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One of the reasons I wanted to fine-tune the Nylon 66 was the thievery occurring in my cherry tree. Old Owl sat on his stick, but he wouldn't give a hoot (even if we can hear REAL great horned owls every evening) and the birds were ignoring him. Fiberglass must have caught in his throat. The only things that were halfway scary were his eyeballs, and the birds flew right past him, and even ignored my fluttering foil cake dishes.
Ergo, I planned to reduce the population of feathered bandits. Meanwhile, my Smarter Half decided that we should simply pick the cherries, because they were almost all ripe, and that's what we began to do. We had filled two pans, so she went back to the house to get me an empty, and when she gave it to me, she left me in the tree (actually, on the stepladder) to finish picking while she began to pit.
The robins were not happy about my presence in the tree. They were screeching and flying around, and must not have been paying too much attention to other things. Suddenly I noticed the intensity of the screeching changed, and one bird sounded like it was in terrible distress. Sure, enough, sitting on the ground about 10 yards away was an avenger -- a Cooper's hawk. As I watched, it tore feathers from the still struggling robin. Then it tore chunks out of it and started enjoying its meal.
After a few minutes some bluejays started dive-bombing the hawk, never really getting too close. Finally, the hawk picked up what was left of the robin and flew off, with the jays in hot pursuit.
So there is justice in the land, after all. Thieves will be eaten.
I have been given to understand that farmers who used to have problems with chicken hawks would erect a pole with a muskrat trap on top in their poultry yards. Maybe I should erect a pole, say about 20 feet high, but with a nice perch for Mr. Cooper's Hawk. If I am nice to him, maybe I won't need Mr. Fiberglass Owl as much.
My Honey said she saw a bald eagle in her cherry tree. I'm still looking for him.
It is somewhat embarrassing to have to admit that the old grey mare just ain't what she used to be. There was a time when my pulse was normally a steady 60-65 and I could count time on it. Not any more. The metaprolol keeps it from racing off the charts, but I can't manage 60 too often any more, and the worst part is the irregularity. I can never tell when it is going to do a double beat or something. That makes fine motor control tricky.
I decided to test my new invention today, and it gave me a perfect opportunity to adjust the sights on the Nylon 66. I ended up firing 35 rounds (shorts, single loaded) altogether. The windage target from Alabama F&G is a great tool! Unfortunately, it can't cure erratic heartbeats.
21 yards (measured)
sitting, no rest
single fire, CB shorts
group is 1.25 inches
The two on the left were heartbeat victims. Their direction probably indicates a leftward pull as I squeeze.
I know I got that groundhog the other day. I heard the thump and saw him flinch. And the crosshairs didn't move off him the whole time. I just can't find the body.
Oh, yeah. I was shooting right-handed. I'm still finding it tough to find the target quickly, but I'm adjusting.
I can imagine Adam and Eve talking about their family tree. It was really a one-way street, all branches and no roots.
I finally got in touch with k_c34, who told me a bit about herself. I'll have to go over that with Grannie. I realized that for some of these people, the folks I grew up with are somewhat legendary. They lived four and five generations back. That makes me old, especially when I read their stories and am jarred by the fact that I used to visit with that person's great-grandfather.
Anyway, my concerns over Geni.com were enhanced over the weekend when Maria started her own tree and invited me to join it. I discovered new weaknesses in Geni's security as a result of the merge of trees. HP got to see what the tree actually looked like while he was here; his comment is under the previous post.
Then he sent a followup email :
ok... i'm looking ALL OVER trying to find that stuff you showed me on Geni that uncle John and Maria posted, but I can't find it. Do I HAVE to create an account to be able to see it and FIX it???? What if I don't WANT an account???
I found the stuff Steve Webel posted and have already emailed him about fixing it, but I can't find the other stuff that uncle John posted and Maria updated with totally incorrect info and info about my minor kids that i DON'T WANT POSTED on the internet for their safety and privacy. what gives??? how do I get to this info that you showed me at your house so I can DELETE / edit it?? Do I need to sign up for an account, is that the only way???
hp
and I replied
You be right. The only way you can make any changes to YOUR information is to sign up on Geni. Then nobody but you can make any edits to your profile. Until that time, depending on the permissions level, anybody you never heard of before can edit your profile as long as they are within 4 generations (default) of you on the tree. Example -- Erin Kun's husband's cousin. After all the disarray that was introduced by the merge, I deleted all of the info for your kids except name and birth order (so they would appear correctly in the tree) and reset the permissions so that I was the only person who could change their info in my tree (I could do that only because I put them there). If they are in somebody else's tree, you have to contact them to make any changes.
You can view the tree without edit permission if somebody issues an invitation to you as a friend.
After seeing what the merge did, I am convinced more than ever that Geni.com is a privacy sieve. In fact, I may start a new tree, and not let anybody join it, simply because once they join, they have the capability of adding to the tree and then merging it; it is no longer under the control of the originator. Better yet, there is GPL genealogy software out there (GRAMPS) which is better than anything Geni is using, and its free, and it stays resident on your own machine or server. You need to have X11 installed to run it via the terminal. GRAMPS was written in Python for Linux but there are releases for Windows, OSX, and BSD; the Windows and OSX versions do not have the support the Linux and BSD versions have. That is why it is better to run it under the Mac terminal in UNIX.
Because of the links via John Hunyadi, there are well over 400 people in my tree now, and a large number of them I have never met. The fact that they would have access to information that they could only otherwise get via a court order is worrisome.
I downloaded a GEDCOM file of my tree, and went looking for a GEDCOM reader. Guess what? GEDCOM is a protocol developed by the LDS for their genealogy searches. I wonder how much of the Geni.com stuff ends up in some LDS database?
I wonder when we see the first embezzlement case come to trial where the embezzler was able to hack an account with privacy question information he got about a very distant relative on Geni.com? Take a look at the people who started Geni.com -- PayPal, among others!!
Unmentioned is the little factoid that once you put something in Geni's database, you may delete it from view, but they have the right to retain the information forever. So, once somebody inserts your private information on the web somewhere, it is no longer private, ever again. Delete keys only hide the information from the person at the keyboard. Sort of like closing your eyes to make the "F" on your report card go away.
Then there are the monkeys. We had a houseful overnight. Kids sleeping everywhere. Kids running everywhere. Kids slamming doors, looking for things to occupy themselves with. I began to think it was payback time. My mind went back to the day when John and I went around Grandpa's barn throwing rocks through the windows just to hear the sound of breaking glass. Nothing malicious, just the delight of tinkling glass. Brought to mind by the slamming of doors. Nothing malicious, just the delight of hearing a big bang. Believe it or not, Grandpa Jim understands. He has also gained a new measure of respect and admiration for his own Grandpa, remembering a quiet man who wore a very sick look on his face that day. My ancestors were indeed remarkable people; I have it relatively (there is that word, again) easy.
A few years ago, when I first dug up the beds in which we now have the strawberries and raspberries, somebody gave me some "crazy onions" to plant for use as green onions -- like shallots. They grow like weeds, and as the plants mature, they produce heads that contain small bulblets and florets. Some of the bulblets have baby onions; the idea appears to be that the adult onion leaves fall over and the bulblets grow into new bunches of onions.
They are all over the raspberry patch now, and have grow up waist-high, with two and even three generations of onions on the same plant. I was thinking about simply tearing them out, since they are very strong flavored, and, as green onions, somewhat stringy at times.
I got this idea, this afternoon, however. The kiddles were arguing over the pickled garlic cloves in the pepper jar last time they were together, and I began to wonder if the crazy onion bulblets could be pickled like those little pearl onions people buy as appetizers. I went out and gathered as many as I could find, and started breaking the bulblets off and cleaning away the outer skins.
As I realized that I would not have much more than a quart of the little stinkers, I decided I would turn them into onion soup. They are sort of like matryoshka dolls in that you peel away one layer, and inside will be another bulblet, and you break that apart, and inside ... Yeah. These things would make onion soup. but not French onion soup. It would have to be Russian onion soup. Crazy Slavs.
My fingers stink from peeling onion bulblets. The soup was simple -- boiled onions, some beef bouillon, and a touch of salt. We shall consider the consequences later.
Ah, yes. Who Daddy me? Back on 1-5-09 I stated that I thought Geni.com could be a useful and fun idea, but I had some security concerns. Joonyah was of the opinion that putting family information on Geni.com was not too terrible a threat to personal security. I thunk about it, and he is prolly right. If I have the correct information, it is better that I put it there than to let somebody else put bad info up. This is especially the case when I think about the posts from some of the people reading this blog and asking for help in tracking down their roots.
So. I have filled in a bunch of other stuff on my tree. Corrected some stuff that John Hunyadi had wrong. Added information from the Hrubik Reunion booklet from 1984 (when there were a lot more of Dad's generation still around). I will be contacting some of our common tree dwellers with invitations to join Geni and take charge of their own branches. Steve Webel (Bob's boy, for those who know a little and might be interested in more) who is off in faraway China, has put HP and Bek in his tree, mis-spelling her name. Also Erwin and Emily Webel (who are in my tree as well, via my great-uncle, Pal Hrubik). I need to contact him to merge our trees. Also, Emmie (Pamer) Hill, in my tree (via Anna (Knab) Hill, my great-aunt), is the sister of George Pamer (in John Hunyadi's tree, via Dave and Barb), and he and I are going to have to work out how to do the merge (more like a loop maybe, since our trees are already merged). I know that some of Uncle Dan's grandchildren and great-grandchildren are interested in finding family also.
I have heard that everyone in the world has at least one common ancestor if you go back only eight generations. Playing with only four or five generations, I can almost believe it.
Just for fun...
Uncle Mike was our favorite. He was full of stories, and when he and Dad got together talking about their boyhood, it was a real hoot. They told of running wild through the Virginia woods, doing all the things little Hrubik boys do when nobody is watching (apparently Grandma was too sick most of the time to keep up with her little jungle critters). Girls, when you marry a Hrubik and little boys come out, your life will forever after be interesting.
Uncle Mike often told how they found Civil War relics -- the Battle of Seven Pines was fought partly on their farm -- and how he fell into a trench one day. Then there was the time the boys wandered up to an old cabin, and the man sitting on the porch asked only one question, "Who Daddy you?". As Uncle Mike told it, it scared them, both because of the man's fierce demeanor, and the fact that they spoke hardly any English at that time. All three, Emil, Mike, and Carl, streaked back off into the woods.
Uncle Mike and Dad laughed over that one. I first heard it when I was about 7 or 8 years old. When I was 8, I bought my first bike, a 26" Huffy Roadmaster, from my classmate, Tom Goila, who lived about six or seven houses south on Dover Avenue. Once I had that bike, I became the milk and bread delivery system, riding down to the Lawson store where Diagonal, Mercer, and Bisson came together.
For a while, there was still a vacant lot on Peerless, and we preferred to ride through that rather than go all the way to Mercer on Bellevue, but when a house was built there, we had to stick to the street. That took us past the Pure Oil station on the north corner of Mercer and Diagonal.
Pure Oil, you say? What is that? Back in the Good Old Days, when American companies worried mostly about selling products to Americans, we had all kinds of enticing labeling. I remember when "EXXON" began -- the name was chosen so that people in foreign countries (that is what we used to call world markets) would not find something offensive about it in their language, and we Americans were too stupid to be offended by that. Ah, yes, Pure Oil, with its round signs, and pretty blue lettering, and the bright blue trim on the buildings, even blue roofs.
One day the tire on my bike was a bit low, and I stopped at the Pure Oil station to fill it. This was right after one of Uncle Mike's visits. There were several men sitting around in the garage, and after I returned the air gauge (oh, yes, they would let you borrow the gauge to check your tires!), one of the men stared at me and growled, "Who Daddy you?". His gruff manner, and his accent, both matched exactly the man in Uncle Mike's story. I told him who my Daddy was, and rode off wondering whether or not the incident was some sort of set-up arranged by Uncle Mike.
Old stories are part of family lore. That's part of why I bother with this blog. It also leads to some interesting interchanges, like the dino discussion some time back, where a crack about a news article actually had both researchers (from England) posting here. The family history stuff seems to get people stirred up a bit. Mention of place names, like Glozan, and Mokrim, and Henrico County, and Harrow, gets picked up by webcrawlers and the blog ends up as a search result.
Unfortunately, it is hard to track some of those folks down. Or, maybe, once they hear from me, it scares them off. The September 23, 2006 post (right after the taped interview with Grannie Annie) pulled in this:
miklovic said...
Iam a member of Miklovic family that has theirs roots in Hlozany. One of my grandfathers relatives lives Hlozany in 1930 and immigrate to Canada. Now I am trying to get to contact with Miklovic family from Canada if you could help me.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2008 4:19:00 PM EST
Grandpa Jim said...
Hey, there, Miklovic. You need to fill in more of your Blogger profile; it would be nice to have a name and email address to reply to.
What was the name of your grandfather's relative?
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2008 10:57:00 AM EST
miklovic said...
name was Jozef Joe
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2008 5:08:00 PM EST
miklovic said...
my e-mail is miklovic2001@yahoo.com and my grandfather relatives lives in Harow
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2008 5:09:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...
Today is June 2/09. I just found this site and am so thrilled that I did. I was born a Cipkar. My parents are Paul and Kata from Harrow. My grandfather is Paul who was married to a Suzana. They came from Glozany and my great grandfather's name was Stefan who was married to Ana. Apparently my great grandfather held a government office position in Glozany. I would love to trace my family tree and when I saw this information on the web, I was thrilled that possibly I may be able to get some further information about my family. I see that these postings happened in 2006. If you could provide any information to me, I would greatly appreciate it. My email is k_c34@gmail.com
TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2009 1:02:00 PM EDT
So I called Grannie Annie and asked about that. We finally got it figured out. k_c34 is just slightly off; her great-grandfather Stefan is Mom's Uncle Steve (her Dad's brother). I sent a reply email,
but got a Mailer-Daemon reply that the email account does not exist. So, k_c34, if you are reading this, you know what happened.
Then, to top it off, a few hous later I got this, as a comment in the May 30, 2009 post:
Jaroslav said...
Hello I am writing you from Serbia, my grandfather was Samuel Miklovic from Glozan or Hlozany on Slovak . I am searching form some relatives in Canada , my grandfather was tailor like his two brothers Jano and Emil
TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2009 5:33:00 PM EDT
Jaroslav needs to also fill in his blogger profile and provide an email address. Unfortunately, most of what I know about the Miklovics would fit in a thimble. Joe Miklovic's kids, John, Mary, and Susie are the ones I knew -- John Miklovic married Mary Cipkar, John Cipkar married Mary Miklovic, and Steve Cipkar married Susie Miklovic. They had a cousin, Ed Miklovic, who lived in Union City PA. That's all I know, folks.
Anyhoo, gotta get back to making sawdust.
