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Midwest Computer Genealogy newsletter for
February 2002
Volume 9 Number 2
The Midwest Computer Genealogy group meets the 3rd Saturday of each
month in the Community room at Bannister Mall. The meetings
start at 9 AM. Enter the mall the south main mall entrance on
the east side of the building. The community room entrance is to
the left once inside the mall entrance doors.
Scheduled monthly MCG Programs are listed below:
February 16, 2002 Marilyn Finke will help us understand the use of the
1930 census, which due out in March 2002.
Reference & Preservation Staff
National Archives and Records Administration Central Plains
Region
2312 E. Bannister Road: Kansas City, MO 64131
(816) 823-5035 or Email address is marilyn.finke@nara.gov
Marilyn R. Finke is a member of the reference and archival
preservation staff at the National Archives and Records Administration
- Central Plains Region, Kansas City, MO. She is President
of Heart of America Genealogical Society and on the executive board of
both the American Family Records Association and the Johnson County,
KS, Genealogical Society. She is a member of numerous
genealogical, historical and archival societies and a well-known
regional speaker.
Synopsis of Presentation-- Here It Comes the 1930 Census
The 1930 census, which is scheduled for release for public research on
April 1, 2002, exactly 72 years after the census date, will present
challenging research because most states are not soundexed.
Since there is limited Soundex help, what should the genealogist do?
This program will focus primarily on preparations the researcher will
want to complete before using the new census and will provide tips for
successful census and location research.
March 16, 2002 Jack Revare will describe his experiences writing and
publishing a family history book.
April 20, 2002 Tom Leathers, publisher of the Squire will tell us
about having your genealogy book professionally published.
To volunteer or make suggestions for programs please contact Judy
Revare at Judy@revare.com or Jack Revare at Jack@revare.com. Judy is
the group program chairperson.
The Family Origin's March 2, 2002 meeting will be 9:00 AM to 11:00 Am
at the Blue Valley Library.
Please visit the following web site for more FOG information http://chezjacq.com/MCG.htm#FOG
or you can contact Rowena at snowtop@juno.com for more information.
Our President's Comments for the month.
I know that you all remember that Santa gave me a new desktop and
laptop computer for Christmas about two years ago and I really have
enjoyed them both more than you can imagine. Little by little I have
transferred all of my data from the old computer to the new one. My
new computers came with Windows 98 installed on them (my old one had
Windows 3.1). I have installed newer versions of Microsoft Office and
some other programs. I definitely had to install a newer version of
Quickens, because the version 4 that I was using did not know how to
handle the year 2000. Some of the other older programs, I just
re-installed on the new computer. All of my data from the old computer
I transferred to the new computer, mostly by using a Zip drive and
multiple Zip disks. I have finally taken enough data and programs off
of the old computer that it is down to bare bones. I left Microsoft
Office and a few other programs on it for the next owner to use. While
in the process of moving all of the data from the old computer
"file cabinet" to the new one, I got to look at some of my
old files. A person really should do that once in a while; it will let
you know really quickly that you need to clean house from time to
time. I noticed that I had saved all of the articles that I had
written for the MCG Newsletter --- better known as the
"Presidential Incoherent Ramblings". It came to my mind that
if I changed the dates a little and re-sent some of the old ones, I
would bet that no one would ever know the difference. I was about to
try it, but then, Catherine (my wife & better half) saved you. She
said all those nice people should not have to go through that torture
again. Now she speaks from experience, because I make her read each
one before I send it on to the (Task Master) Editor. I feel fairly
certain that he never reads them or he would never publish them. There
is, of coarse, always the possibility that the membership never read
these things anyway. Now, with that in mind, I will go ahead with what
I started to say about computers ---- my newest computer has a 400
megahertz Intel chip, 128 Megabytes of Ram, 8.4 Gigabyte Hard drive, a
CD-Rom, Floppy drive, a built in Zip drive, a serial port, a printer
port, and a USB port. It does every thing I want it to do faster than
I can put the data in to do it with, but (Sigh) there is this little
problem --- it is completely out of date, a "Model T", so to
speak. Even my wife, who hates computers and won't even touch one,
thinks I need to "upgrade" (I think she meant computers when
she told me that). The new ones today flaunt a Pentium IV chip with
2.2 Gigahertz of speed, Hard drives of 160 Gigabyte or more of
storage, over a Gigabyte of Ram, built in DVD CD Burners, Sound cards
and Video cards with more Megabytes of Ram each (64 or more) than you
used to get in Megabytes on a hard drive. Of course they still have
floppy drives, serial ports, printer ports and USB ports. Now
the USB ports are a newer version (USB 2) and it is 40 times faster
than the USB 1.1 port. Now you can even get a 19 inch flat LCD
Monitor. Now let me tell you the really good news you can get
this top of the line computer I have just described above for less
money than I paid for my first computer. The truth is that almost none
of us need that much computer and would never utilize even 25% of its
resources. There, now, I think I just talked myself out of that --- it
is exciting, isn't it?
What I really wanted to tell you is, that we need to decide this month
if we want to try to continue having our meetings at the "Bass
Pro Mall" er I mean the Bannister Mall or the other new name that
they are thinking of calling it.
See you Saturday February 16 2002. Wayne
Secretary's report for the January 2002 meeting.
Jim Stout's program was Publishing Your Family History. He described a
family history as a story complete with maps, genealogy, notes, etc.
Using a genealogy program does a good job of recording genealogy, but
not as good with family history. Jim suggested we start out with the
genealogy software and tell it to publish. The second time add the
extras to flesh out the story.
To preserve the completed story, use toner on acid free paper. The ink
used with the ink jet printer is water-soluble. If you use an ink jet
printer, take the story to Kinkos for laser copies.
Jim suggests a "user group" for learning how to use pictures
in what you are publishing. Your genealogy program is not geared to
use pictures with text.
If you are enlarging a picture, scan it at 600 d p i to get a good
enlargement. Start out with something simple, for example, a family
group sheet including notes and sources.
For correct page layout using double-sided sheets, think about the
left margin. The left on one page will be the right on the next page.
Set your computer to do this. Include all information: reports, lists
and descendent list. This can then be exported to Word to be indexed.
Expect to spend some time preparing the index.
Jim gave us a handout entitled "Concordance: A Tool for Indexing
Microsoft Word Documents" This will also work with Word Perfect.
He demonstrated the creation of the concordance and then created the
index.
Those who ignored the snow and came to the meeting were given a
special treat. The Melanders brought coffee, decaf and home made
cookies. Jack Revare brought back copies of Everton's Genealogical
Helper to share with us.
Submitted by Mary Robinson, Co-Secretary
URL sites for look-ups
Looking for Alberta, Canada for information this is suppose to work.
Put " Big Lakes GenWeb", into Google, and take your time to
amble along through all their information here. It gives you lots of
sites within to search, if you are looking to Alberta, Canada.
Download GEDCOM Viewer V1.02 from this web site: (Note I haven't try
it but did look at the page so if someone wants to do it and give us a
report please do for use in a future issue of the newsletter.
Editor's comments: Been fun getting this out this month with the
ice storm having the computer down from 11 PM January 30 to 1:45 PM on
February 6th and then the backlog of email to download plus the clean
up of things. Not much here but been helping an older friend get
his downed limbs and trees out to the curb for pickup hopefully.
Also have to get in the mood to do the work also. It is now Saturday
morning and trying to get this done and on the way. Hope I got
it all included and am making it short. Will try to finish out
page three.
My new computer came with Works on it and also Word 2000 SR-1 which I
am thinking is a crippled version of Word 2000 as it does not do some
things that the book say it should. One thing is it will not go
to a database list in Excel and print labels, it tells me it can't ID
the worksheet and there is only one. Also the book says that you
can put the cursor at any place on the page to start work well so far
it does not do that. I also use the format selection at in the
tool bar a lot to format type as I find that when you bring in things
from an email that it treats it as HTML format and some functions in
word only work for me if in the normal format layout. Lots of
fun. Think that I will someday take Works and this Word out of
the computer and reinstall word from Office Suite disk. Am
afraid that maybe will create other troubles when remove it so have
put it off so far.
My complain about Works is I have trouble to get beyond the helpful
wizards that someone has dreamed up to help us get started doing
something. Guess I got started on older software that didn't
have all the wizards and so I want to get to the work sheet by myself
but Works says no I have to help you, don't you understand that.
Oh well such is the way of the computer so it maybe best to work with
them not fight them.
Contact members of the group are as follows:
President---------- Wayne Boydston
816-230-3140 odessssadoc@juno.com
Vice President----Ralph Stirlen ------
816-532-0229 rstirlen@swbell.net
Co-sec-------------- Ivan Waite --------
816-318-0892 ilwait@earthlink.net
Co-sec-------------- Mary Robison-----
913-384-3339 MHRobinson@aol.com
Program chair-----Judy Revare-------
913-491-1768 judy@revare.com
Treasurer-----------Lewis P. Hahn ---
913-631-7998 lewhahn@giv.net
Group dues are $12 a year and the year runs from June 30th to July 1st
of the following year. New member dues are prorated at a dollar
a month for balance of club year remaining.
Don Bjuland (editor) dbjuland@worldnet.att.net
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