Yesterday I was at my parents’ house when a commercial for Ancestry.com appeared, and I must say that I was quite intrigued. Normally, because we don’t watch television in my home, I am rarely exposed to commercials. And even at my parents’ house, I tend to tune out the TV. But yesterday I just happened to be standing within three feet of the set when the ad came on, and it caught my attention for its entire 30-second duration.
When it was over, my husband and I looked at each other and agreed to check it out sometime, and then promptly went on with our activities.
Later that day, at the baptism party for my cousin’s daughter, I was having a pleasant conversation with my cousin’s mother-in-law. We were talking with my dad about the ability of the mind to stay agile from mental activity such as language learning or social interaction. At that point, she mentioned that she spends several hours per day on the computer researching genealogy.
It turns out that she uses Ancestry.com, as well as free sites such as the Ellis Island Foundation, and the records of the Latter Day Saints. In addition, she also interviews relatives and adds her research to these online sources.
I often feel compelled to research my heritage, both through genealogical and genetic data. It’s on my long list of things to do, along with world travel and starting my own business. All will happen in due time, but I’m not exactly sure when. But after yesterday, I’m wondering if now is the time to immerse myself in this fascinating topic. Maybe I’ll contact some relatives about this, and start that free, 14-day free trial.
Great—now I sound like a commercial!
I’ve created a new site about fitness, health and outdoor sports. It’s called The Novice Athlete. Check it out.
As you can plainly see, I’m using the Sandbox theme right now, which seems to be serving my needs enough. It doesn’t come with a bunch of features, and it is deliberately un-fancy, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. It is semantically marked up, and intended to be customizable, which I love.
The downside of course is that we’re going to have to suffer with an awkward, plain-looking site for a while. So please pardon my dust during the remodel.
I’ve been procrastinating on this one since I just updated twice in the past month. And the last time that I updated, the newer version came out just two days later.
So, before another version comes out, I have decided to update again.
I am loathe to update because the last two times didn’t go quite as planned. I’m not sure why. Perhaps if my tech skills were up to par…
Fortunately, if 2.7 does as promised, this will be the last time I will have to upgrade manually ever again. Future updates will be done in one click.
Speaking of which, I will also be updating my tech skills soon. I’m brushing up on my Web programming skills, and plan on finally mastering PHP. (Previously, I just dabbled, hacking files to suit my needs.) I’m happy to say that I will soon be empowered to comfortably run a modern site. Amen.
Update
This one went a lot more smoothly, and I think it’s because I took a few more precautions. First, I reverted my theme from Sandbox to the default, and deleted my Sandbox files from the server. Next, I deactivated all of the plugins and widgets, deleting them from the server as well. Lastly, after uploading the new files, I made doubly sure that I had uploaded everything before attempting to log in again.
I don’t know if all of the above was truly necessary, but I think at least one of these things made a difference.
As this is the fastest upgrade I’ve ever done, I do feel a sense of accomplishment. (Read: rewarded myself with cake.) Still, I sure am looking forward to those one-step updates.
Update
Well, Sandbox isn’t behaving quite the way I’m used to. It’s not exactly broken, but perhaps some of my recent hacks need readjustment.
Just a few days after I had updated Wordpress, out comes version 2.6.5. So I updated again, which didn’t go so smoothly. But after fixing the “blank page” issue, which was most likely related to a missing theme file, I’m back in business.
In other words, my chocolate break was well-deserved.