[AT] Backing up tractor pictures and degenerating into a ramble.

[robinson at svs.net]

	Actually I don't bother backing up tractor pictures or even take many any 
more. I have a lot of good pictures in my head. Funny, as I typed that I had an 
image flash through my head of John Girrard's little home made tractor that 
looks like it was built with a cutting torch and an arc welder...   :-)
	My big back up item is my genealogy work. The Legacy Family Tree software 
creates its b/u in a zip file and it takes very little room. It will even fit 
on a 1.4 floppy. I am very careful about that file. Once about a year ago a 
computer glitch cost me a months work. Now in addition to my normal b/u stuff I 
keep two floppies, a CD, b/u files on three desktops, a zip drive and my laptop 
and at two locations on the web...   :-)   I am also going to send it as an 
attachment to several other family members. I don't want to lose that baby...
	All of my family tree working notes I keep on other hard drives and password 
protected. I also have a lot of "files and piles" of paper notes.
	Much of my stuff is older equipment but I like to putter so I have two desk 
sitting side by side that look a little like the Titan mission control. I have 
4 desktop PCs and my laptop all networked together and 5 monitors. I barely 
have room to write out a postcard...   ;-)
	I still putter along with the family tree stuff and do a tiny bit most days 
but I have given the all out effort a bit of a rest for the last 6 months to 
avoid going completely mad. Too much else going on. I started with little more 
than nothing beyond my great grand parents a few years ago (less on Diana's 
family) and it is now up above 1,700 names, most with places, dates, marriages 
etc. Some of these folks can really hide... It will never be done, they can't 
be. I am reaching the point where I will soon publish what I have for the 
benefit of family and let someone else hopefully pick up the work later and go 
on. Over the last several years I have spent more time in cemeteries than some 
of the dead folks.   :-)

	BTW, does anybody here live close to Warsaw (Duplin County) NC ?...   :-)

	I have long enjoyed Mike Sloans ads from the Lancaster Farming paper for two 
reasons. One is simply that they are interesting. The other is that both Diana 
and I (especially Diana) have roots in that area. 95% or more of her family 
tree is German/Swiss Penn dutch and almost all in Lancaster County. Part of my 
maternal line is from northern MD and York County (next to Lancaster) PN. As I 
read the ads I often wonder if some of the folks running the ads are distant 
relatives or if some of the antiques they sell were ever used by our families 
ancestors there. If only those things could talk. Maybe it is just as well that 
they can't...   ;-)
	At least tractors mostly have serial numbers. Genealogy can have a lot of 
problems that are about the equivalent of someone switching serial number 
plates between tractors. You can spend years tracking a line then modern DNA 
testing can prove that one horny milkman 100 years ago threw the whole thing 
out the window...   ;-)
	Just a couple of weeks ago a fellow about my age on one of my surname list 
found after tracing what he thought was his line for many many years that he 
was adopted and never told about it... Talk about devastated. The last he 
posted he had gathered himself and was going to push on anyway... He has no 
clue about his birth parents.
	BTW, I suspect that either Diana or I are related to more than one member of 
this list. It is funny how last names keep popping up... 



-- 
farmer, Esq.
      Wealth beyond belief, just no money...


Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson at svs.net