www.itowler.com - Ian's Home on the web

This year I will not be renewing my Ancestry.com membership.  Partly because of the Expense, but mostly because I am not using it enough to justify the cost of roughly 160.00 (or a little more than 13.00 a month).  I currently have a backlog of items to get done on my own Familytree site, and I have a toddler in the house, so extra time for using Ancestry.com is not likely.

So one of the goals for 2011 is to lose some weight.  I have set a target weight of 165-170.  That should not be to hard, I just need to get it done.  To help with that, I need to kind of keep track of my progress or there lack of.  In years past, I had set a goal to lose weight, but I had no way to figure out if I was accomplishing my goal because I did not even have a scale in the house.  I now have a scale in the house, and as a part of this years goal to lose weight, I plan to "weigh-in" every Tuesday.  

It Happens over and over again, you catch the genealogy bug and you are itching to get started.  In the rush to get started, you add people to your tree, but you forget to add source information.  Ideally every single person in your tree will have at least one source record, indicating where you got the information on the person.  Dates of birth, dates of death, marriage, Census information all should have source information attached.

Well,

Post number 2 for the year, and as you can see, things are on a roll as far as updating the site.  Itowler.com has undergone a few changes, most of which are not minor.  The first major change is the fact that I have moved to a new host.  Right off the bat I noticed that there was an increase in speed.  The new host allows me much more control and so far I am liking it.  It has forced me to learn even more about server administration, but that is a good thing.

Like every year I am going to post my goals for 2011.  These are not resolutions, but rather goals.  What's the difference you may ask?  Well if it's a resolution, it is easier to fail or quit on.  For example, if the resolution is to stop drinking coke, if you have a coke, then you failed, and may think about giving up on the resolution entirely.  If it is a goal, having that coke is a "slip" and you can get back to the plan the next day. So., like 2009 and 2010... I am working on Goals for 2011 and not resolutions. 

So in an effort to make the site my user interactive, I have enabled the comments option for my blog posts.  This means that you will be able to comment on a post, instead of using the sitewide comment option.  This should make it easier to get in touch with me about a specific topic.

In the past I have not had this option enabled for security reasons.  Between security and spam concerns, I had chosen not to enable the commenting.  I no longer have as big of a concern about that.  Drupal is really solid, and I have also installed a pretty strong anti-spam system, so here we go.

Its near the end of June now and I figured that I would check in on my 2009 Goals and see how things are going so far. 

• Lose weight

This is a carry-over from last year.  I need to get down to 165-170.  I should get there, but again...who knows.  This one is starting to get important though, the longer I keep the weight on, the harder it is going to be to get rid of it.

Familytreedna.com is offering a great sale for the remainder of the month.  FamilytreeDNA.com is a DNA testing company that focuses on Genealogy.  To date they have 157,583 Y-DNA records, 91,097 mtDNA records, and 5,424 SURNAME PROJECTS.  One of those surname projects is the Toler 2 (Virginia) project, for which I am the admin.  There are only 2 Toler / Towler DNA projects, with a combined total of around 24 results.  Familytreedna.com recently announced that it will be offering a summer sale to help boost the amount of records that in the database.  The sale is a great deal.  Here are the details:

• Y-DNA37+mtDNA for $119. (The regular project price is $248 – a reduction of more than 50%!!)
• The promotion will begin on June 9, 2009 and will end on June 24, 2009
• Kits ordered in this sale must be paid for by June 30, 2009
  

Part of the great part about the internet is the ability to share information.  This is really helpful for genealogy.  Being able to share info and ideas about your ancestry is great, and the internet makes it even easier.  But in order to share people need to be able to find you.  Finding itowler.com just got a little eaiser.  itowler.com is now listed in the Genealogy Blog Finder. 

Itowler.com has been active now for about 4 years, and I have been posting about genealogy for about a year now.  Blogging about my genealogy has been helpful in a number of ways, not the least of which is the ability to connect with other people working on the same familes.   In order to make connecting with other people more effective, I use a number of tools, including SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and make sure that I submit my site to multiple search engines.  You can not find new people to connect with if they can not find you. 

I am not sure that I have ever mentioned it, but I descend from several individuals that fought in the American Revolution.  I actually share a surname with one: Joseph Towler (click on the name to view my genealogy data).  Using some online Genealogy resources, I discovered that Joseph Towler Fought with the 7th Virginia Regiment.  I have even found a few images of Muster Rolls from the unit (see the image on the right, click to enlarge).  I find these records really fascinating, as they provide more insight into the lives of the people that are included. 

To date, I have only found 2 Muster Records for Joseph Towler, and they are both when he was stationed at Fort Pitt.  The area around Fort Pitt would become the modern day Pittsburgh, PA.  One of the things that I find interesting is that Fort Pitt would have been about 340 miles away from where Joseph lived (or Bedford, VA).  This is a long way to walk.....