Online backup Update

I signed up for Mozy backup in February. It is now two months later and I have not had even ONE successful backup. I am just done with it. I am not even sure if I have successfully canceled my account since their online information doesn't even matchup with their own documentation. Despite my frustration, I will try to explain the main issue: My backup would stop without any error message. The best I could get from the support staff is that there is a connection issue. For awhile, it was their issue but even after it was fixed, it still happened. So I spent a lot of time sending emails back and forth and almost any directions given by support didn't match up with what I was able to access using their downloaded software. My suspicion is that support was using a PC while I have a Mac BUT if you offer the service for both, than provide proper support for both.

Since I still think doing an online backup is just a really smart idea, I am going to try a different service, Backblaze, which was mentioned by Eastman's genealogy blog. Right off there is one big difference. You receive a 15 day free trial, unlimited backup. So I am currently doing a backup to test out the backup process. Another plus about Backblaze is that some of their team members are former Apple employees. This gives me hope since I believe that once an Apple user, always an Apple user!

Who do you think you are?

I LOVE this show: Who do you think you are?! Now I cannot actually watch it when it is on TV since that particular channel (8) is not coming in with my little converter box. But every weekend I can watch the show on-line using Hulu.com. Yes there are commercials but it isn't to bad. I usually let the video load for a bit (by pausing) and then watch it until it hits another slow spot and pause again.

Every episode so far has been very interesting. I love the mix of history and how it wraps around the ancestors being discovered. I love the reactions of the celebrities when they discover something amazing. I love visiting the different libraries and archives, although this part is pretty small. I would like to see more of the background discovery process but they only have 40ish minutes and it has to appeal to non-genealogy people as well.

I hope that we will be able to watch the British version of this show at some point!

Online Backups

I have a lot of information and pictures stored on my laptop computer. I would be lost and devastated if I lost everything on my hard drive. More so now than ever before since I don't even have prints of the last few years of my pictures, just files on my computer. So I have a MacBook which does backups all the time. This is great! If something happened to my hard drive, all would not be lost and I could restore from my backup. But what if something happened to my house and I lost my computer and my backup? This is what has been bugging me for a while.

I listen to the Genealogy Guys podcast and they have mentioned several time that they do online backups with Mozy. So I decided I would give this service a try and signed up for a two year time frame. Mozy would backup my computer when I scheduled it and all would be good. I knew it wouldn't be a fast upload, I do have a lot of information, but I believed it would be a good backup.

But I have been having problems with the backup process. It actually takes DAYS and DAYS for a backup. The first time I ended up stopping the backup because I thought it was stuck. I started it again a few days later and it just kept on going and going. This time I was patient and waited it out, checking periodically on the status. Finally it reached 100% and I thought, "Oh Good! It's almost done!" But no, it kept right on going. It was almost up to 120% when I finally stopped it because I totally do not understand why that happened!

So I ask myself, what can I do to speed up the process? Well, the "easy" answer is to clean up my hard drive. I am not always smart about what file type I saved. I do have a lot of .tiff items. So I have been working on changing those over to .jpg which takes up less space. At least, I have been doing this for everything but my pictures. I still really want those at .tiff but maybe I need to store those on a separate hard drive and just have jpg copies on my computer. Ultimately, this is what I want to do but what a huge project!!!

Reading related to Genealogy

Sometimes I come across (or hear about) a book that relates to genealogy. The book I am reading right now qualifies. I want the author, Ingrid Hill, to write stories about my ancestors and I don't care if it is all fiction! The book is Ursula, Under. The reason I am reading this book is because the main piece of the story is set in Michigan, where I live. My library, KDL, does a winter reading program for adults and this is the last book I needed to read to complete the entire bingo page. So I really didn't know a lot about this book before I picked it up. It is actually kind of hard for me to describe but I will try.

The story centers around a little girl named Ursula who falls down a mine shaft. The story then goes back and forward through time exploring this girls ancestry. These stories are so vivid that I felt that I could go to the location described in the book and actually find the grave (or skull) of the person who has since passed from history. I haven't finished the book yet (I'm about 2/3 of the way through) and there is very little information about Ursula's current condition. But I am really enjoying the book! Read it! :)

Organization Update

So I have been working hard(ish) on my files! I have one drawer emptied out, not the smallish drawers either, a very long filing cabinet. What I ended up doing was scanning the obituaries and miscellaneous stuff and filing them by family group.

But I put the internet stuff into folders by site. I already did the Holland Sentinel archives lookups and now I am starting on the GenLias. I have a LOT of dutch ancestors (and their families) so this file is kind of full. (The largest file is actually from a site called Digital Resources of the Netherlands but now I am wondering if I can just use GenLias instead.) Right now I am questioning the dates that are listed since they are labeled Registered. I wonder if the date is actually the event date or the day the event was recorded. Since I haven't been able to find the answer, I am plowing forward with inputting this information into my Bento file and linking to each person.

I do consider the information a primary source since it was recorded at the time of the event. Although I am bothered that the information I am looking at isn't a scanned image but transcribed which does leave room for error. Since I will probably never be able to actually see the documents, I will just have to work with what I have available!

Update

So I was listening to the Genealogy Guys and George mentioned that his New Years resolution was to organize his paper files. Which he did. Now I have been working on organizing computer stuff into Bento but my paper files are so not well organized. Or I should say, they are in folders but I really do not have any idea what I have. So I not only need to reorganize the papers so that I know what I have, I also need to scan and update my Bento file so that they are linked to each person. So I decide to start redoing my files. I have been pulling all the files apart and adding to Bento. I did find I have a lot of stuff I printed off the internet so that means I need to go back and digitally link to my computer rather than all the paper. Serious amount of work.

But I did add some obituaries to my files and this is one of the ones I found. This is the woman in the picture from the last posting I did!

Willemke Meulenbelt Brand 1863-1947

Willemke Meulenbelt was born February 2, 1863 in Aduard, Groningen, Netherlands. She married Otto Brand Dec 31, 1890. They had two children, Gijsberdina & Jan, before they immigrated to America aboard the Dubbeldam, April 19, 1894. They had two additional kids, Otto & Catherine after arriving in Michigan.

The story I heard from my mother about Willemke is that she pressured her husband into coming to America. Her family had already come across and she really wanted to go also. Otto never really adjusted to life here and didn't even learn English. Interesting, they died 11 days apart. They are both buried in the Pilgrim Home Cemetery in Holland Michigan.