Bill's Genealogy Blog

Bill Buchanan is a long-time genealogy enthusiast, living in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada. This blog will describe my experiences as I research my family history and help others.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada

I am a retired online school teacher. I love family history. From 2007-2020, I spent much of my time providing part-time support for the world's largest free family history site https://familysearch.org This is very rewarding. I have helped others with the Family Tree and related FamilySearch products.
In 2010-2018 I served in the Edmonton_Alberta_Riverbend_Family_History_Centre..I have a FHC blog at Bill's Family History Center Blog Since 2020 I have been a family history consultant for Edmonton Alberta North Stake. For information on the Latter-day Saints and family history click https://www.comeuntochrist.org/

Monday, December 11, 2006

I invited the relatives to request qa copy of "Bill's Buchanans and Watsons", but haven't had a lot of requests. I got nice reponses from a couple of people whom I had sent the PDF version. Judy wants some children's Nativity pictures to put on fridge magnets for the little grandchildren to play with. While looking for some, I also found this photo, which I liked. Image hosted by Webshots.com by edandhelen

Saturday, December 02, 2006

I can't believe the number of responses on the PAF mailing lists to my suggestions regarding not formatting "unreadable/unformatted" floppy disks and on succession planning. Everyone seemed to have some input to share. (To read them, check the archives of the lists mentioned earlier in my blog.) Living at the end of a dead-end rural road has an interesting aspect this time of year. When there is a foot or two of snow on the ground, people sometimes end up in a snow bank. This happened last night. The doorbell rang, and a young man about 20 years of age asked if he could use our telephone. He telephoned his friends and I got my shovels, and between the four of us, we had him on his way in half an hour. They seemed like really nice boys. We all need a little help from time to time.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Tuesday it was almost my turn to make it into the Obituary column of the newspaper. I was driving south on Range Road 30, going to help friend with a computer problem. The road was deeply covered with packed snow and ice. I was driving slowly as I came to the stop sign at the highway, but I skidded right past the sign. I steered for the shoulder of the road, and stopped there, as a big truck with two trailers went roaring by. We are thankful for small miracles! Today I updated my main website, by up-loading a new copy of my Buchanan family database. This has taken a while, as there seems to be an unknown link between my Buchanan and Ing lines, which makes separating them difficult. Because of all the problems I am having on my desktop computer, I was unable to use it to upload the files. Instead, I transferred them to my old laptop, downloaded AceFTP free, and did the file transfer from there. The whole idea of wireless high-speed internet seems more and more attractive, but I my current dial-up internet contract runs for another 11 months. Wednesday it was so cold that the FHC remained closed (-31 C, about -40 C with wind chill). So I used the time to do some shopping and some record-keeping that needed to be done. What will I find next week? Wait and see.