Happy Birthday Mom

Hope you have a good day today.

Salt Lake Trip

This past weekend I flew to Salt Lake and met up with Dad, Mom, and Gary and Family and we went to Natalie's baptism. I had a great time and it was good to see family. Thanks to all for all of the help with airport pickup/food. I took along my new Amod GPS datalogger to test drive it prior to go time come May. My other gps units won't pick up a signal inside of buildings, but this one will. The position is less accurate inside of a building, but it works well enough that at least you know which building it is.

View Salt Lake in a larger map

Ancestral Birth Places...Sort Of

Here is something else I've been working on. Here is the method by which I obtained this info:

I printed all of the ancestral birth places from PAF to a comma delimited file. I then corrected as many errors as I could see right off hand and made all information consistent (such as change all of the ID's to Idaho's...etc....). I then removed all duplicates so as to minimize the number of places I had to process. This cut it down from well over 3,000 to about 300. I then ran them through some geocoding software which assigned coordinates. I then removed all of those for which it could not assign coordinates and all of those that were very obviously incorrect (such as placing a place in Belgium in Africa). This brought the number down to about 290 or so. That is what you are seeing on this map. You may have to zoom out on the small version. There is a link to a larger version below the map. 

What this isn't:

1) An all inclusive list of every ancestor or person living. Take Australia for example. There aren't any dots there when there should be. 

3) Completely correct. There are still some errors that I didn't catch. 

4) A density map. Meaning, it has one dot for each place. It does not have one dot for each ancestor born in each place. I had to remove the duplicates because it was making my computer smoke. An example would be Burley, Idaho. Even though myself and many of my siblings were born there as well as several other relatives and ancestors, there is still only one dot. 

My disclaimer:

No information regarding individuals is associated with this. The only information I used was place names and coordinates. There are no specific addresses either, just city, state, country level information. If you find that it has coincidentally pinpointed you, I will happily remove any of the dots. 

Enjoy. 

View Ancestor Birth Places in a larger map

Package Tracking

I was bored this morning and trying to figure out a way to track my packages with a map. I know I can run an rss feed through yahoo to convert it to a georss feed, but didn't have time to play with it too much this morning. In the mean time, I found this website which suffices for now. 

http://www.packagemapping.com/?action=track&shipper=ups&tracknum=1Z3F9A460301616851&uniqueID=&

and this one

http://brennanfolmer.com/package-tracker/map.html?c=3&s=IN%20TRANSIT%20-%20On%20Time&l1=COMMERCE+CITY,+CO,+US&d1=4/8/2009+4:00+AM:%20In+transit+

to&l2=SALINA,+KS,+US&d2=4/8/2009+3:59+AM:%20Departure+scan&l3=OKLAHOMA+CITY,+OK,+US&d3=4/7/2009+9:45+PM:%20Departure+scan&ground=1

The second one goes one step further and shows where it is currently headed to. Both are tracking a package of some USB AA battery chargers that I ordered from Amazon.com.

My work is very close to the main UPS facility in Spokane Valley. I don't know this, but judging by the volume of trucks, I imagine it is the primary center that serves this entire area. I arrive at work in the morning at about the same time when a lot of the trucks are leaving the facility. We aren't talking 1 or 2, but more like about 100 plus trucks all leaving at the same time. Every morning when I see this, I always say, "For the Brown Empire" just to be a dork. The reason is that it makes me think of this episode of Simpsons:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9XF3QNyYJY

Caren's Blog

Well, we have a new convert to the world of blogging. Caren and I recently met with friend Seth, his wife Julie, and their daughter in Spokane for lunch. While there we discussed the antics of several other of the people that have played and do play a part in our lives. Caren discussed how she and I have been accused of being codependent and how the proposed definition greatly differs from the actual definition. We were accused of spending too much time together and not enough with other people and several other things that might constitute what is generally refferred to as a healthy relationship. After hearing this, Seth's response was, "Isn't that the point?" As I understood it, he said this in an effort to illustrate that what we were being accused of is generally what is necessary to maintain a healthy relationship. Caren and I got a kick out of this since it so aptly describes the thought process going through our heads a large majority of the time. It couldn't have been said better. So, Caren decided to name her blog that. Although it doesn't say it, the blog is a Seth Lyman memorial blog. Which is actually kind of weird because that would mean he is dead when in fact he is alive and well. Sorry Seth. Anyway, enjoy the new blog. She is busy with school and such, so hopefully we will hear from her when she has time. The link is below and I've also added it to my bloglist on the right hand side of this blog. 

http://www.isntthatthepoint.blogspot.com/