A list of SOPA supporters was released recently and amongst other big name companies, Go Daddy was on the list. Go Daddy is a giant domain name registrar and that throws a lot of money around on sponsorships and advertising. Go Daddy was also the place I registered a lot of my domain names, including this one. Once I learned that Go Daddy supported SOPA I, like others, immediately began moving all the rest of my domains off Go Daddy, I process I began earlier in the year when Go Daddy’s CEO decided it was a good idea to go to Zimbabwe, shoot an elephant, then outfit local residents in Go Daddy hats as they tore the dead elephant to shreds, video the whole thing and post it on the internet. Yeah. You can’t make shit like that up.

Anyway, I still had 39 domains at Go Daddy so I talked to the folks over at hover.com who happily moved all my domains over to my hover account for me. Apparently this did not go unnoticed by Go Daddy. Check out this voicemail I received today:

Oh Todd.

You want to make sure Go Daddy wasn’t giving me a reason to leave? Go Daddy most certainly did sir, in the form of that dogs breakfast of legislation that they not only supported, they helped create helped create.

Despite today’s half assed press release kinda sorta withdrawing Go Daddy’s support of SOPA (you know, depending on how things go), I have no reason to continue a business relationship with a company that ever once thought it was a good idea to allow the censorship of the internet.

If you read this, Todd, don’t expect a call back.

Update

Here is the transcript of the voicemail for those requesting it:

Hi Erica, This is Todd calling from go daddy dot com. I was calling regarding your transfers away. I wanted to, hopefully touch base with you and just get some feedback from you to see um, we just wanna make sure that you’re provid… you’re being provided with the support that you need that you, you know, that we’re taking care of you, we just wanna make sure that we’re not giving you a reason to leave. Um, certainly not trying to necessarily change your mind uh we just wanna make sure that go daddy is doing everything it can just to meet your needs so. If you don’t mind sharing your feedback, we would love to hear from you. The number here is (480) 463-8895. We can also help you, with your transfers, if you need. So feel free to just reach out and let us know. Thank you very much. We certainly wish you Happy Holidays, and have a great day. Bye.

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As promised, the entire set of our wedding photos are posted.
Our photographers, the wonderful Allison Bitzer and Philip Given of The Susquehanna Photographic. Philip and Allison were not only great to work with and great people, they also support great causes. You’ll notice, if you visit our wedding photo gallery, a little image in the footer that says CC BY-NC-SA. That means my wedding photos are Creative Commons licensed. Yep, The Susquehanna Photographic supports Creative Commons. In my estimation, that makes them more awesome than any other photographers around. Their pictures aren’t half bad either.

Photo Copyright © THE SUSQUEHANNA PHOTOGRAPHIC

We’re mawwiaged! More pics later. <3, Erica

Mom had high blood pressure and headaches for much of her life and nearly a year ago exactly, one doctor decided to look deeper than the “stress, sinuses, tension” diagnoses she’d gotten in the past. An MRA revealed 3 different aneurysms. Her doctors response upon getting that test result was a 10pm call to my mom saying she needed to go to the ER. She did and my younger brother called and told me what was going on. My mom lived about 3 hours north of me if I drove normally. It took me about 2 hours to get there that night. The ER trip that night turned out not to be necessary but I wanted to be there with my mom regardless.

What followed was a succession of doctor visits and tests. An angiogram was done to reveal the size of the aneurysms (2 quite large, one “manageable”) and several doctors were consulted about the course of treatment. There was talk of her going to Buffalo in January of 2010 to have surgery for the aneurysms but the day discussed came and went and mom was still hanging out at home and working.

Early in 2010 (I can’t remember the exact month), my mom told me they’d finally scheduled the surgery, 3 days after my 30th birthday. Instead of going to Buffalo, she was having the surgery in San Francisco. The surgeon was supposed to be one of the best in the country. He was very confident about everything and this helped my dad and I feel comfortable about the surgery. Mom didn’t want to hear about it, didn’t want to talk about it. I found out later that she was taking anxiety meds to help deal with it all.

I arranged for my younger brother to fly down from Alaska and for my younger-ish sister to fly over from the East Coast. We engineered a successful surprise during what was technically my birthday weekend but really, the weekend was all about making sure she was feeling the love from all of us. She had to be at the hospital at 6am for her surgery so we all (well us minus the fiance who had to go back early for work) got in the Durango at 3am and headed down to SF.

After some paperwork and waiting around, her surgery got underway at around 7:30am. The surgery went on until about 6:00pm. To say we were tense and anxious was an understatement. She made it through the surgery, though there were some complications. We could never get a straight answer from the surgeon on why the surgery took 12 hours vs. the 8 hours we expected, nor did we get an answer as to why he deviated from the original surgical plan. All we knew was that instead of her aneurysm being coiled, it was clipped. The clipping caused some unexpected clotting that, to quote the surgeon, “blocked a small but important artery.” We’ll call that the understatement of the year.

Due to the blockage, Mom lost movement on her entire right side and had serious expressive aphasia. What was supposed to be a week long stay in the hospital followed by 6 weeks of rest at home turned into a week in the ICU and a week in recovery in the hospital. During much of the time in the ICU, Mom was in and out of consciousness and she battled hard to get from only saying “mmm hmm” and “uh uh” to being able to communicate with those of us around her. The expressive aphasia was frustrating to her to say the least. The lack of right side movement was beyond trying. Mom was a very do it herself kind of person and never really enjoyed being still for too long. Several times she tried to get up to do things on her own and I had to rush out to get a nurse to help. This was no surprise to me but I want to take this opportunity to take a small detour down the road of nursing.

Moms ICU nurses were top notch. Seriously, they moved like a well oiled machine and there were zero concerns from me aside from typical worried daughter “is she comfortable?” kind of things. Once she moved out of the ICU, things got concerning. Moms surgery was a multistage surgery that required an 8 inch incision on her left forearm, a 6 incision on her neck, and a large incision on her head. Due to all the meds and fluids she needed, a PICC line was put into her right arm. Due to the increased swelling and fluid in her head, they put in a drain on the side of her head opposite her incision. She definitely needed a lot of special attention. She didn’t get that unfortunately, and I had to point out specific instructions to the rotating parade of nurses several times. At one point, she developed serious pain in her right shoulder, enough that even having her sit up caused her great distress. Nurses response? We’ll get you some more pain meds. It took everything in me not to go off my hinges a little bit at this. Maybe its the troubleshooting computer tech in me that thinks you should find the root cause of a problem instead of band-aiding the symptoms. I digress…

Once the hospital deemed she was ok to move to a rehab facility, things were starting to look up but she was very upset that she wasn’t being taken home. She did not want to be in the rehab facility at all. I guess that should have been a sign. The nurses there were…a different breed? They were under the impression my mom was recovering from a stroke. I think the large cut on her head should have given away the fallacy of that. They didn’t know what she was supposed to do to eat or use the bathroom (in fact, one of them asked me and Steve on our first visit there).

On the night my mom passed away, Steve and I came up to visit after work like we normally did. Steve would always meet me at work and we’d take one of the cars up to the city together so we could ride in the HOV and have a slightly less traffic jammed ride up to the city. We got to the rehab facility and dad told me that when he got there, they’d taken her blood pressure on top of her PICC line. Everything ever written about a PICC line says you are NEVER supposed to put a blood pressure cuff over a PICC line and if you must take blood pressure from the same arm a PICC line is in, you do it from the forearm. Obviously when I heard that, I was livid, given that there was a sign over her bed saying exactly what not to do when a patient has a PICC. More digression.

Mom seemed fine that Friday evening and Steve and I told her goodnight and that we’d come back Sunday. Saturday was a wedding prep day. We left and Steve picked up his car from my job while I stayed at work to make use of my large monitors to work on some of the graphics work for our wedding invitations. Dad called me at about 10pm or so and told me that mom had taken a turn for the worse. I immediately called Steve and he came right back and back up to SF we went.

When we got to the hospital, Dad told me that mom complained of pain in her head and they took her down to get a CAT scan. While she was getting the CAT scan, something in her brain was bleeding and by the time they’d finished the CAT scan, she’d lost all neural activity. When I was allowed to see her, she was hooked up to some machines that kept her breathing but for all intents and purposes, my mom was gone.

I broke down. I never break down but I most certainly did that night. Panic, shock, etc etc. I called my brother who knew something was up but was not expecting to get THAT call. He was in denial. Shock. Etc. I called my sister and my other brother and my aunts and that was about all I could take. We helped Dad take his suitcase and moms suitcases out to the Durango and he went back home and we went home.

I cried a lot. I didn’t think it was fair. I still don’t. I want to make inquiries to see what went wrong at the rehab facility because once she was there, she was supposed to be out of the woods. I want to know why a brain surgery patient was allowed to bleed out during a CAT scan. Those inquiries will happen after the wedding, I just can focus the mental energy on them now.

I wonder what the surgeon thinks about my moms passing. I wonder if he feels like someone else messed up his work. I wonder if he got angry when he found out. By the way, don’t let Grey’s Anatomy fool you, neurosurgeons are not all like McDreamy. This one definitely was not. Bedside manner is maybe a skill he could work on.

It’s been a month since my mom died and I cry all the time, for no reason. Well, there is a reason, obviously, that I miss my mom. I wish I could have her back. I wish she could be at my wedding. I wish that she never had to go through any of what she went through and could still be here, healthy, enjoying life. She was always worried she’d die at an early age. Her mom died at 37. Her mom’s mom died at 41. So now, that has become my worry also. Aneurysms are hereditary and I’ve been having weird, random, icepick headaches a lot lately. I have a doctors appointment for them tomorrow. I am hoping I don’t get a 10pm call with unwelcome test results.

I’m trying to let you rest in peace Mommy. I miss you.

No related posts.

I found my Uncle on Facebook.

Sounds pretty mundane, run of the mill right? Many of your family members are on Facebook, I’m sure. To grasp this, let me back up for about oh, 50 some odd years.

My grandma went down to Saint Petersburg as a young woman, I’m not sure why but I know she ended up working at a local business. There she met a man. They conceived my father. The man then went…somewhere. My dad was born and never knew his father or who he was.

Fast forward to 1997, as my grandmother knew her days were getting short. She told my dad the circumstances of how she and his father met and also his fathers name. My grandmother passed away shortly thereafter.

Fast forward again to 2005 or so. I started becoming extremely interested in my family tree and history. I asked my dad what he knew of his father and he told me his fathers name, as told by his mother. I immediately did a search on Ancestry.com for the name. No matches. I didn’t pay much attention to it. I hadn’t known my grandfather for 25 years and it wasn’t that big deal a that I couldn’t find him. I assumed either my grandmother remembered the name incorrectly or my grandfather didn’t tell her his full name.

Fast forward again to 2010. I had my dad do the the Big Spit (23andMe test) and he’s got many Relative Finder matches. His paternal haplogroup is one of great interest to several people in said haplogroup. These results reinvigorated my interest in trying to find my paternal grandfather. Once again, I turned to Ancestry.com. Once again, nothing. This time though, I decided to be a bit more persistent.

Let’s rewind to 2005 again for a moment. The internet was still all about search and finding information useful to you. Facebook was still private. MySpace was being purchased by NewsCorp and was still for music artists and teenagers, for the most part. Friendster had a brief explosion of interest and use but was fizzling out. In 2005, the concept of  social networking just hadn’t yet reached the masses.

Things have changed here  in 2010. Facebook has just reached 500 million users and I can easily strike up a conversation with both my future mother-in-law (hi Lynne!) and my dad on the site if I so desired. Social networking is not just an idea a few sites are toying around with, it has permeated the internet.

Message #1 and what I thought was the most promising.

That was my thought process when I decided to take a pretty drastic (for me anyway) step on June 12, 2010; I searched for every person with the last name Anderson (of course this is not the real name) on Facebook and emailed anyone that looked to be any parts of African-American. The first person I emailed was also the first person to respond and he was who I thought I was going to get the best response from. I mean, he looks like my dad looked 20 years ago albeit a little shorter.

I sent him a message and got a response that I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, he knew a David Anderson! On the other hand? This David  was from Georgia and everything my grandmother told my had to do with a David from New Jersey. I decided to wait for other responses before chasing down his since it seemed unlikely to be a match.

I’d also sent a message to a person also named David Anderson. He didn’t have a profile picture (well he did but it wasn’t of himself, it was an inanimate object) but I decided to take the chance that he may be related in some way. He responded to my message with the following: “Lol ha Yeah i know him very well, thats my dad call me 555-555-5555″

"That's my dad. Call me..."

Pause.

What? Wait what? This guy is my uncle?! But…he’s younger than me!  Composing myself, I asked more questions and eventually called. We compared details about his dad and my Dad’s dad. Lived in New Jersey? Yep. Lived in Florida? Yep. Born around the same time? Yep. Throughout the conversation, I was the one providing details and he was the one corroborating so my guard was up. Maybe he just responded positively to mess with me. Then he added his aunt (my great-aunt) into the mix. She was as skeptical as I was. Wouldn’t you be? Who just randomly pops up out of the blue like “Hey! I’m your brothers 30 year old grand-daughter! Holla!”  She and I spoke on the phone and told me she’d talk to her brother about the situation.

She was true to her word. The next day, she called me back. She spoke to her brother. He remembered my grandmother. He’d like me to call him.

…

No way. I was still in disbelief and shock. I took down his number and never called. I did speak to the other David again and while we were talking, he put me on hold. When he came back, his dad, my supposed grandfather was on the phone. A month later I still shake my head at this. I talked to this man who we thought to be my grandfather but I was still skeptical. I asked him how he knew and met my grandmother and he called her his girlfriend. Said they worked together in Saint Pete. Said where they worked in Saint Pete. Highly interesting because I had no idea what my grandmother did down there. Once we got off the phone with him, I called my dad. Asked him what my grandmother did in St. Pete. He confirmed what the man on the phone said. The man who was supposed to be my grandfather. The man who is my grandfather.

Still on the phone with my dad, I asked him if he was sitting down. He was, watching some show on the Discovery channel. I asked him if he’d like to know his fathers phone number. The line was silent for what felt like 5 minutes but probably was only 30 seconds or so. He said yes. I asked him if he was shocked, he said yes. I gave him his fathers number.

The next day, I called my dad back and asked if he’d called his dad. Yes, he said, but they were going to have talk again later. Talk they did. 3 weekends ago, my dad went to meet his father for the first time. At the same time, he met the rest of his family at their family reunion. 3 days ago, he and his younger (by 25 years) brother had lunch.

My dad now knows his dad. Sorry if this is a bit dramatic. I’m all weepy-eyed as I type this because it still floors me. I can’t even begin to imagine how my dad feels right now.

All because of  a search on Facebook.

The internet is a powerful tool. We truly live in the information age and it is remarkable, yet only in its infancy.

Truly remarkable.

Hi Dad!

P.S. The person in message #1 is actually related. The real last name (no, not Anderson) turns out to be fairly uncommon. Also? Hate finding typos where my fingers skipped over a word because my brain was moving too fast. I do that a lot, as evidenced by the typos in the messages in the images above and likely in this blog post.

P.P.S. Thoughts expressed in this post are mine alone and not my employers, blah blah, etc etc.

No related posts.

It seems like 23andMe is firing on all cylinders lately. They published some results from the 23andWe research program shortly after knocking out the bulk of the massive amount of DNA day orders in record time (most people I heard from got their results in less than 4 weeks). Of course there were a few outliers taking the full 8 weeks for processing and the unlucky 96 who got the wrong results but for the most part, 23andMe has been working at a furious pace from what I can see.

Following in the fast paced trend, they’ve recently released a new tool in Ancestry Labs called Ancestry Finder (currently in closed beta). I sent them a message asking to be included in the beta and they kindly added me. I spent some time testing out the tool and from what I can see, this is going to go far in increasing the amount of sharing between distant family members. Enough text, time for pictures.

The first thing I saw in Ancestry Finder

When I first opened the Ancestry Finder tool, my initial thought was “meh, this is going to be another of these things not applicable to African Americans.” As you can see in the image above, the information presented just wasn’t compelling…well non-existent really. Unimpressed but undeterred, I clicked to show the Advanced Controls. (Yes, I saw the big blue “how does this work” button but who reads directions?)

Advanced Controls

Advanced Controls revealed some settings that shouldn’t be hidden and shouldn’t be deemed “Advanced”. Why? Because this is where all the magic happens.

To explain the Advanced Controls, I have to back up a little bit and share how the Ancestry Finder works. On 23andMe there is a feature called Relative Finder (RF). RF basically compares your DNA to other members of 23andMe participating in RF and if a significant chunk of your DNA is identical, they can determine (to some degree) your relatedness. There is also a voluntary survey on 23andMe called “Where Are You From” that  asks you to detail your families ancestral origins to the best of your ability. Here is where Ancestry Finder comes in. If one of your Relative Finder matches has completed the “Where Are You From” survey, their answers are presented to you in a graphical format on Ancestry Finder.

Back to the Advanced Controls, there are 3 controls that can adjust what results you can view. I’ll go through each and kind of explain what they do.

Results from toggling the "Include matches primarily from US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa" checkbox

The first thing anyone using this thing should do is check the box to Include matches primarily from US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. To be honest, I am not sure why 23andMe includes the option to hide those results. However, the option is there and the default is unchecked, which has the potential to hide a large portion of your matches.

Results from changing the "Number of grandparents from the same country" option to 1+

The second highly important option is the “Number of grandparents from the same country” dropdown. This allows you to choose which results are displayed based on how many of your matches grandparents are from the same country. The default is 4 so that if one of your RF matches has grandparents who are all from say, Ireland, that match will show up. Again, this default highly limits the amount of data that shows up for a reason I can’t yet discern. To see all the matches, I chose the 1+ option. This allows me to see all my matches responses to the Where Are You From survey, even in the case of people who don’t know where their grandparents are from.

Results from moving the "Minimum Segment Size" Slider down to 5cm.

Finally, there is a slider in the middle that changes how small a segment can be for it to be shown. I adjusted mine all the way down to 5cm from the default 10cm. Unlike the other two options, I can understand the default setting for this option. At 5cm, the RF match is probably in the Distant Cousin range and knowing where their grandparents originate probably can’t provide much insight into recent ancestral origins.

Those are the Advanced Controls. Again, I can’t figure out why those would be called “Advanced” as adjusting them is the only way to see anything of interest in the tool.

Hovering over individual segments.

One of the coolest things about Ancestry Finder is what happens when you hover over one of the colored segments. On hover, a small box pops up explaining each portion of the segment. In the example image to the left, I captured a couple results of what happened when I hovered over a segment. You can see the breakdowns for each color (in the top segment, Navy for Canada, Purple for Iceland, and Lime for the UK) as well as the Segment Length for each result.

I think Ancestry Finder is huge. Game changing huge. Paired with Relative Finder, its going to make 23andMe one of the most useful tools for Genealogy researchers. Of course, there are some tweaks I’d like to see. Like I mentioned above, the Advanced Controls definitely shouldn’t be hidden and some of the default settings should be changed. I would also like to see those “Your relative’s…” pop ups become clickable with the link going to the RF match’s profile.

I am interested to see if Ancestry Finder encourages more people to use Relative Finder. Right now, my RF response rate (matches that respond to initial contact) is about 33% and based on messages posted in the 23andMe community, that is fairly high. If other 23andMe members are anything like me, they’re going to want to see what all 23 chromosomes look like filled up with Ancestry Finder data. That, of course, requires increased interaction in Relative Finder so there is a good possibility RF usage will increase. In any case, Ancestry Finder is definitely a very useful addition to 23andMe’s tool belt. I look forward to seeing how the community responds once it comes out of beta.

Update: Looks like they took Ancestry Finder out of Beta today and now it is available for use by all 23andMe members. Nice!

My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.

…Joel C!

Thanks for your participation everyone!

A couple days ago, as a thanks for my participation, 23andMe gave me a code for a free Complete Kit, a $499 value. I toyed with the idea of which person in my family I was going to get to spit. I had this whole elaborate plan of finding one of my moms dad’s brothers sons and getting them to do it but then I figured, there is someone out there that needs this more.

So I’m giving it away. A Complete Kit includes (copying and pasting from the 23andMe website here):

• Ancestry

  • Relative Finder
  • Maternal Line
  • Paternal Line (for men only)
  • Ancestry Painting
  • Global Similarity

• Health (156 reports)

  • Carrier Status (24)
  • Disease Risk (81)
  • Drug Response (17)
  • Traits (34)

• Download your raw data

  Download your mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA data, as well as data for nearly 600,000 other positions.

Enter by posting a comment on this blog post stating how a complete genotyping from 23andMe would benefit you. Entries will be accepted until June 17, 2010 11:59 PM PDT. I’ll post the winner on June 18.

The End. Have a happy summer people!

Disclaimers and other stuff:
Winner will be chosen at random (using a number generated at http://www.random.org/). This giveaway was not requested by or endorsed by 23andMe. My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer. My employer is not a party to this giveaway nor does it endorse this giveaway, nor have I asked it to.

I’s (getting) married now!

Squeeeee worthy? I think so.

To save you all from the deluge of wedding ideas that I want to share, I’ve created a new tumblr specifically for these thoughts. Follow if you like to read about wedding-y stuff.

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For the days leading up to Black History Month, I will do a cursory Family Tree for any African-American folks that ask me. The only caveat? You have to be willing to post your tree somewhere (blog, FriendFeed, Facebook, twitter, etc) during Black History Month.* Why? I think AfAms need a better understanding of who we are and where we come from. Interested? Email familytreeme@ericabaker.com.

To expand, I define cursory as “as many generations I can go back without having to jump over many hurdles”. This normally gets me back to the 1870s for most African-Americans and if the data is good, I can go further.

To get started, I’ll need the names and if possible, birthdates and birthplaces of your grandparents. The tree I generate will work backwards from them.

Once done, I’ll give you a list of all the people in the tree, the actual tree itself, and the GEDCOM format file in the case you want to upload and continue working on the tree in Geni or another family tree tool. If applicable, I’ll also provide interesting supporting documents (Freedmen’s Bank Records, Draft Registration cards, wills, etc).

Please feel free to pass this on to others.

*Why the necessity to post during Black History Month? Reminding people that Black History is more than just remembering the efforts of civil rights activists and celebrating African-American inventions; it’s our history.