Thursday, November 17, 2005

OHA - Buffalo Research - Acronym List - XP Restore Point

The Onondaga Historical Association (OHA) in Syracuse, NY has suffered severe damage from a 24 inch water main break immediately in front of their museum and research center back in October. Their facility is still shut down and is expected to reopen November 25th. They have the full story and photos of the unbelievable damage on their website at: http://www.cnyhistory.org/ and they are asking for donations to help with the extremely costly recovery.

Here is a swell website for researchers working in the Buffalo, Erie Co., NY area. Brought to you by Cynthia Van Ness, [aka: Betty Barcode] and includes links to over 175 full text, digital books on-line that relate to Buffalo. http://www.buffaloresearch.com/

Here’s a GREAT idea! - Acronym List.

Our good guy publisher, Geoff Brown, over at Between the Lakes Publishing has put up a free site at: http://www.betweenthelakes.com/pdfs/organizations.pdf , that will help you identify Organizations by their Initials. It’s easy to remember what “AA” is, easier for some of us than others, but who the heck knows what the “EOMA” stands for? I suspect this is a dynamic list and will be growing all the time, so if you want to add to it just send the info to Geoff at: http://www.betweenthelakes.com/ .

A lady sent out a panic message on one of the mail lists that I subscribe to. She had lost all of her family files in Family Tree Maker and wanted to know how to restore them. She had called DELL and tech support quoted $99 to walk her through it because she was out of warranty, go figure.

I had her back up and fixed in less than two minutes. Windows operating systems like XP and probably others, have a way to Restore the Operating System to an earlier day without damaging any newly added files. Here’s how you do it: go to: All Programs, Accessories, System Restore, then just pick an earlier date that you know the program was working OK at. Don’t worry it’s all reversible if you don’t like what you see pick a different date. XP will create arbitrary restore points periodically as you use the system but an even better way to stay out of trouble is for you to go into the same section and “Create a Restore Point” from time to time. I do mine after any time that I have made major changes, or installed new programs, or uninstalled old programs, or after major anti-virus fixes, etc. When you create a point you will be asked to give it a name. Just write out what was going on and what you did and that the system is working fine at that point. When the point is saved the system automatically gives it a date and time stamp.

Oh by the way, I suggested she could send me the 99 bucks kiddingly of course, but she did offer to buy supper any time I am in the Deep South!

Of course I know that you all always “BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP” all of your important files and programs and make at least two copies of each and store one copy off site every day, right?

Visit our website for Upstate New York Genealogy: http://www.ny-genes.com

No comments: