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.

Ancestry's iPhone app, "Tree To Go", is not so portable after all.

Yesterday I did a review of the new Ancestry.com app for the iPhone, "Tree To Go".  After writing the review, I decided to get something to eat.  My wife and daughter were sick so I went to Panera to get us some soup.  One great thing about Panera Bread is that they offer free wifi Internet access while you are in their store.  So, while I was waiting for my order, I started playing around with the Ancestry app some more.

Let me give you a little background on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, just in case you are not sure of the difference.  The two are essentially the same thing except that the iPhone makes phone calls and uses ATT's 3G network.  The 3G network gives an iPhone user the ability to get on the Internet from anywhere within the 3G coverage area.  You have probably seen the commercials on television where Verizon picks on ATT because their coverage map is better.  Despite ATT's claims that their coverage is as good as Verizon, they are misleading you.  ATT has great phone service but their 3G network is spotty.  Verizon ads show the 3G maps.  ATT ads show their phone coverage maps...two different things.  Where I am in Virginia, ATT 3G service is terrible.

As for the iPod Touch, it cannot make phone calls and cannot access the 3G network.  I should also mention that the iPhone has a digital picture and video camera installed, at least the newer ones do.  So, what does this mean for the Ancestry app?  A LOT!

While in Panera it dawned on me that I had not tried the app while being offline, without any Internet access.  I only have an iPod Touch, not an actual iPhone, so I went outside of Panera where there was no wifi service.  I then launched the Ancestry app and my dreams were somewhat crushed.  For as many good things as I had to say about the app yesterday, I have just as many negatives now.  If you do not have an Internet connection, you are out of luck!

I found out very quickly that, if you cannot get online, you have only very limited use of the app.  You cannot add photos or make any changes to the people.  It does let you look at what the app has already downloaded from the server.  You can basically see the tree as it was the last time you were online.  You can see the people, dates, locations, etc. but you cannot make changes.  So, what does this mean?  If I go to a cemetery, I cannot take a headstone photo and put it directly into my family tree if I do not have 3G service.  In most cases an iPhone would do fine, as long as you are in the coverage area, but an iPod Touch would be useless.  I also could not enter the dates I found from the tombstone because, there again, I am not connected to the Internet.

What Ancestry could do is redesign the app so that it stores your changes and then syncs with the online version the next time you have an Internet connection.  That becomes a bit complicated if you have made changes to both the app file and your online file, which one is right and which is out of date?  It could be done but that involves a lot of work on their part.

I do not want to come across as bashing the app.  It is a great step forward for Ancestry but it still needs work.  I want to be able to fully use the app myself, I just do not know if it is worth getting an iPhone at $300 plus $80 per month for the next 2 years!  I can renew my Ancestry membership for the next 14 years for that kind of money.

Ancestry.com iPhone and iPod Touch App Review

I was extremely excited to hear that Ancestry.com put out an iPhone application within the past few days.  I was even more ecstatic when I found out that it was free.  The download was quick and simple.  The only thing required when I launched the app was my Ancestry.com user name and password.

Unless you are an Ancestry.com member, the app is pretty much useless for you.  It pulls your Ancestry.com online family tree into the program for use.  So, unless you have a family tree on Ancestry's web site, you are out of luck!  It is key to remember that this is an Ancestry app, not a Family Tree Maker app.  You do not need Family Tree Maker to use the app, but you MUST have an Ancestry.com membership.  I guess you could use it with a free trail, but that would only last until your trial period was up.

I personally have an Ancestry.com membership but I actually did not have any trees online.  With that in mind, I had to upload one before I could do much with the app.  If you do not have a tree already, it will prompt you to create one at the Ancestry site.  Trust me - the screen on an iPhone or iPod Touch is too small to do much data entry.  With that in mind, I opted to start Family Tree Maker on my computer and uploaded a small tree to the site, a file with about 60 family members.  Despite the small file size, it took a long time for it to upload.  Maybe the Ancestry site was busy last night with extra traffic, becuase of the new app.

It took about an hour for my file to upload but after that, the app ran quite fast.  It found my new tree automatically and opened right up.  The color scheme is nice, typical Ancestry green and antique white.  All of the basic data entry functions that you would expect are there.  You can create and edit people in your file.  You can write and edit notes and even upload photos to your file.  This is a neat feature if you have an iPhone with a camera.  You could take a picture at a cemetery and put it directly into your tree.  The best part is that the file on your iPhone is synchronized with the tree your have on Ancestry.com.  When I added a photo to a member of my tree, it was on Ancestry's site instantly.

There are a few weaknesses that I see right off.  There is no way to see an actual tree, at least that I have found.  There are no reports and I do not see any way to share/export/email information to your friends.  I also do not see how you can delete someone from your tree.  The idea here is not to be a Family Tree Maker substitute but instead a way to view and work on your tree from the road.  In that respect, it was better than I expected.  For a new app, it is very clean and looks great!

As would be expected, the app is a little buggy.  When you look at a person's photo gallery, the images are not cropped properly.  It also gets stuck between images sometimes.  It is almost like all of the photos are connected end to end, instead of being separate files.  When you scroll across the gallery, it moves like a roll of microfilm and does not seem like individual photos in an album.  I only played with program for about an hour and it did cut off inexplicably once.

I will continue to play with the app for at least the next few days and let you know if I have any other thoughts.  As of right now, I think it is a great tool.  It might actually encourage me to put my entire tree on Ancestry's site, just to get the functionality out of this app.  The only negative about putting my tree on the site is that it does not sync with my Family Tree Maker file.  I would therefore have two family trees going, one on my computer and one online.  When Ancestry gets their online trees to sync with the at-home version of Family Tree Maker, then the app will be one hundred times more important to me than it is today.