Note to self

Note to self: Don't look up a movie on Wikipedia until after you're done watching it. I'm watching Back to the Future II, and I missed something, so during a commercial break I looked it up. It's very difficult to stop where I'm done watching and not read ahead!  

Good thing for backups

Today I was working on synchronizing my tree on Ancestry to my tree in my genealogy program. It was going well, then I started to get errors. It told me to run the "check and repair" tool, and that kept hanging when it got to "checking for event problems." I forced it to quit, opened it again, then looked at the events. Almost all of my events were missing. The new imports I did yesterday were there, but not the rest.

Of course, I'm getting clever-er by the day and made a backup immediately before starting to import new gedcoms from the interweb. So now I'm importing the two gedcoms from yesterday into an empty database, merging and fixing them there, and then importing them into a COPY of the backup from yesterday. (I bet you would have thought I would import into my backup, that would defeat the purpose! Keeping a clean copy that works is very important!)

Working on husband's line

I've been trying to take advantage of the three free days of Ancestry.ca that I got a link about in one of my mailing lists. Unfortunately, I soon ran out of little threads of my Hispanic family that had come into the USA long enough to show up on publicly available records.

Ah well, I figured I'd take a look at my husband's line. I've done very little there, to be honest.

Well, of course it figures that there are two submitters on One World Tree who have at some point researched his family, neither of which provided an email address to contact them! Each of the two was a little different from the other, but I do believe that one used the other as a source. To make sure that I got it all, I had to import them both and merge them in my program. I still have some cleaning up to do, removing some double events that the filters may have missed for example. But at this point, it looks like I picked up a very good number of leads. (Not very well documented, unfortunately.)

From my husband as generation 1, I added:
(Generations 1-3 were not new.)
Generation 4 has 3 individuals. (37.50%)
Generation 5 has 2 individuals. (12.50%)
Generation 6 has 3 individuals. (9.38%)
Generation 7 has 1 individual. (1.56%)

And of course dozens of siblings and cousins all around.

Current statistics (again, this may go down a little bit with some cleanup work I'm going to do.):

Individuals
----------------------------
Number of individuals: 527
Males: 257
Females: 270
Individuals with incomplete names: 30
Individuals missing birth dates: 444
Disconnected individuals: 5

Family Information
----------------------------
Number of families: 212
Unique surnames: 129

Not bad for a free three-day pass! Thank you, Ancestry.ca!

I Puritani

My husband and I went to see the opera at the theatre last night. (They broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, but yesterday's presentation was pre-recorded from the live presentation some time last month.) We watched I Puritani, a Bellini opera about a star-crossed couple. The story was a tad predictable, but the performaces were excellent.

I personally would like to watch the rest of this series, even if that means going without my husband. =P

Homework!

I'm doing the rest of my homework now. I was first surprised at how much I was able to read comfortably. Once I started reading out loud, that is. Reading it silently was frustrating for some reason. My inner voice can't pronounce things as well, I guess! Secondly, I was shocked at how many words I could pronounce when I saw them but wouldn't have been able to spell yesterday. After I do my outline, I'll add my new words to my two lists and let you know how much I've added to my vocabulary!

You would think...

I've watched two documentaries about prison life recently (Salinas and San Quentin), and I can't help but think that there are a couple of simple solutions to most of the issues. At first, after watching the San Quentin one, I thought "wouldn't it be safer if everyone stayed in their cells except for activity time and didn't eat in a big, crowded, common cafeteria?" It was an observation based on just the simple logistics, avoid having a big concentration of inmates per guard in a place where you're giving them weapons (plastic though they may be, silverware can be dangerous) and giving them something to fight over (they said some fights are because people feel that they're getting less food than someone else). Then, after watching the Salinas one, it made me think "wouldn't it be safer if you did recreation time and meal time in shifts with the same race?" I'm all for racial equality on the outside, but it's pretty obvious that it's a major issue in the prison system. If you don't have warring factions in the yard at the same time, no one will get stabbed. Makes sense to me. Or I may just be crazy, who knows.

Grandpa's death certificate

Today (well, some time in the past few days) I got my grandfather's death certificate in the mail.

What I learned that I didn't have before:
Occupation, time at job, and employer (He was a "vulcanizer" in my dad's birth certificate and a "sheet metal worker" in his death certificate)
Address at time of death (I don't believe this residence is still connected to our family, the address doesn't look familiar)
Hospital at which he died (which is the same one where I was born)
Date of burial
Funeral home

What I need to work on:
Cause of death. It's handwritten in doctor writing. "upper gastrointestinal k...... d..to ..." then another two lines of additional things I can't read.

I'll scan it later and see if someone can help me decipher it. =)

Oh, by the way!

I know that I already posted a word to summarize the past week at school, but I just wanted to add to that the word hispanohablante. Apparently, that's what I am!

Spanish word of the day: diptongo

A diptongo is the combination of a strong vowel (a, e, o) with a weak vowel (i, u). The resulting combination is always monosyllabic, and the weak vowel is typically slurred together with the strong one. The exception to this is if there is an accent mark on the weak vowel- that strengthens it, causing it to be pronounced separataly and in a separate syllable.

I was planning to share all the stuff that I've learned in the hopes that typing up my hand-written notes would help me remember stuff better. Then I realized how much I've learned and how difficult it would be to type it all without the benefits of a Spanish spell check! (Flock's spell check has to be reset to Spanish with every word, and I'm not sure how to change the language on the LJ spell check.)

Instead, I shall summarize!

This week we learned basic word deconstruction, including diptongos, die'resis (two dots over a u, I never even knew that Spanish had those!), tildes (accent marks, thankfully all in the same direction, unlike French that does both ' and `), and how to split a word into syllables. I also learned that interrogative words always have accents. I wouldn't have caught on to that pattern for at least two semesters if not told by the professor!

I just finished my workbook homework but I haven't done my reading yet. I have to read a 4-page story and summarize it in Spanish, presumably correctly spelled!

During class I keep a column on the right hand side of the paper where I put new words. I also highlight vocabulary in a different color than other stuff in my textbooks so that I can pick it out later. I picked out the words from all the sources today, and wrote them into two separate lists (the ones I would have typed out if I had any idea how to type and spell check in Spanish): words I didn't know at all and words that I could have defined before I started this class but wouldn't have known how to spell.

In my new vocabulary list, I have 61 words! A lot of them were not used in context, though, they were in lists in the workbook and are totally unrelated to each other. I still need to learn them though, I'm going to look them up in the dictionary after finishing my homework but before class on Monday.

In my "really, that's how they spell it?" list, I have 35 words. It's true what they say, spelling in Spanish is normally pretty intuitive when you understand how things work and how each letter is pronounced. If there's a deviation from it, it's indicated with accents, so it's nearly gringo-proof. However, there is some confusion while you un-train yourself from English pronunciations. For example, hueso (pronounced whueso, roughly) sounds to me like it should be weso. Of course, with my limited Spanish, I've probably been mispronouncing it all these years because I'd never seen it written and people have never corrected me all these years because it's "not bad for a gringa." Other than my hue/we/whe example, there's also cu/qu, q/ch/k (archaeologist is spelled with a q in Spanish), z/s, s/c, j/h (that's a gringo confusion I think), ll/y...

So, yeah, apart from a lot of grammar concepts that I think I've got about 80% down, I have 96 words to learn! Good thing Charles is at SCALE this weekend so I can do more homework. (Wow, I don't think I've said something like that in... well, maybe ever! See what happens when you take classes that interest you on a personal level?) I haven't been as productive today and yesterday as I typically would have been, for various reasons. I'm glad my workbook homework is out of the way now. =)

Photo blogging: If Google ruled the world?

GoogleMaps.png
Originally uploaded by Sarolite.

As evidenced here, it occurs to me that if Google ruled the world (or if the world neglected to sanity check), we might not get to places in quite the same way as we did before.

DRM Goodness

I couldn't sleep so I've been reading some stuff online. In the same news story, I found both of these quotes:

"Currently, music purchased at Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, for example, is wrapped in Apple's proprietary version of Digital Rights Management technology known as "FairPlay" and can only be played on the company's iPod devices. Songs purchased from rival online stores that carry different DRM technology cannot be played on iPods."

and

"Earlier this week, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs called on record labels to abandon their requirement for online music to use DRM, which is designed to limit unauthorized copying. Jobs said such restrictions have done little to slow music piracy and eliminating them would open up the online music marketplace."

Am I the only one who sees a conflict between those two messages? I guess there's just not another option to placate record labels that doesn't lock iTunes users into iPods and visa versa, right? I mean, don't get me wrong, an anti-DRM message from Jobs is a good thing. I just wish that would carry into his company's practices.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070209/ap_en_mu/emi_unprotected_music

School observations

Community college is an excellent place to people watch. It's like high school, except a higher percentage of students have cars, the books are more expensive, and there's hardly any 10-foot high chain link keeping you in. Therefore you could even people watch without being a student!

Some of my observations this week:

• Similarly blocked class schedules means a constant and predictable ebb and flow of cars in the parking lots. Arrive 10 minutes before class, and you'll be parking on the other side of the school, no matter where your class is. If your class is on the north side of the campus, you'll be in the south parking lot. If your class is in the south side of campus, you'll be in the north parking lot. Do not attempt to spot swap with a student from the opposite side of campus, this will upset the delicate balance of the universe (or at least of the community college) and leave you both spot-less, but not in the clean way.
• No one wants to be at school half an hour early, except the people who park in the side of the school where your class is. The near parking lot will be full by the time you arrive even half an hour before classes start. The parking lot on the opposite side, however, will be empty.
• Emos run funny. This was observed at about 9:25am with a male emo running through the center square of the campus. This could be caused by their funny pants, or by the skateboards in their backpacks. If you are emo, you should plan to arrive in the near parking lot at least an hour before your class (or the far parking lot half an hour before) so that you don't have to run to your class.
  
• My Spanish professor uses a Mac laptop, and heavily recommends Firefox over Safari. When a file looked funny, she claimed that it was due to being in Safari and closed it to open Firefox and start the demonstration over again. Yay! (I'm not a Firefox user anymore, I use Flock, but I like Firefox too.)
  
• There will always be more left-handed desks than left-handed people, and thus right-handed people will have to sit at left-handed desks.
• You have to have a receipt showing that you've paid for your classes to buy a book. I personally think that's ridiculous, particularly for a store in the business of selling books. "How DARE you buy a book that looks interesting and learn stuff without being in a class???" So much for studying to quiz out of stuff. The only possible justification I can think of is to make sure that there are enough books for the enrolled students, but I somehow doubt that the non-enrolled purchasers outnumber the people who forgot their receipts in their backpacks (which are not allowed into the bookstore). The short answer to this: keep 5 more in stock than you think you need, that'll last you until the next edition comes out!

Next time I'll tell you what I've learned that's actually related to my class!

My Spanish class is 5 units, whereas a typical class is 3, so I decided to only take Spanish this time around. It'll ease me into the whole reading and homework routine, and I'm only one PE class short of having a "normal" unit load. I've actually learned quite a bit already, this will help me communicate with my family in Mexico, as well as help my genealogy research, reading documents and writing letters to request such documents. =)

Lizard Picture

HPIM1428.JPG
Originally uploaded by Sarolite.

I just wanted to share this because I found it cute.

On the bottom left, by the way, is the old house, which I put back in. They both fit.

To get this quality of picture, I had to put the camera inside the tank at the other end, do not attempt this shot through glass. =)

Getting off the juice

With a very prevalent family history of diabetes, I'm always very much aware that it's not un-likely for me to be diagnosed as diabetic at any time. When the doctor ran lab work last week, my blood sugar level was good. However, it was a 9:30am appointment and I can't eat until an hour after I take my medicine, so I was on an empty stomach when my blood was drawn. I figure it's good to keep an eye on my sugar intake even now, as I'm told that it can delay or reduce the onset of diabetes down the line.

Did you know that orange juice has 22 grams of sugar per 8oz serving? (Based on orange juice we'd normally get at the grocery store, a non-pulp calcium added Tropicana you can see here.) I'd imagine it's mostly natural sugar and not added sugar, but still not good! I picked up a half gallon of low-cal low-sugar (20 grams per serving) orange juice, without the calcium added, and it was edible.. umm.. drinkable? It wasn't great, however, and I decided that if I'm not getting the calcium out of it, it wasn't worthwhile. Especially since I've been so good about taking my vitamins and calcium lately.

So as my sister eloquently put it when I was on the phone with her today, I'm "getting off the juice."  I bought this today at Fry's:


(Click on picture takes you to Fry's product information page.)

This replaces my one-gallon capacity water cooler that I bought when I was living in a 10' x 20' studio apartment, also known as the birthday cake. It was too small, and getting louder, so loud that I couldn't stand to have it on all day long. I thought it best to upgrade, since the small one probably needed repair worth more than its value to run quietly again.

The new one has three temperatures of water, with separate on/off switches for hot and cold water. So if I don't plan to have it make soup/coffee for me, I can switch off the heated water and still have cold water.

I'd tell you how I like it, but it's in the back of the Explorer down in the basement still. I might get it today, it's actually about 2/3 the weight of the filled 5-gallon bottles that are also in the car. I have cleaning to do, though, which will hopefully also clear a good space for the water cooler. Where the little one is right now isn't a good spot for a bigger one.

But yes, we never have soda at the house, and now I don't plan to drink any orange juice at home. Go me!