Trunk or Treating - Happy Halloween

For Halloween this year we thought we'd take trunk or treating to the next level.

After many hours spent taping black weed barrier type sheeting all over our minivan we had an acceptable micro haunted house. To make it more appealing we added a tent to the back of our van and tada we had an award winning, according to our local church, haunted house.

The adults thought it was creative.

The teens thought it was cool.

The smallest kids thought it was perfect - whats better than being able to see the end from the beginning of a haunted house. Only two or three of a hundred or so little ghouls refused to enter.

One little girl with downs syndrome feel in love with it and went in and out for more than an hour. It was very fun to watch her at the fun but spooky ghosts and zombies.

We won the award for the best trunk - I think we kind of cheated.

On another note regarding Halloween I found a very unique Halloween Memorial at a local cemetery and wrote about it for the Deseret News in Utah. It was very rewarding to help the parents of this little boy spread their message of making good happen from his tragic death. As genealogists we are involved in a great work of helping people find their past and helping to keep it alive.

Family Tree Beta from FamilySearch - my invite

Just got my invite from Familysearch. More.

Going Virtual

Yesterday Dick Eastman wrote a post about going paperless.

One particular aspect really made me think.

I have often had the desire to go paperless. In so doing I have not had a lot of sucess because the bottom line is sometimes its just easier to pull out a book, journal, bill etc. than to have to try to remember where it is located in my messy file system of a computer.

Search - If I were to going completly virtual I would need to be fully optimized for search.

Meaning that if I were to add search text to each photo, document, bill etc. then it become highly effective.

I have a smart phone and becuase it cost over $400 I decided to invest $30 or so in a clear screen protector.

The screen protector company guarantees that plastic covering for life - and they guarantee to replace it for five bucks if I ever have to replace the phone with them same model for warranty repairs etc. T

The other day I needed to replace it and had taken a picture on my cell phone of the receipt. Since my smart phone has also become my camera of choice I have hundreds of pictures in my photo file folders on my phone.hey also replace it for $5 if the protector fails in any way - fading - ripples - rips etc.

Rarely can I quickly find the exact image I am looking for.

Knowing this I emailed myself a copy of the 'Smart Phone Clear Protector Receipt"

Using those keywords I typed in receipt while the clear protector guy waited and within a few seconds pulled up the email, the attached photo in my smart phone gmail account and Five dollars later had a newly covered phone.

The bottom line here is that yes you can go fully digital but just as when you lose a receipt amoungst thousands of other receipts bills etc. all shoved in a large filing cabinet the exact same thing can happen when you misplace a virtual receipt. Just as its important to have an effective filing system in real life so it is when you have a virtual filing system.

Lesson for me - I need to go in to all my computers, hard drives etc. - create order from chaos and move on from there.

I better start working on this soon.