What happens when you achieve your dream (and it wasn't what you expected it to be)?

I have always collected license plates, Virginia plates to be exact.  No, I do not have a physical collection of license plates in my office or anywhere in my house.  The collection is in my brain.  I like to run across low-number license plates.  In Virginia, the lower the plate number the more important the driver...or so it seemed to me for all of these years.  Most of the low-number plates I have found belong to members of the Virginia government.  Some are house or senate members, others may be a court clerk or someone else of elevated status.  In most cases the person's job title is spelled out on the plate itself.  I guess that is code for "do not tow me, I am important."

I saw Eric Cantor's car at Panera Bread one day, a few years ago.  If you are not familiar with Mr. Cantor, he is a member of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia and I think he will be the Majority leader for the House in a few days.  Cantor is a pretty good guy.  I remember when he actually went door to door and talked to people.  My mom saw him so many times, he actually remembered her name...but that was years ago.  Anyway, I was excited to see his car, but he was not in the restaurant.  One of his aides was picking up lunch I guess.

One little-known fact is that the members of the Virginia legislature park in the basement of the Library of Virginia.  They ride the elevator up to the main level and then walk across the street to their offices.  I have ridden the elevator with many prominent figures.  One of my most memorable experiences was bumping into John Hagar, who was Lieutenant Governor of Virginia from 1998-2002.  I actually ran into him on the street and spoke to him for a few minutes.  At that time, he was in office and was alone on the street...no security whatsoever.  I do not remember if it was before or after 9/11, but it struck me as odd that he would be alone.  

You have to keep in mind that Hagar is in a wheelchair.  I have no idea why he is disabled but he uses a wheelchair for whatever reason.  You also have to keep in mind that Richmond is a very hilly city.  Here I am, on West Broad Street, and here come the Lieutenant Governor wheeling himself, in a manual chair, up a hill.  I gained a huge amount of respect for the guy at that moment.  He probably could have had help from any number of people but he was out on his own, living life.  I saw Hagar a few times after that, at various functions around town, but never in the same light I saw him that day.  You may have also seen Hagar on the national news in 2008 when his son married President Bush's daughter, Jenna.

So, back to the license plates.  After all of my years of searching for low number plates, I had found a lot of good ones.  I have seen numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on but I never found the illusive plate number 1.  I always assumed it belonged to someone of utmost importance, probably the governor himself.  I doubted that the governor drove himself around a lot so I understood the elusiveness of the plate.  Well, that all changed for me one day last week.

My wife is a photographer and she wanted me to deliver some photos to a client.  I agreed but was not overly excited about doing it.  I had to drive to her studio and pick them up before making the actual delivery...more than I really wanted to do.  Being a good husband, I took the ride and kept my mouth shut.  Well, on the way to drop off the photos, a truck pulled in front of me and to my surprise...it was plate number 1!  It was nondescript except for the blaring "1".  It gave no indication that I was following the governor, or anyone else for that matter.  It was absolutely killing me to pass the person and see who was driving.

We were on a one-lane road so I had no way of passing them.  Luckily the driver was going the way that I was, so I waited for the perfect moment to make some kind of move.  Luck was apparently on my side because the vehicle's driver decided to take a right up ahead.  I sped up and got as close as I could so that when the vehicle turned, i might be able to see the driver.  Now, my memory is a little fuzzy here, but the driver seemed to have been an older man or woman...but clearly not Bob McDonnell!  I was a little disappointed but I drove on and delivered the pictures.  I did manage to pull out my iPod Touch and snap a photo of the plate as a keepsake.

The more I thought about this over the next few days, the more it began to bother me.  All of these years I held license plate 1 up to this really high level of expectation.  For all intents and purposes, my dreams were crushed because, as far as I could tell, the driver of car 1 for the Commonwealth of Virginia is an average Joe.  Now, I could be wrong.  The driver could have been someone of great importance but I can at least say they were not who I expected or was looking for.

I went and saw the Disney movie "Tangled" with my daughter this past weekend.  There is a scene in the movie where Rapunzel is in a boat with Flynn and they are talking about dreams.  Rapunzel always dreamed about seeing the release of these certain lanterns into the sky.  As she waited with Flynn to see the lanterns drift into the heavens, she found herself being afraid.  What if the lanterns did not meet the expectations of her dreams, or worse yet, what if they surpassed her expectations, what would she do?  His answer was simple, you just find another dream.

Now, I find myself sitting here waiting for a new dream to come along.  I know all of this sounds silly but I really did just achieve something I had been looking for all of my life.  I cannot help but feel a little bit lost.  In genealogy, we have tons of little dreams...to find the grave of great-grandpa or locate cousin Joe on the 1880 census.  It is easy to pick a new genealogical dream because there are tons of them available.  Genealogy is a search that never ends...unlike finding the only license plate number 1.

I am sure that one day I will find a new dream, to find a new game to play.  License plates were great fun while it lasted but those days are gone.  I mean, what am I going to do, start looking for plate 10?  No, because that could never evoke the excitement of finding number 1.  But at the very least, if you think about it, I got 32 years worth of entertainment for free.  I guess I should be grateful for that much!

My stab at a review of the Apple iPad

It has been awhile since I decided to review a new product that hit the marketplace. I suppose nothing has caught my eye lately but I feel as if I should throw out my two-cents when it comes to the new Apple iPad. It hit the stores earlier this month and I have had two opportunities to play with one. After some time to digest it, here are some of my thoughts...

The iPad struck me as being a little heavy but the overall size is nice.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, the iPad is basically a big iPod Touch.  It is caught somwhere between a cell phone and a laptop.  You cannot make phone calls on it and you cannot install software on it in the traditional sense.  In that way, it is nothing like a cell phone or a laptop!  Confused yet?  Think of it as a portable way to do all of your social networking.  It is great for surfing the web, listening to music, sharing photos, writing email and watching movies.  It is not so great for word processing or other heavy functions.

(Going forward, I am going to pretend that you are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of how it works and skip any additional, generic descriptions.)

The screen on the iPad is beautiful...the picture is great.  The touch screen works well but it seems to me that the rate sensor (or gyro) is a little slower than that of the iPod Touch.  In other words, when you flip the iPad from vertical to horizontal in your hands, it is sometimes slow to chnage format or does not change at all.  That is quite annoying...the most annyoing thing that I have found to date.

Other facets of usage seemed a little sluggish.  I though the map application was a little slow and the email system had a little lag to it.  Now, don't get me wrong, all of these functions run well, but they did come across as slightly less than blazing to me.  I might be expecting too much!

The current version of the iPad has Wifi capability only.  At the end of the month, they are coming out with a no-contract 3G version where you can connect to the Interent thorugh the ATT network.  That will be neat becuase you could sign up for one month of service at a time, with no contract.  You can also sign-up and cancel right for the iPad itself and not have to call or visit an ATT store.

Other impressions...I thought that YouTube videos played back alittle grainy...but that could be their poor quality and not that of Apple.  I also do not like how small iPod Touch apps show up on the screen...they are tiny!  I would hope that most app vendors would make full iPad-sized apps in the near future.

All-in-all, I really like the new iPad but I do not feel that it would do more for me than my iPod Touch already does.  It might be neat with the 3G function though.  You could sit in a cemetery and upload data to Find-A-Grave in real time (although witthout photos becuase there is no camera on the iPad).  That would also assume the cemetery is within ATT's coverage area.

For now, I will probably not buy an iPad because of its price tag, ranging from $499 to $849 based upon size and 3G capability.  I would gladly accept one as a gift for my birthday but would probably not buy myself one right now...it's nice but not so nice that I would spend my own money!  If the next version comes out with a camera, I would probably jump all over it...but that would be a few years down the road.

What I am genealogically thankful for this year.

I know this is a day late but I was thinking about it last night...what are the top ten things I am thankful for in genealogy this year?  It took me awhile to fill this list but here we go, in no particular order...

1. State budget cuts this year did not severely hamper the Library of Virginia.  In past years, they were forced to lay off employees or even close for extra days during the week.
2. Family Tree Maker 2010 finally seems to be getting stable.  I think I have finally made the long-term switch to that product.
3. Ancestry.com went public this year - it is now on the stock market.  This may turn out to be a terrible thing in the long run but for now it seems positive.  They have a huge rush of cash into the company so I would expect a lot of expansion in the near future.
4. Getting my new office set up.  I am sitting here typing in it right now!  I am not finished with it yet but I should be done by the end of the weekend.  I mostly have to do some trim work and painting.
5. I set out to create a free set of genealogy lessons by email, for the general public, and I actually did it.  I wrote 20 lessons, set up a website and an email delivery system.  You can check it out here:  USA Family Tree.  I have over 1,000 subscribers.
6. I was directed to the Library of Congress site Chronicling America - a free database of US newspapers from the late 1800s to the early 1900s - great site!
7. I bought an iPod Touch.  This, more than anything, changed my life this year.  For about $300, I have a very powerful computer in my pocket at all times.  I am even able to have a viewable copy of my GEDCOM with me whenever I need it.
8. My GPS unit, great for finding my way around old country roads.  It keeps me from pulling over constantly to read a map.  It also helps me to record the coordinates of places that I find, such as an old cemetery.
   
9. I finally got the picture of my great-great-great-grandmother that I knew existed but never took the time to track down.  I found a new cousin, told them how to find the photo, and they tracked it down for us...very exciting.
10. Finally found the middle name of my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Addison Vass, on his daughter's SS-5.  We always assumed his middle name was Andrew so this was a great find.

Well, that is my genealogical to-be-thankful-for list.  What is on yours this year?