December 2015 – Page 3 – red paper boat

And the reason I was at home playing amateur genealogist, instead of at work where I belonged? Last night the lower section of Franny’s incision started to get a little oozy. I was afraid it had gotten infected or that she was having a reaction to the stitches, so I stayed home today so I could take her to the vet to get checked out. Verdict: seroma. Not an infection, and not a problem with the stitches, so we’re still on track to have everything removed on Thursday morning.

While we were at the vet, Piglet decided to get on my laptop (um, literally) and do a little genealogical research of his own. I came home to find he’d been familiarizing himself with Legacy Family Tree.

Crankypantsing, Genealogy

Unpossible Things

December 13, 2015December 14, 2015 Shelly

One of the many areas where Family Tree Maker is a big, fat slacker is error reports. I ran an error report in Legacy Family Tree, and it was 40+ pages long, with about 10 errors per page.

After working for 8 hours, I had 5 errors resolved. At this rate, data clean-up is going to take me the rest of my life.

One of the errors is something I should have caught as I was entering the information. A child (Thomas) was allegedly born several years after the father’s death. Either the father’s death date is wrong, or the son’s birth date is wrong, or both. Or the father is not actually the father. Possible, but there is no reason to suspect that’s the explanation. Much more likely that the dates are incorrect.

In trying to clean up the problem, I came across hundreds of family trees at Ancestry and Rootsweb containing the impossible dates. Do people not logic-check their work?

Turns out, it looks like the father probably died in 1645, making Thomas’ 1644 birth date reasonable. There are other problems with the screenshot, though. Additional children (Edward and George? I have no idea if they are legit. Likely not.) and several duplicates. Additionally, I think Sarah and Phebe may be the same person.

Pets, Photography

I Requested a See-through Cat

December 12, 2015 Shelly

Piglet stole my seat, and then when I moved him, he parked himself in front of the TV. Jerk.

In other news, Frances is counting the hours until Thursday morning. Suture removal cannot come quickly enough. She’s sick and tired of the cone and of not being allowed on the furniture.

Uncategorized

Mid-December

December 12, 2015January 8, 2016 Shelly

This is ridiculous. The low heating bill will be nice, though.

Genealogy, Photography

O frabjous day!

December 11, 2015 Shelly

I did a little more digging around and figured out how to get individual ID numbers to display on the “Individual’s Information” screen, in Legacy Family Tree. That was bugging the crap out of me. And, in doing so, I also made it turn on the ID numbers that had been assigned by Family Tree Maker. This is HUGE.

When I migrated from Cumberland Family Tree, years ago, Family Tree Maker assigned its own ID numbers. It was a total pain in the ass to have everyone renumbered, because I rely on those numbers for searching and note-taking. When you have 10 people with the same name, living in the same place, who are close to the same age, having easy to track unique identifiers is important! At that point in time, I had only about 1/4 the paper files I do now, and even then it was an overwhelming task to change the ID numbers on each and every piece of paper.

I was afraid I’d have to go through that again, but I won’t. It’s like every damn holiday rolled up into one, yo!

There are still some things that didn’t transfer properly. I lost events and most of the media files are gone. That’s annoying, but I can deal with fixing those problems. Renumbering every freaking piece of paper? NOPE.

This: