We Look Like Who?

Randy of GeneaMusings posteed yet another activity for his fellow geneabloggers to do. He asked participants to head over to MyHeritage.com and click on the "Celebrities and Fun" tab. There visitors can upload a photograph and it will tell them which celebrities they most resemble. Here are the results for my entries:

I had entered three different photos, and Anjelica Huston was on each result, though this is the only one on which she didn't appear as the highest match. Others that resulted from the other two pictures (all three taken within the past year) were Victoria Principle and Thiessen (I can't remember her first name).

Wondering how others in my family would turn out, I put in a picture of my mother and father. Dad's first:

Then Mom.

Since I'd always been told I look like mom, I expected some of our celebity-look-alikes to match, but they didn't. She would be THRILLED to see Jackie O on her match list!

Perhaps Grandma (HODICK) McHugh will share some of my matches:

Nope. Grandpa McHugh?

Nope again. How about Grandma or Grandpa ORourke?

(Check out Cary Grant under my grandpa! COOL!).

Since none of us share a single celebrity look-alike, I am left with no choice but to conclude that we were all adopted!

I tried to see who Izzie looked like, but alas, the face recognition tool couldn't find his face!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I can't remember a year when we didn't decorate for Christmas. Growing up in western NY state, where White Christmases were the norm, it was easy to get into the spirit. Dad would decorate the outside of the house with big, bulb lights and a homemade gigantic star that was placed in the middle of the porch railing. Mom would take care of the inside, for the most part. She did have some help with the tree and the platform underneath:

Most of the houses and trees, and the brick paper and the mountain paper in the background belonged to my paternal grandmother, Mary HODICK when she was growing up, so the set was spectacular. I'm not sure, though, whatever happened to the set once us kids all grew up.

As an adult, I carry on the tradition of decorating for the holidays. I don't have any family heirlooms, and the oldest thing I have is ... well, probably a nutcracker of some sort (I have 37). Tonight I finished my annual tradition of decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving. It sure looks a lot different from my childhood home in NY, and certainly has progressed from Grandma McHugh's aluminum tree and color wheel!

Shoo-be-doo-be-doo ... be-doo

Some people strive to be singers and start out as Backup Singers. Genealogists strive to have backed-up data (soured and cited) and know the first step is to have Backup Data.

Today is Data Back Up Day. It is one thing to have a wealth of data of any type; it is quite another to lose all that data because of a system failure, natural disaster, or other catastrophic event affecting your computer. Potential loss of data can be avoided simply by having a back-up of your computer. It isn't enough, either, to back up your computer once and forget about it. Any new data introduced since the backup would still be lost. Now I don't know about you, but if I lost the new data I have on my computer since January 1, 2009 I would be lost. I might even be discouraged enough to just give up. So backups should be done often. My workplace backs up daily. I would be well-behooved to do so monthly. Geneabloggers is the guru of such knowledge, and he says to do so monthly and reminds us Geneabloggers to do so on the first of every month. So it's high time I listen to the almighty techno-guru!

The last back up I have is on a thumb drive. I don't even quite know where the drive is right now. So what good does it do?

So I am considering my options. I could back up using my CD/DVD drives. But that would be rather burdensome, and CD and DVD discs don't last forever, and they would add to my clutter.

I'm considering online storage sites, but have two problems: I don't know any reliable ones that are either free or cheap. I'd hate to spend money on "renting" storage space. Ultimately, my goal is to get an external hard drive. But, even though they are more affordable, I don't have extra money to spare at the moment, and I don't have the patience to learn how to use one. Maybe Santa will be good to me!

While I'm waiting for the external hard drive, which option should I choose? Any suggestions for trustworthy, reliable online storage sites? What concerns/precautions do I need to implement to protect sensitive data? Should I back up sensitive data on CD's/DVD's and only put less sensitive data on an online site? Input, please!

Save the Date

January 22-23, 2010 at the Mesa Convention Center. This is the date of the 2nd Annual Mesa Arizona Family History Expo. I attended last year's Expo and had a fabulous time! I will definitely be there for this next one, too.

This year I will have the honor of being a presenter for this Expo! My topic is "When the Past Meets the Present to Change the Future: Using Geneograms in Genealogical Research". It will be held on Saturday, 23 Jan 2010 at 1:00 p.m. in the room Palo Verde II. The presentation will be part lecture, part hands-on activity so attendees can learn by doing! I hope to see you there!

Congratulations Marianne

The time has finally arrived. The post that brought Marianne McHugh to the attention of the publishers and writers of "Encyclopedia of American Disability History" has come full circle.

This volume is now available at Amazon.com, and in this volume you will find an article on "Daily Life" of people with disabilities. In this article you will find my father's oldest surviving sibling, Marianne McHugh:

Thanks aplenty go out to Penny L. Richards, who "found" Marianne on the March 9, 2008 edition of the Carnival of Genealogy and passed my article on. Thanks also to Susan Burch, the editor of this encyclopedia for her enthusiasm for the project and for using Marianne's photograph.

Ancestral Roulette

Randy Seaver has done it again. He's created another Saturday Night Fun activity to spur us on in our research. The instructions are:

1) How old is your father now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ahnentafel. Who is that person?

3) Tell us three facts about that person with the "roulette number."

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.

5) If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then spin the wheel again - pick your mother, or yourself, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!

Well, I started with my father, who is 72, making my roulette # 18 which is empty. My mother, if alive, would be 71 which also made my roulette # 18. So I chose my aunt, Marianne McHugh, instead, since she has probably had the most influence on my professional life. Marianne, as you will recall, was my father's oldest surviving sister/sibling and she was born with Down Syndrome in 1930. If Marianne was alive today, she'd by 79 years old. Using the calculation described above, this gives me the roulette number of 20. The person with that number on my ahnentafel is John Kearns.

John Kearns was my second great-grandfather on my mother's paternal line. Three known or speculated facts about John Kearns:

1. He was born about 1855 (1880 Census).

2. He married Mary Donahue.

3. He was a coal miner residing in Pittston, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

(photo courtesy of Pat Sharpe Dunn)

John and Bridget's daughter, Mary, married my mother's grandfather, James O'Rourke (1876-1944).

You've Probably Seen this by Now

But THIS is the way to start a new branch!