If anyone does need more information or help with things you find on Saurette.com, please feel free to email me. I’m still around and willing to help. It might be more sporadic than usual, but I’m always available to field research queries and the like.

My son starts Kindergarten this Fall and as Molly gets older, I should have ample time to start digging into new avenues of French-Canadian genealogy. I hope everyone is enjoying this summer weather. I know I’m not.

Steve Rock
srock@saurette.com

For people who actually read these posts – I have added the ability to chat in real time with me (provided it says I’m available). I use Woopra analytics to watch over my site while I’m working. It allows me to watch people go through the site and see what surnames and people are being researched. I’ve had a few people come here recently that have spent a lot of time looking at particular surnames. I’m very glad that people can get something from the work I do. If you see that I’m available, please drop me a question while you’re browsing the site. You’ll find the Woopra chat box at the bottom of just about all the pages. This might work better for some people rather than email since we can have a chat while you are on the site itself. I tested this out yesterday and had a lovely chat with myself – so I know it works.

For now, I think I’m going to browse more census images to make sure I have rounded out my direct Saurette and Oligny ancestors. Pure data entry can get tiresome, especially if I’m not even sure why I’m doing it. I haven’t been doing much research for other people lately, (good or bad thing?), but that’s mainly due to lack of inquiries. The break has been nice, but I’m always available to help out – free as always!

On a humorous note: I’ve been getting traffic from other sites where people are trying to find the Saurette clothing line for kids. Their site is saurette.net. Some clothing sites have their web address listed incorrectly as mine. I bet people are really shocked when they land here!

I finally got around to updating the database yesterday as well – mainly because of corrections. If you are related to Onil Leduc, there was a big error there, but with the help of somebody doing Leduc reserach, it was pointed out to me and fixed.

Keep on diggin’!

Steve

I have added some census images to Almeric Saurette and Guillaume Saurette’s pages. I also have updated the Drouin images under ‘deaths’ to reflect the latest images I have found. Seems like I always have something new to add or change of late. That’s okay, that is part of the fun. I’ve been having great correspondence lately with several people and said correspondence has taken me down paths I might not have bothered looking into. I think the excitement for me is chasing down things that have eluded others and knocking down those research walls. Keep the e-mails coming!

I continue to source information and merge duplicate people as I find them. Each time I upload my database to the site, it gets more and more accurate to reflect what I have been doing. If you have issues and/or problems with anything, just let me know so I may address them.

The Super Bowl is this weekend. I’m not really excited about either team. There’s always the commercials and the half-time show . . . . .

The iPod touch is not going to be used by me to do new genealogy – it would take way too much time and be very hard on the eyes. I love how web sites render completely on the screen. If it is too small, then you can make it bigger. I got to wondering, though, if there was a way to optimize my genealogy site for the iPod touch and iPhone. Well, turns out there is. I spent this AM adding the capability to all the WordPress sites that I run.

If you visit Saurette.com from the iPod touch or iPhone, it will look pretty sleek. I was very impressed with the results. There’s a drop-down bar to move from page to page. The one big caveat is this: to view the database will still require viewing the site as normal and then magnifying what you are looking at. If, however, you want to read my posts or pages about my genealogy, then those will render very nicely.

I can tell from my tracking that there have been some visits by iPhone of iPod touch. If you come back or land here with that device, let me hear about it in the comments! If you also know of any killer apps I must have, give me a shout out for that too. I’m looking forward to many happy years with this new gadget.

• Finishing up the Drouin images for deaths (hardest ones to locate)
• Sourcing all the marriages in my ancestral lineage
• Adding info to surnames/families that people have searched for on the site

That last item is interesting. I can monitor the visitors on the site and what they are looking at. Thus, I can see what surnames and individuals people have looked at. Starting today, I have been checking the visits and then adding in information (if I have it) that pertains to the surnames people have looked for, that way, if they come back, there will be more information and more sourcing available.

As is typical, however, I fully expect to get sidetracked and start other projects along the way, but those three I outlined are on the front burners. I will continue to provide help as needed to those who contact me. If you do request help, you get my attention first and foremost.

It seems like the genealogy never ends even when it feels “done”.

Also, I have rescanned in some documents I had for better quality. The Almeric Saurette page got some updates as well. I had his death certificate for a long time, but hadn’t scanned it in a while. I finally got that done. Also, his daughter, Marie-Anna‘s page has been updated as well with another copy of her marriage record that just became available to me yesterday.

I will probably head back to finding some Drouin records for that section as well. This seems somewhat urgent to me since the Drouin images were taken down once already by Ancestry. Also on my to-do list is to rerun the descendant reports just in case the information has been changed from the last time. Basically, I’m just trying to keep things current and fresh (for me at least). Look for the new database to be updated to 20,000+ later this week.

So I was curious what the visitors to Saurette.com were using. I have checked my stats from August 1st up until October 20th and have the results (most to least use):

• Internet Explorer 7
• Firefox 3
• Internet Explorer 8
• Internet Explorer 6
• Safari 4
• Chrome

I was surprised that IE 6 was used so much these days. The top 3 were not far apart from each other. It takes a good sized drop from IE 8 to IE 6. Fortunately for me, Saurette.com renders fine in all the iterations of IE (last I checked anyways). The other site I am developing does not. IE 6 and 7 mess it up while *every* other standards compliant browser renders it correctly.

Maybe it is because I’m a techie, but I really can’t fathom why people still use IE at all. All the other browsers are better – plain and simple. A simple download and install and, boom, you are up and surfing and seeing pages viewed the way they were meant to be viewed.

As you can tell, this has nothing to do with genealogy, but I felt the need to mention it in case you ever visit sites and can’t understand why they look wrong (Steve stares directly at the IE 6 users). Don’t be so quick to blame the designer. Good design attempts to be standards compliant for maximum exposure to all the browsers. Microsoft just has to be different. I should point out that IE 8 is better, but still not 100%.

I want to hear from the few people who browsed the site via their iPhone! How’d that go?

You might wonder what this has to do with shipping costs. Well, these CDs are simply a .PDF of the book that has been scanned at some point previously. So the way I see it, when you place an order for a CD, all they need to do is burn the CD and ship it out. You can order these records as bound books also, but they point out on their site that there is a lengthy delay for those as they print on demand. I can understand that completely. I don’t understand why they have faster shipping options, which cost more, if they aren’t actually going to get the item out to you within that time frame.

I ordered one CD. I chose 2-3 priority shipping. That CD is a no show so far. It took 2 days to even get a sales receipt confirmation. I’m a patient person, but I don’t think sites should offer expedited shipping on things if they cannot do it. Or at least have a section on your site explaining your shipping practices based on what you order. This happened to me earlier this year when I ordered something, not genealogy related, paid more for quicker shipping and then was told the product wasn’t even in stock. To their credit, that business was great to work with – they ate the shipping cost for me and send out the product as quick as they could.

So, bottom line? I’m very leary now to order things from a smaller operation and pick quicker shipping. The big boys online seem to have no problems, but the little guys need to figure things out better, or at least have it spelled out on the site what they can do with shipping their goods.

I look forward to receiving this CD this week – fingers crossed – so if you have ancestors married in Bellechasse County, drop me a note and I can do some looking up for you. Here’s to a good week.

Well, I did genealogy research before having access to those records and I shall continue to do research if I never have online access to them. Since my main focus of research is on tracing ancestral lineages for people, I concentrate on marriages. Because I seek marriage info, I still have a lot of resources at my disposal, both online, and in my own personal collection – a collection I have spent a lot of money to build.

So, while the loss of the Drouin images at Ancestry.com is a bummer, it will serve to separate the wheat from the chaff as far as researchers go. The folks over at familysearch.com have picked up the ball that Ancestry has dropped. I won’t get into those details, but you can search over there for what’s been going on.

Now – back to the olden days of research!

I also added the Ancestry.com RSS feed to the sidebar. Any time they update their blog, the new info will show up here as well.

I’ve got some other ideas to mull around, but for now, I’ll be happy to see a tiny increase in traffic. Thanks again to all those who have emailed me recently. I have enjoyed the correspondence about our French-Canadian ancestors.

The other big change I might make is to upgrade my old version of Family Tree Maker. I use FTM on my desktop to store all my genealogy data. I’ve gotten so used to it and can input things very quickly and easily, but it is getting old. If I do upgrade that piece of software, nothing on the web side of things will change.

Have a great weekend all!

Steve Rock
steve.rock@saurette.com