One of my neighbors has let their dog dig in the back field. Some of the holes are easy to spot, but a lot of them are invisible even when the grass is cut short.
I tripped in one of these invisible holes a couple of months ago and totally wrecked both of my knees. I could barely walk for a few days, and they still hurt.
I’m sure the dog’s owner hasn’t given a second thought to how dangerous those holes are. There are five of them in just that one photo, by the way.
I had made an appointment for a flu shot for this morning at Target (pharmacies owned by CVS). I got there and this was on the pharmacy window.
I understand there is a serious shortage of pharmacists, and sudden closures can happen. I’m not taking issue with that. But surely CVS has a way to inform people with appointments made through their app that their appointment has been cancelled?
We are not amused.
I rescheduled at a different pharmacy (we have three CVSes within one block of each other). But the timing isn’t great. Appointments have filled up fast, and the soonest I could get was at 6am on Wednesday.
On my way to work. Someone just dumped a scooter in the middle of the sidewalk.
Walking in the stacks. Someone decided it was okay to just shove the books on the shelf any which way.
My upstairs neighbors. This gigantic TV has been sitting right outside my door since Memorial Day. It’s now on Facebook Marketplace for $40. Do they really think someone is going to pay them for that?
This is why I get crabby when people complain that adding an extra click to Ancestry tree hints is slowing them down, or that downloading record images takes too much time, or that searching for information on Ancestry (much less on another website or, heaven forfend, offline) is too much work, or that it’s unfair that they can’t just copy whole chunks of someone else’s tree.
Those dates in the top left corners of my family worksheets are start and end dates. Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward, and I finish working on a family in a week or two. But sometimes it’s not that easy. And it is never a matter of just hoovering up other people’s tree vomit.
But also? Those tree hints are based on the trees of people like me, who do the actual research. And then our punishment is to listen to others complain about hints, or complain about how the people doing actual research are somehow being selfish.
Evernote released another update that made it completely unseeable to me. Not even the web client worked. So I spent way too much time today trying to decide if a Zotero will do what I need.
I spent the rest of the day cleaning up some entries in the FamilySearch tree and adding my sources to them, then got on Facebook and saw yet another post in the Ancestry user group scolding people who don’t have public trees. Some people believe they are entitled to others’ research. If you don’t agree, you’re some kind of asshole and don’t belong on Ancestry.
Not gonna lie. While I do have a public tree, it there are no Ancestry documents linked to it. I uploaded a gedcom, so there are sources (including notes and transcripts), but no pretty pictures and no easy way to click and look at a document image. My tree also won’t generate tree hints. That’s a feature.
The information is there, and it’s well sourced, but I want no part of spoon feeding it to people who believe they’re entitled to it.
I got a whopping 3% cost of living raise, which is more than we got last year. I work for the state, so this is normal. Merit raises for support staff are not a thing. My rent and bills have increased, of course, as has health insurance. With a 3% raise I’m effectively making less this year than last year.
I don’t know how this new round of loan forgiveness will play out, obviously. I hate this rollercoaster. I know I’ve been looking at my budget and wondering what the hell I’m going to do when student loan payments restart next month. If this really happens it will be amazing, despite the fact that I live in one of those shithole states that decided to tax student loan forgiveness. Paying taxes on the forgiven portion will still be better than trying to figure out how to pay off a balance that is now more than twice the amount I originally borrowed.
I got these Findagrave edit suggestions today. The death location did need to be changed, so I approved it, but the other three? Why? Why would you remove a bio? Why would you make the birth location less specific? And the birth date is just plain wrong.
The information in the suggested edits came from the death certificate, which Shirley has helpfully added an image of to the Findagrave memorial. She has some salty words for people who don’t like that, in her Findagrave profile.
You can see the parents’ first names are not included, and the birth date is incorrect. The birth location is also not specific. Just Ireland.
Mary Agnes was the daughter of Patrick Basquil and Bridget Hynes (also spelled Hines and Hinds). She was born 20 Dec 1882 in Lackaun, a townland in Aughagower Civil Parish, County Mayo.
Findagrave does not play well with Irish place names, so the most specific you can get for this location is Aughagower, County Mayo, Ireland. That’s it. But I added the full birth location, the baptismal information, and the parents’ names in the bio. Which Shirley wanted me to remove.
The baptismal register image is dark and difficult to read, but it backs up the birth information. She was born in Lukane (or Likane? a variant spelling for Lackaun) and baptized 29 Dec 1882 in Aughagower Catholic Parish. The parents were listed as Patt Baskwell (or possibly Baskuell, which would be a new one for my collection) and Bridget Hynes. I’m pretty confident of my paper trail, and I’m pretty confident I have my facts straight and correct.
WHY? I really don’t understand. The edits she requested amount to vandalism, and they make absolutely no logical sense to me. I can understand using the information in the death certificate if you don’t have better, more reliable information available. That’s how it goes sometimes. But we have a very nice paper trail for Mary Agnes. We don’t need to rely on incomplete or incorrect information from a death record.
This is infuriating. When searching Ancestry for Indiana death certificates, exact does not mean exact. This doesn’t seem to be an issue with most other databases (though I’ve noticed it happening in Ancestry’s SSDI index, too). So it looks like you’ve gotten 31 hits for your search, only no, it’s really just 13. This isn’t a huge deal when you only get a short list of returns, but if you’re dealing with a common name, the list can be overwhelming. Even more so when you find the list is actually 2-3 times as long as it needs to be.
If I wanted the date to be a range, I’d have set it up that way in my search criteria.
I ordered groceries for pickup at Kroger today. Impossible burgers are now $17.49 for 6. That’s almost $3 each! I like them better than Beyond burgers, but not at that price.
As I was leaving after picking up my groceries, this happened.
Why are people? Why? Why would you leave your truck right in the middle of the road? With the door hanging open? When the guy returned, he looked annoyed that I was waiting behind him. I’m not sure what he expected me to do. There really wasn’t enough space for me to pass on either side.
So I didn’t get Impossible burgers, but I got these crackers. They are so freaking good. I often shop at Kroger instead of Aldi, just because I’m craving parmesan crackers.
red paper boat 