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Subject: GEN-NEWBIE-D Digest V97 #42

------------------------------ GEN-NEWBIE-D DigestVolume 97 : Issue 42 Today's Topics: Re: SS information [ (judith murphy) ] Re: GEN-NEWBIE-D Digest V97 #29 [ Doug & Carol Dickinson < ] Re: subscribing to lists [ Lucinda L Wales <> ] Re: FTM [ ] Modem Addiction [ (Lorretta A ] Re: Posting Problem [ "Karl and D'Layne Reynolds" <nvreyn ] Cache Question [ "Karl and D'Layne Reynolds" <nvreyn ] Re: Comments on Family Tree Maker [ ] defragmenting your hard drive [ "gdwo498" <> ] Defragmenting Computer Hard Drives, [ "John M. Brickley" <. ] Re: GEN-NEWBIE-D Digest V97 #41 [ "William R. Kemp" < ] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 21:14:44 -0500 (EST) From: (judith murphy) Subject: Re: SS information The number of years you were married to be eligible changed over the years, so be sure to tell social security when you apply for benefits if you were married to anyone else and they will look at the length of the marriage/s and do calculations of that social security as well as your own (if you worked too). Many widows/widowers and divorcees (both men and women) don't even know that just because they were married to 2 persons or more, divorcing the first, and the last one died or you divorced also, that they will have the option of choosing the HIGER amount for all of the spouses IF you were married to that person for correct number of years or longer. For instance, if you had a woman who married 3 times, first time for 11 years, next for 10 years, last for 15 years, divorcing all 3 men, when it comes time to collect social security you can have all 4 (including your own earnings) calculated since you were married to all of them for the 10 years or more -- then you get to choose which of them you want to use to collect this social security (usually they advise you to take the higher amount, but if not advised, common sense would say you would want the $600 monthly check over the $340 monthly check.) Now, if another woman divorced her first husband of 15 years, and remarried and was married for 12 years at the time she went down to apply for social security, she would only be able to use hers and her current husband for being calculated (since she is STILL married she cannot use a former husband, even if over the 10 years). Now this is my understanding from what Social Security told me -- and I know the latter case was what happened to a friend of mine -- she said -- fine, then I won't apply at this time -- went home, DIVORCED her husband, and after the divorce was final went back and applied and they calculated both former husband's amounts to determine hers -- and because her first husband had earned huge amounts of money during his working career as opposed to her second husband's making "peanuts" she ended up with a check of almost $400 MORE a month than if she hadn't divorced -- yet she and her last husband still live together, just they are divorced. (Now, don't ya'll go out and do this -- it may not work for you the way it did for her and I SURELY don't want to be called a "home-wrecker" <ha,ha>). I was always under the understanding that you did not have to report the death unless they were getting a check or unless you had children in the household under 18 or still in college (unsure age/schooling as this changed not long ago). What I understand from Social Security is that there are people on welfare and other programs who found out that someone died, wasn't getting a social security check, so they use their social security number to get these welfare payments, passports, etc. So, Social Security is trying to "crack down" on finding these and was asking everyone to report the death of any person in the family who had a social security number. Hope this helps some, Judy M. >Judith, > >Why would one report the death of spouse if they weren't receiving social >security? > >I think the marriage duration was 20 years and was changed to 10 years. > >I have a friend who receives divorced spouses payments under social security. > >Vall > > > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 17:40:45 -0800 From: Doug & Carol Dickinson <> Subject: Re: GEN-NEWBIE-D Digest V97 #29 > Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 12:41:35 -0800 > From: Frank King <> > Subject: Arizona > > Looking for info on a web site for Tuscon, Arizona. need information on > my g-grandmother who just passed away last year. She was about 96 yrs > old. Too bad I didn't start sooner. I would know more today. Her name > was Grace Coles Garter Bryant. Coles was maiden, Garter was 1st marriage, > and Bryant was Last marriage. I believe she was also married to a > Hendrick who would be my gr. grandfather. > > Any help would be appreciated. > > Frank > > I have been off net for several days due to a major case of the flu so perhaps someone else has already answered your post. But if not, try going to the Arizona Department of Libarary, Archives & Public Records e-mail list at http://www.dlapr.lib.az.us/dlapri/email.html Scroll down to Jim Lovell - Genealogy Research and send him an e-mail. He was able to locate an obituary for my father in law in just hours. I asked whether this was a special favor for me or whether his job included this type of thing and he said its his job. Good luck. Carol ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 19:44:10 -0800 From: Lucinda L Wales <> Subject: Re: subscribing to lists Hi Barbara, One thing to keep in mind whenever you want to subscribe to the lists, is, there are 2 email addresses for each list. One is used for subscribing, unsubscribing, and other commands (like archived file retrieval). The other address is for the actual posting of messages. Some list require you be a subscriber to post messages, others do not. Because maiser controls many many lists, when you subscribe, you need to add which list you are subscribing to in the body of the message. Example: SUB PENNA-DUTCH Others, such as the WHITE-L, only asks for the word SUBSCRIBE to be in the body of the text. Thats because when you subscribe to the WHITE-L, you send your message to which only controls the white-l list. There is a great list of "genealogy mailing lists" at: http://users.aol.com/johnf14246/gen_mail.html Here you will find both addresses for each list. It also has exact directions of what to add in the body (and occasionally subject header) of your message and a Listserver Help Page. Hope this helps, Lucinda Barbara Mangum wrote: > > Need help, please!!!! > > There must be a secret of which I am unaware. I have tried many times > to subscribe to lists and either I do not ever hear from them or I get > an error message back. Are you supposed to put anything in the subject > line? One example is Another example > is I get back an error message. Is > this list limited to subscribers or members of a group? Any help would > be appreciated. > Barbara > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 22:47:04 -0500 (EST) From: Subject: Re: FTM Don Dale, I disagree with you re:discussion of genealogy software (or griping, as you refer to it). It can be very helpful to newbies making that decision. It helps to have different input, and I think that genealogical lists are a completely appropriate place to "discuss" these issues. I would suggest that you skim and delete letters that don't appeal to you. They are of interest to others, and therefore are appropriate here. Catt ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 22:54:01 EST From: (Lorretta A Curry) Subject: Modem Addiction _ THE TRAGEDY OF AN ON-LINE ADDICTION by Steve King . "Did you know that last month's (expletive) phone bill isover $450?" my wife scolded me in her harshest, my-husband-the-child voice. "That's more than twice the monthly payment youmake for that (expletive) computer!" she continued as sheescalated to screaming. "I confess! I confess!" I sobbed. "I'm just an on-line junkie. I'm addicted to my modem! I guess I'll just have to join Modems Anonymous before I owe my soul to the phone company." As a counselor for Modems Anonymous, I hear numerous variations of the preceding story every day. That insidious disease, modem fever, is exacting a tragically large toll from the cream of our society's computer users. Modem-mania is sweeping through thevery foundations of our country and there seems to be no stoppingit. This disease (yes, it is a social disease of almost epidemicproportions) is becoming a such calamity that soon there's evengoing to be a soap opera about on-line addiction named, "All MyModems." If you don't already own one of those evil instruments called a modem, take warning! Don't even think about buying one. Modemfever sets in very quietly; it sneaks up on you and then grabsyou by the wallet, checkbook or, heaven forbid, credit cards. . Once you own a modem, you enter the insidious addictive trapby "dialing up" a friend who also has a modem. For some strangereason, typing messages to each other fascinates you. (Even ifit is less than 10% of the speed that you can speak the samewords over a normal voice phone link.) Of course, you makeseveral attempts at hooking up before you finally figure out thatat least one of you must be in the half-duplex mode; thatdiscovery actually titillates you (sounds impossible , but it'strue). Then your modem-buddy (friend is too good a term) sows another seed on the road to on-line addiction by giving you the number ofa local RBBS (Remote Bulletin Board Service). Once you get anRBBS phone number, you've taken the first fatal step in a journeythat can only end in on-line addiction. . After you take the next step by dialing up the the RBBS your modem-buddy told you about, you find that it's very easy to"log-on." This weird form of conversation with an unattendedcomputer is strangely exciting, much more so than just typingmessages when you're on-line with your modem-buddy. The initialbulletins scroll by and inform you about the board, but you'retoo "up" to comprehend most of it. Then you read some of themessages in the message section and maybe, in a tentative manner,you enter one or two of your own. That's fun, but the excitement starts to wear off; you're calming down. Thinking that it might be worthwhile to go back andre-read the log-on bulletins, you return to the main RBBS menu. . Then it happens. The RBBS provides the bait that enticesyou all the way into the fiery hell of modem addiction. As youlook at the RBBS main menu to learn how to return to the log-on bulletins, you find an item called FILES. By asking your hostcomputer for FILES, you thread the bait onto the hook ofcorruption; the FILES SUBMENU sets the hook. You start runningwith the line when you LIST the files; you leap into the air withthe sheer joy of the fight when all those public domain programtitles and descriptions scroll by. They're FREE!!! All you have to do is tell the bulletin board to download (transmit) them to you. You download your first programand you're landed, in the creel, cleaned and ready for thecooking fires. In just 55 minutes after you logged-onto theboard, you've downloaded six programs, one of them is AndrewFleugelman's PC-Talk, version 3 (truly an instrument for evil). . BBS-LIST.DQC, which is also among the files you downloaded, contains a list of a great number of bulletin boards throughoutthe country. (There's evil all around us, constantly temptingus!) You print the list and find about 60 RBBS phone numbers. (Have mercy on our souls!) The list also gives you the hours ofoperation, communications parameters and informs you about eachboard's specialty. You decide to try PC-Talk and use it todial-up an RBBS about three states away. Since the line is busy,you pass the time entering all those RBBS phone numbers intoPC-Talk's voluminous dialing directory. . You try the number again -- still busy. You think, "Hey,there's one that specializes in Pascal programs. Maybe I'll tryit. It's about half-way across the country, but it's after 5pmand the phone rates have changed. It won't be too expensive." . The Pascal board answers. After 45 minutes you'vedownloaded another five programs. Then you call another board --only this one's completely across the country from California, inFlorida. And so it goes on into the night ... and the next night... and the next.... Some days it gets to you. You begin tofeel the dirtiness of modem addiction, particularly when yourwife makes you feel like a child by berating you for thoseastronomical phone bills -- if she hasn't divorced you by then. Every time you sit down before your PC to do some work, you dialup another RBBS instead. If that one's busy, you call another,and another, until you connect. Then you feel OK, almost "high." When you finally hang up, you still can'twork; you can only dial up another RBBS. . Your downfall as an on-line addict is just another one ofthis society's terrible tragedies, such as polygamy or thecompulsion to circle all the numbers on computer magazine "bingocards." Eventually your whole social life relies upon only the messages you find on electronic bulletin boards; your only happiness is the programsyou have downloaded. (You never try any of them, you onlycollect them.) Hope exists, however. We, the dedicated butunder-paid staff of Modems Anonymous, have done extensiveresearch to find a cure for modem mania, which has been ruininghundreds of lives. And we have succeeded in our quest. The cureis really quite simple, yet effective: Set up your own remotebulletin board service. Then all the other modem addicts will phone you, and their wives can nag at them about $450 phonebills, and you can find peace -- at last. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 20:28:58 -0800 From: "Karl and D'Layne Reynolds" <> Subject: Re: Posting Problem Carole Rohrings wrote: > > So, I miss Harry Huntsman! Did he get his posting problem fixed? Is that > why he doesn't write to us anymore? > > )~; > > Carole Rohrings > > > _______________________________ > > Researching Bell Boyd Chapman Cronk Curcie Delamarre Drake Gray Hayhurst > Himes Jennings Kearns Kuykendall Mather Post Stark StJohn StLouis > Sullivan Thrush Wheeler > > USGenWeb Coordinator for Lake and Sutter Counties in California > > Listowner for Cronk Curcie Delamarre Hayhurst Himes Jennings Kearns > Kuykendall Love Mather Post StJohn StLouis Thrush Wheeler surname > discussion lists I was just going to ask the same question. I would like to know if Harry got his email problem fixed - and if one of us NEWBIEs helped him fix it. Wouldn't that be a hoot. <<G>> And by the way, Harry, glad to hear you were rooting for the right team!! THE PACK IS BACK! D'Layne M. (Kite) Reynolds Las Vegas, NV ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 20:52:20 -0800 From: "Karl and D'Layne Reynolds" <> Subject: Cache Question Hi All, Shortly after becoming a member of this list, I read a question that someone asked about the "cache." I've just discovered mine (had no clue what they were talking about...so hit the old delete button). Just one question, should I empty this thing? It seems huge and I guess then taking up a lot of space. Oops, two questions. Sometimes when I'm trying to sign on to sprintmail, I get a strange message that something isn't right and to try again later. If I hit disconnect, I get another message about, "use a previously cached file" or something of that wording. Does that mean I can go into this cache place and log on by opening one of the files? (If I understand the info in there correctly, it's previously visited sites.[?]) Geez, now that I look at it, I don't think I'm even spelling "cache" right. Can someone explain all this technical jargon to me? Thanks! D'Layne M. (Kite) Reynolds Las Vegas, NV ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 00:17:46 -0500 (EST) From: Subject: Re: Comments on Family Tree Maker Hi Karen, I agree with you regarding FTM--I've been having very good luck with it and I found some lost relatives on the ILL/Ind Marriage that FTM offered free for 3.4 users. Just my 2 cents Dorene ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 23:14:17 -0600 From: "gdwo498" <> Subject: defragmenting your hard drive Paula, IMHO your software is smarter than a lot of the advice you are getting about defraging your drive. I feel that defragmenting a drive every day that is less than 20% fragmented is ridicules and a tremendous waste of time and effort. If you write a lot of files, then update those file frequently, you will probably get some fragmentation of the files. What this means is that the disk in your hard drive is somewhat like an old phonograph record. The files are written to tracks that circle the hard drive disk like the grooves in the record. But there is one really major difference, unlike the phonograph record, the files on a hard drive do not need to be written in contiguous blocks. Parts of a large file may be written to several tracks, or grooves, on the disk of your hard drive. The computer is smart enough to keep a file of all the "addresses" of the various locations so it can find all the pieces and put the file back together again so you can use it. When you "write" a file or a program on your computer analyzes the space available on your hard drive and tries to find a space large enough to write the entire file in a single block. As you continue adding programs and files the computer continues looking for these empty blocks, and eventually filling in the spare spaces between other previously written programs and files. The first time you write a file, the computer will most likely put it in one block, all together. What happens is that latter you modify, change, add to the file and the computer tries to write it back to the same block, but finds that the size of the file has increased and the block is not able to hold all of the modified file. Part of the file will be fragmented or separated from the original location and written to a different "track". When you defragment your hard disk, your computer goes through and finds all of the files that are fragmented or separated, pulls the file all together and finds another block where it can write the file back into a contiguous block. The more frequently you rewrite and modify files the more fragmented your disk will become. If your do not frequently rewrite files you will have very little fragmentation. A person using a computer to run a business would be constantly modifying the personnel, accounting, inventory files and would need to defrag the disk more frequently than the average home user. Having files that are fragmented is not necessarily a bad thing. Your computer knows where all the parts are and will always find them for you. What happens is that it slows down finding and displaying a file for your use. How many nanoseconds can you count between the time you ask for a file and your computer displays it? Sorry, I had to ask. What I am trying to say is, yes you should occasionally defrag your drive, but is it something to make a big deal out of, for most of us, no. If your are a "power user" and have to tweak the last nanosecond of speed out of your system, defrag frequently. If you just want to have a wonderful tool that you can enjoy, do it every week or month or quarter, whatever fits your schedule. That way you can do a disk scan at the same time and won't feel so frustrated by the time it will take. Gary and Janet Woodard, Houston ----- you wrote >I have had my computer now for 3 months and would like to have some input >on defragmenting. I was told to defragment everyday. My computer is > >usually 2% fragmented and the message asks if I want to defragment anyway. >How about thorough scan of disk? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 22:19:25 -0800 (PST) From: "John M. Brickley" <> Subject: Defragmenting Computer Hard Drives, A Different Viewpoint! Recently there have been some postings asking about defragmenting or optimizing hard drives. Many replies have already been submitted to the group explaining exactly what this process does, and why doing it periodically is good for your computer operation and the health of your hard drive. After reading these responses, I'd say the explanations are pretty good. However, most of the people who are asking for this explanation are somewhat unfamiliar with what is a NORMAL amount of maintenance to do to keep their computers in tip top shape. They come here because their friends and other people, in their zeal to share information with the "newbies," tend to over do it when it comes to giving technical advice. Like most uninformed people, the "computer youngsters" want to believe that what they hear from more experienced computer users is sage advice. But rarely do the old veterans include any practical advice to go along with their "techno-speak." Hopefully, in this note I will not be that way (too much). Computers are like fish tanks. "Keep your hands out of the water as much as possible." The more you fool around in a fish tank trying to keep the fish's environment near perfect, the more the chances are that you will introduce diseases and stresses to the fish yourself. The more you "play" with your computer trying to keep it "tuned up," the higher the chance you will either forget to do things properly or choose to do things improperly to save time and you will create a disaster for yourself. The best advice I could give someone who is just beginning their relationship with a computer is to take it slow. There are many things to learn about hard drive maintenance, including proper file management, routine virus scans, defragmenting, hard drive file repair, and backing up to name just a few. If you just jump right in there and start doing things without giving some thought to just exactly what you are doing, you can and probably will do more harm than good. You won't "hurt" your computer, even if you don't defragment it for the first year you own it, unless you are a huge user who makes MANY, MANY changes, deletions, edits, to numerous files on your hard drive. Simple word processing and a genealogy program do not make you a power user. For the average user, about all you may notice is that it seems to take a little longer for files to open. As for doing any physical damage to your hard drive, remember that most hard drives have a life expectancy rating of between 300,000 to 1,000,000 hours MTBF (No, this doesn't mean they will work for thirty years). What that means is that they were built to last a long, long time. Most damage to hard drives comes in the form of excess heat, but that is not the topic of this discussion. The read-write mechanism in a hard drive is built to deliver many years of trouble free use. To concern one's self with whether they will wear out a read-write mechanism because they don't optimize on a weekly basis is a bit ludicrous. By the time the average user wears out a hard drive, they will be looking for a bigger one anyway. FREQUENCY - How often should you defragment your hard drive? Defragment a hard drive every 1-3 months. How often this is done depends more on how full the hard drive is than how many edits you have done with it. A small (under 160 megabytes) hard drive that is around 90% full does not have much room to use for edits to your files, so what little free space it does have gets seriously fragmented in a hurry. For the everyday user, once a month is all they need. Occasional user, once every three months. A one gigabyte hard drive that is around 25% full, in the hands of a moderate user, might not need defragmenting but maybe twice a year. I have a 525 MB drive that is about half full, and I do mine about every two to three months. I am a daily user, and I edit a lot. By the end of two months my disk is maybe 12-15% fragmented. Remember, I have a lot of unused hard drive space available, over 50%. Serious fragmentation doesn't even start occurring until you get over 40-50%. I've seen hard drives that hadn't ever been defragmented, and were about three years old, and they would be around 60-80% and worked just fine. A bit slower loading files, but otherwise not a problem. STEP ONE "REPAIR" - Run a disk repair utility BEFORE you defragment your hard drive. Very Important! Routine use of a computer will cause some occasional file damage. Defragmenting a hard drive can involve moving ALL of the data and files that are on the hard drive to a new location on the hard drive. It can also mean moving some of the data around on the hard drive as many as ten or more times. Without running a hard drive repair utility BEFORE you defragment, you run the risk of having whatever damaged files that are repairable, become totally useless and unrepairable after the defragmenting process. If you like reinstalling software, then go ahead and stick your hand into the fish tank. Otherwise, make sure you follow correct procedures. If the file you lose was a one-of-a-kind file, then you can lose it entirely. To continue this thought a step farther, you should run a repair utility about every two weeks if you are a regular user of your computer, and at least once a month if you are not. If your computer likes to crash, freeze, or just isn't acting right, run a repair utility on it before you do anything else. This also applies when you "think" you may have a virus. Many times it's just a damaged file. Once the files are repaired, they are ready to be defragmented. Another issue is the possibility of "bad sectors." While I have yet to see a bad sector on a Macintosh hard drive, I have seen them frequently on older DOS machines (maybe it was just the fault of the DOS program I was running) and numerous floppies. These are slight defects in the physical media of the disk itself. (Floppies from Verbatim are famous for these defects right out of the box. Sony disks are very good.) If your computer tries to write information to the disk where the damage is, you can kiss it good-bye. A repair utility will look for this type of damage and will "mark" those spots so the computer will not place your valuable data at those locations. If you defragment your files and they get moved to those unmarked locations, say "Good-bye File." STEP TWO "BACKUP" Backup your files BEFORE you defragment your hard drive. I do not know of any utility programs that will defragment a hard drive that guarantees 100% reliability. All of them say that there is a chance that something might go wrong. If you have files that are irreplaceable, then you better have a fresh backup of them "just in case." Many people buy backup equipment to protect them from just this situation. These could be extra hard drives, tape drives, jaz drives, DAT backup, removable media, etc. Some people will back up their hard drives onto floppies, but somehow I find backing up onto 250 floppies to be a bit too much. I have a SyQuest EZ 135 Drive (Macintosh). I need just two disks to hold all of my files. The backups topic was previously discussed, so I won't go back over that. I will say this though; I have probably defragmented a hard drive over 2000 times (I also worked in a computer lab) and have never had the process go awry. But, you never know... Optional - RECOVER (undelete) any deleted files you want to recover BEFORE you defragment your hard drive. Even though I list this last because it would not be something you would normally do each time you defragment your drives, you should do this before you do anything else, just so you have the maximum chance of 100% recoverability. While most of us delete things with the intention of never seeing them again, occasionally we will change our minds. Most good utility programs have the capability of recovering files we threw out with the trash (Mac term). However, once you defragment your disk, chances are the spot where that file was sitting has been overwritten with new data during the defragmentation process. Recover the file first. To sum up: Routine defragmenting is part of good computer maintenance. Buy a reputable hard drive repair utility. Most will include all you need to repair your files, defragment your disks, erase files permanently, recover accidentally erased files, fix crashed disks, and much more. Use it according to the instructions. First repair, then backup, then defragment. Above all, if you aren't sure you know what your doing, then don't do it. Waiting until you find out how to do it properly won't hurt a thing. I hope some of you find this useful and that it answered some of your questions. John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 01:42:27 -0500 From: "William R. Kemp" <> Subject: Re: GEN-NEWBIE-D Digest V97 #41 I would like to thank all who kindly gave their advice on how to find some Rockwell prints and I have come up on some very good leads. Thanks to you all. Bill Kemp