Adventures in FamilySearch Indexing - Week 59

My son that is on a service mission for the Church at the LDS Motion Picture Studio has been hogging my computer for a couple of days now. Have I ever told you that I don't share well? Well I don't. I know my computer is better than his laptop, for some work he needs to do, but come on, I need my time on the computer too!

I like my computer room to think and ponder on things. I really feel the loss of it when it's not available to me. You know in fact I'm lucky I still even have a computer room. Friday I was in there and my old surge protector that sat under my computer monitor decided to give up the ghost and go up in smoke. I was lucky to be sitting there when it happened.

The master switch had been making sizzling noises whenever I used it. It was a short quick sound and not bothersome to me. I figured yeah need to get a new one and that was about it. Then I threw the switch Friday and all heck broke out. Zip, zap, crack, pop and smoke I was lucky I could pull the plug before any serious damage was done. I thought at the time, "Gosh, Renee, that was stupid you were even using it in the first place." I guess that's the problem when you have a frugal mentally and figure it's best to "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without". I can tell you now it's not good to "use" up bad electrical items.

You want to know how frugal our family is? Saturday morning I bought a new surge protector and removed the old surge protector to the trash. As I was throwing it out my husband asked me what I was doing? I replied "Throwing out the old surge protector. That's why I bought a new one." He says "Don't throw it out let me look at it first." I said "Are you kidding? Do you think after it smoked I'd ever use it again even if you think you can fixed it." He was quiet. He also fished the old surge protector out of the garage can without me knowing. Later on he tells me, "Yeah that surge protector was toast. It's all burned up inside and I can't fix it, it's a good thing you got a new one." I just had to shake my head. Yeah, that's called frugal to the point of being called stupid.

Well, at least I am here still, the room and the house are still here too. I just have a son not budging from my computer right. Thank goodness I have a laptop and it doesn't take a lot of quiet time to do FamilySearch Indexing.

There are two messages from Headquarters this week.

From: Headquarters
Subject: Semimonthly Message
Date: 16 Sep 2008

Reminders on indexing census records

On some projects the place of birth information is split into two fields:
State/Territory and Country. If a state is listed as the place of birth do not put a country in the Country field unless it is actually written on the record.

• For example, on the 1870 Census, if New York was the only information written in the Place of Birth column, index that in the State or Territory field and do not put United States in the Country field. Simply press Tab to leave the Country field blank.
  

The line number is located in the margin on either side of the line. Do not add a 0 before the line number.

Tools available for making an image easier to read

Sharpen: This might help to read text that appears out of focus. On the menu bar, click View, and click Sharpen to change the contrast of the edges of text.

Brightness/Contrast: Brightness increases or decreases the brightness of an image. Contrast makes the light colors lighter and the dark colors darker on the image. On the menu bar, click View, and click Brightness/Contrast to change the luminosity of the image.

Invert: Sometimes when a document is hard to read, inverting the image may help make reading it easier. To view a negative appearing image (white writing on black background), on the menu bar, click View, and click Invert.

The next message is:

From: Headquarters
Subject: Marking Other Types of Documents
Date: 22 Sep 2008

Some batches may contain document images that are completely unreadable, contain non-extractable information, or are an exact duplicate of another image in the batch. Whenever the batch that you have downloaded contains a non-extractable image of any kind, you need to identify it and submit the batch.

To do so:

1. On the toolbar in the center of the indexing screen, click on the down arrow in the box labeled Document Type.
2. Click on the appropriate image identification.
3. Click Yes on the warning message.
4. On the menu bar, click File.
5. Click Submit.
   

Note: Occasionally, the project instructions will request that you mark certain document types (such as Agricultural Schedules in the 1870 US Census) as No Extractable Data images. Please remember to mark these batches accordingly and submit them; do not return them.

Pretty basic information that all of us can understand.

I was happy to see that my New York 1870 US Federal Census was still available for me to index tonight. I worked on two batches totaling 80 records. My grand total of records indexed to-date is 8617. I had a lot of immigrants on these two batches. It did say New York City so that isn't to surprising. The nice thing on this census was it told in some cases where in a foreign country they were from. That is helpful for someone trying to jump the pond. I wonder who is indexing my upstate New York records? Wouldn't it be cool if I could actually index my own ancestors. Maybe someday.

See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!