Adventures in FamilySearch Indexing - Week 61

Hopefully I can get through my indexing today without my computer freezing up on me. Do you remember a few weeks ago my son was hogging my computer and it was giving me fits? Well it happened again and this time my son really messed up my computer with installing video programs off the internet to work on movies he was creating. The big problem is my computer resources don't match what was needed to run the programs. Major difficulties here Will Robinson. Did I ever tell you I don't share well with my computer. Can you blame me here!

I think I finally got it through my non-techie son's head that what he was doing was causing the problem with the computer freezing up. I think I have him understanding not to download spyware, sorry freeware, onto my computer. That he can't load anything from now on onto my computer and if he does I am selling him to the lowest bidder, plus changing the computer password so he can never access it again if he ever makes it back home. Sorry just have to rant. I really don't share my computer well with others, especially when they do things to mess it up. So far today I have not experienced it freezing up on me. Hopefully it will continue working great for me or I'm going to have to nuke the hard drive. Don't you just love computers some time.

I received a comment from a reader on my blog article last week. I mentioned that I needed to index 100 names each week to qualify to see some of the images hosted on other sites.

Notice that all LDS Members will have free access to all images available threw these agreements. This will likely be verified with the new LDS Accounts feature that is being developed. When fully developed this will allow one Login and password for all LDS sites for Church members.

Yes, I forgot about the part that since I am LDS I do get a little benefit because my tithes and offering money is helping to pay for my access through these arrangements with third parties. Just this past week I received the address to sign up for your LDSAccount which will be the main sign-on account for many online LDS Church resources. You go to http://ldsaccount.lds.org/ to sign up. It will be great to have only one login to remember. Right now the site is in beta and you can only access www.beta.lds.org, www.ldsces.org and LDS Art Competition through the login.

To begin indexing I started my regular pattern to see if there are any announcements for us and I wasn't disappointed. This one is from the FamilySearchIndexing website.

October 9, 2008: Mac Users and Java - Resolved

A fix has been created for Mac users who have not been able to start the indexing application for the past week (see announcement below on Sept 29th). For the fix to apply to your computer (if you are one of these Mac users), click the Start Indexing button in the bottom right corner of this home page.

If you experience an issue, such as a certificate mismatch error, please click here to run a file that will remove old JAR resources from your computer. Then click the Start Indexing button again, if needed.

There were no new messages from Headquarters on the My Messages portion of the program. There are a copy of posts I had this week on my blog about Indexing this week.

• FamilySearch Indexing Update: 2 New 1870 U.S. States Added; Cheshire Project Nears Completion. (13 Oct 2008)

• FamilySearch Indexing: Anyone can help with Family History, Anytime, Anywhere (10 Oct 2008)

I couldn't believe it when I started to index this evening. My New York Census is gone! What are I going to work on now? I was on such a roll with the 1870 U.S. Federal Censuses so I decided to work on batches in Missouri.

I did three batches so that made 120 names indexed tonight. My grand total to date is 9,217. I wonder if I will be able to reach 10,000 names indexed by the end of the year? Wouldn't that be so cool? I think I will make that my goal.

One batch that I worked on the census taker abbreviated everything he possibly could. He had really nice handwriting but I think he couldn't spell. Just a gut feeling here. It made me realize that when I have names I can't find in the index to make sure I check possible abbreviations for the name or initials for the person too. Sure glad he didn't index one of my families. Well that ends my adventure in indexing for the week.

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