Undid that restore and tore out some more hair. At this point, I’m completely out of ideas.

I finally decided that I’d better just spend the day doing a major back-up, wipe my hard drive, and reinstall everything. That’s not what I had on my agenda for the day. Ugh.

I took the lid off my spindle of discs, which sits in front of my computer tower. And, what did I see? The Compact Flash card from my camera sitting in the card reader. Hmmm. As you may have noticed, I haven’t been taking many pictures lately. Also, lately, my printer (until this morning) has been working fine. Hmmm, again.

You may or may not recall that when I first got this computer, I was extra clueless and hooked up the internal card reader before installing Windows. Windows, because it hates me, assigned drive letter C to the Compact Flash drive. This is obviously not good, and has caused minor problems over the past year. Nothing major enough, though, to motivate me to fix it.

So I got to thinking. I would bet money that my printer, when turned on, first looks for a C drive, and if it doesn’t find one, then it looks further until it finds my main drive (lettered I, which is kind of funny, dontcha think? My computer is no longer part of The Collective. Aieee!). Anyway, I had my camera out yesterday, and took a few photos. I forgot the card in the card reader, and so now I finally know what has been plaguing my printer.

I took the card out of the drive, rebooted, et voila, my printer is now visible.

Teh Enb.

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1. Which I still think it was doing, onna counta Windows could not see my scanner unless I turned it on before turning on my computer. If Windows was able to see the scanner before ZoneAlarm was up and running, then all was well. Otherwise, any new traffic through my USB ports was blocked. I did some searching on ZA’s boards, and others with HP scanners had the same problem.

Photography

Spring Morning After the Storm

Shelly

IMG_0777

It’s just gorgeous outside this morning–blue sky with that clean air that only comes after a night of storms. There is a whole herd of bunnies out there, grazing, the birds are deafening, and Mr. Chipmunk and Mr. Groundhog ought to be up and about soon.

Speaking of Mr. Groundhog! I was watching him a few days ago while he was grazing at the edge of my patio. He sat up on his haunches, with a loooong blade of grass between his lips, and proceeded go gobble it up like a strand of spaghetti. Very cute.

Crankypantsing

Big Brother Rant

Shelly

Please to avert your eyes, if you don’t watch the show.

Anyway! I recorded Tuesday’s show and watched it right before last night’s show. I have a few observations.

1. Joshuah is a giant asshole. From telling Amanda that she ought to commit suicide to threatening Allison (she got a restraining order against him) to calling just about every woman in the house a skank or whore at some point, the guy is just plain foul. That sort of crap is inexcusable. And the juxtaposition of him calling Natalie a whore, then wanting to hear his supposedly uplifting eviction speech was priceless.

I want to tell you all one thing. If you can learn anything from me, it’s be true to yourself. I’m proud being Joshuah Michael Welch. I’m proud of who I’ve become and I stand for what I believe in. If all of you stand-up for what you believe in, you’ll go way far in this game and in life. That’s all I can ask is just be true to yourself.

He has an awful lot to be proud of answer for.

Oh, and am I the only one who thinks his petulant smirkings are reminiscent of a certain Chimperator?

2. Natalie has issues. This will not be news to anyone who has watched any of this season’s episodes. The dirty dealings are par for the course, so I have no complaints about how she’s trying to manipulate everyone else. I do, however, have a big problem with her invoking God. According to her, the big guy has been sharing insider info with her. She’s also made comments about how Team Christ (I am not making this up!) will win because they are righteous and on the side of God, and how the folks who aren’t in the Jesus club are all evil doers. WTF?!

I’m grossed out by the fact that she uses religion in that way.

She is also a hypocrite. On the one hand, it was okay for St. Matty to lie to James, but on the other, it was not okay for James to go back on his word not to put Matt up for eviction.

Oh, and her demanding that no one laugh at James making fun of her? Yes, he was being mean (the comments about her weight were inexcusable), but at the same time, telling your competitors that you will go after them if they don’t follow your orders is kind of ridiculous.

So is thinking she can win against anyone else in the house.

3. Ryan’s comment that Adam nominating Sheila and Sharon was cowardly and spineless. I thought it was an excellent move on Adam’s part, only he didn’t take it far enough. First, as Adam said, it forced folks to actually work for a change. Second, if Adam had followed through and teamed up with James, Sharon, and Sheila, he could have yanked the rug out from under Ryan and Natalie. Because as it stands now, Adam is in serious danger of getting targeted by Natalie.

Uncategorized

Spring

Shelly

I made a big pot of vegetable soup last night, along with a loaf of whole wheat bread. When I got up and went out to the living room this morning, it still smelled wonderful. Mmmm. And it’s supposed to storm this afternoon and again tonight, which I’m almost half-way looking forward to. It’s Friday for me, and I could use an evening with homemade bread and vegetable soup and a good book and the knowledge that I don’t have to get up in the morning[1].

Also, the forsythia and redbuds are blooming, as well as daffodils, and the grounds folks have planted pansies everywhere. I also saw tons of little violets out in the back field, while Harriet and I were tracking bunnies. Well, Harriet was tracking; I was just along for the ride.

The best part, though? I haven’t had to turn on the heat in several days. It’s supposed to cool off again this weekend, but I think it’s safe to assume that winter is well and truly over. It’ll be nice to have a month or so where I don’t have to use heat or AC.

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1. I think Mr. Upstairs must be out of town, because I haven’t heard a peep from him in a couple of days. There was a fury of cleaning activity on, I think, Monday, then the next day, silence. I haven’t even heard water running. Hopefully, this means I’ll be able to get caught up on sleep this weekend!

Photography

Black Smoke

Shelly

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I glanced out the window yesterday and saw a plume of black smoke coming out of the smokestack across the street. One of my coworkers said that they must be flue sanding. According to her, they periodically toss sand into the working smokestack to clean the built-up crud off the insides. I guess the heat from the fire makes the sand rise, but before it melts, it tumbles against the sides, sanding off the creosote and whatnot. I’d never heard of flue sanding, and a quick Google wasn’t very helpful. However, my coworker said that the smoke would only be black for a few moments, and she was right. I snapped three pictures, and by the third one, the black smoke was entirely gone.

ETA: YouTube to the rescue! This is about trains, but the concept is basically the same.