A while ago, my Mom told me about a trend she (or maybe Gramma R.) had noticed when researching our family tree ( Read more... )

Does anyone know if it's possible to pull some data out of a family tree?

I'm especially interested in a way to automatically count what first names have been used most often, and in tracking lifespans and how they change over time. At the moment I'm keeping track manually in a Google spreadsheet, but that's kind of cumbersome.

This was a very full, very long weekend.

We spent all of Friday driving and just collapsed in our hotel when we got to East Lansing.

Saturday we slept late, then went out to lunch at El Azteco, my favorite mexican restaurant. After that we wandered around downtown for a couple of hours and bought some odds'n'ends at Flat, Black and Circular, ( Read more... )

Some cosmological theories state that every time an event could have happened in multiple different ways, it does. That is, that new universes are splitting off constantly ( Read more... )

Body: I'm doing OK. My left knee is a little twinge-y, but other than that I'm fine.

Reading: Still reading Anathem. I might manage to finish it this weekend, or I might not.

Hearing: The Memory Palace, also Mountain Stage. You need to listen to Vagabond Opera. Their set on Mountain Stage was amazing, one of the best I've heard recently. ( Read more... )

This Day in History 1889: The Oklahoma land rush begins

My family has a personal connection to this historical event:
At 11:50 a.m., soldiers called for everyone to form a line. When the hands of the clock reached noon, the cannon of the fort boomed, and the soldiers signaled the settlers to start.The soldier who fired the "starting gun" for the ( Read more... )

I've been meaning to post about this for a while:

Tom's server is dead, so his blog and the private family blog are both down for the foreseeable future.

I'll let folks know when he has a replacement up and running.

Tom's & my delayed wedding party was today, and in spite of the weather it went really well. The pavilion was big enough that no one felt trapped or overcrowded (as far as I know ( Read more... )

I reviewed the book in this post.

As promised, here are some of the highlights of the theory and how they seem to apply to me:

• Firstborns identify with parents and authority.  As a child I definitely identified with both of my parents, and as a teen and adult I was(am) treated as a peer by both parents, especially my father.


• Relative to ( Read more... )