I've Dreamed of You

I love this song.

Christmas Songs On The iPod

Yes, I have a lot of digital music. So much so that it kills the hard drive on my computer. Because of this, I have the music split up in different libraries. One for school, one for Christmas, one for Halloween, you get the idea. There's a way I use to import back into my main iTunes library from these other libraries so I can synch them to my iPod. Yes, this includes Because It's Christmas from Barry, but it also includes some other favorites.





Someone took another favorite of mine - from Mannheim Steamroller - and added some Christmas lights. Enjoy.

Fun With Dolphins

Happy Thanksgiving

Artwork Copyright: Disney


Happy Thanksgiving!

Mine is done for the night, and boy, am I full from the great food.

Mom came over and we had dinner together, the two of us.

When I was little, Mom would make the turkey, and my sister and I would try to do our part to help. In the 1980's, Mom went back into the world of work, which meant that she was usually working on Thanksgiving Day. This meant a little bit of a change: Dad making the turkey, with some help from teenager Dawn. Needless to say, I learned how to make a turkey.

When my sister left, we kept up the turkey tradition, only we would try to find smaller and smaller turkeys, until we realized we could have a better and easier time cooking chicken instead. Since Dad passed away, we don't do turkey at all; Mom doesn't like the taste of it.

This year, I had Mom over to my place. We both have cats, but I have just the one, so there is less competition for the food. :-) With corn, cranberry sauce, stuffing and an apple pie with spices and raisins, it was a very filling dinner to have. I now have plenty of leftovers to keep me going for a good week.

Tomorrow is Black Friday. What are your plans for it? I may do some grocery shopping, maybe some craft shopping, but no gift shopping this year. I made another investment over Veterans Day weekend (I'll talk about that on another post), so I've spent as much as I can afford for Christmas. I'm thinking this year will be smaller with giving some homemade crafts instead.

For those traveling, please be careful in your travels.

And for all, a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving.

Because It's Christmas

Of all of the Christmas songs from the Christmas CD's Barry Manilow has done, this has always been my favorite song.



Incidentally, one of the long term subs at my school yesterday told me she would be going to Vegas in March and was hoping to see Barry perform while she's there. I had, in the past, shown her the picture of Barry and I from the Platinum I did last Christmas, so she's wanting to see him perform. I hope he's performing during the time she's there, I'm sure she'll enjoy his show.

Now About Those Pat Downs...

Too bad neither Fox nor Obama seem to be asking the questions others are, at least according to Fox News:

Obama Is Told There Is No Alternative To Pat Downs

Others are asking a smarter question: What do airports in the Middle East do for their screenings?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Traveling Over The Holidays?

Some helpful tips to get you through the TSA Screening.

Very cool!

Well, the dog will not be outrunning rabbits, but it will be walking and running. Technology put to great use.

The Other Side of Immigration

If you've seen my post on immigration reform from a while back, then you know there are more options to fixing the illegal immigration problems we have in the U.S., then just simply kicking people to the curb.

Here's a film that addresses it from a different angle.

It's That Time of The Year Again

Thanksgiving? No. Black Friday shopping? No. Christmas? No. Well, okay, yes to all three, however the point of this post is regarding the annual CNN Heroes Awards Ceremony. Where some unsung heroes and the causes they have created are publicly recognized.

Here's a video with more about it, a video I found to be very touching.

A Big Thank You

To Geneabloggers for the nice link to this blog!

Geneabloggers.com

Also a big welcome to anyone who shares my love for genealogy. As I've said before, it's addictive and you meet the nicest people while working in genealogy.

Thank you!

Watch This

You'll be glad you did.

If, by the way, you feel everyone in the U.S. has been duped after watching this, don't worry, you have.

Walt's Apartment

I saw this and couldn't resist.  Wow.  What history within those walls.

If you don't know, Walt had an apartment over the firehouse on Main St. in Disneyland (Anaheim).  Some people got to go in and see it, and posted the pictures online!

http://micechat.com/forums/disneyland-resort/145971-walts-apartment-rare-opportunity-private-tour-lots-pics.html

Genealogy

For those of you, my long time and new friends, who are into genealogy, there is only one word I can think of to describe it. Contagious! :-)

I was into locating my genealogy as a teenager, and became more heavily involved with it when Decker died back in 2000. Being a member of the Mormon faith, we are big on locating our ancestors, not just for the temple work involved, but also because of the stories and how their lives impact ours today.

There is a lot more to genealogy than just names and dates. As I just mentioned there are also the stories. Everyone has them, some are fun stories, some are downright depressing. Some, however, such as stories about incidents within the family and health related information, can actually help people know what medical issues they should be looking for that are genetically passed from one generation to the next. For example: I didn't know breast cancer was in my family (both Mom's side and Dad's side) until a few years ago when one of my aunts passed away from it. That's when it began to be discussed within my family.

As with many families, particularly ones where people didn't want to talk about the history of the family, this can be especially daunting, and sadly it takes a tragedy for things to come out. The good news is, once it does, the younger generation will at least have that information as part of their own history and they will hopefully pass it on.

Every family has their own sets of stories, and mine is no different.

I posted a few of the ones pertaining to deceased members of my family onto a web site I created as part of a Web Page Design class I took in 2001-2002. I need to update it, as several other family members (including my Father) have since passed away.

There are also a lot of online resources for people to locate stories as well as family members they didn't know existed. The social aspect of the internet has really propelled this ability to share this information with a lot of people, which has been quite a miracle in my eyes.

When Decker died back in 2000, I felt the pressure to finish the work he had tried to do, but was unable to finish at his unexpected death. He was the High Priest Group Leader in our Ward, and as such was responsible for getting the Family History (genealogy) work going in the Ward. While he was unable to get a class going, I got one going after his death.

Because of his encouragement that I take computer classes (he said my logical thinking was perfect for programming skills), I used those classes to create a program to tutor people on how to use the Church's software to submit located ancestors for temple work. This program was called Ascending The Temple Steps. At the time I was inspired by God to make it, the Church used the PAF program along with a new computer software called Temple Ready to get floppy disks ready with the names to be turned in to the Temple. This ground breaking software alone cut down the months long process of submitting paperwork to Salt Lake for approval into just a few minutes.

I first shared my little program on CD's to members of my Ward. Then the Stake leadership found out about it, and I began making CD's to the Stake. They told their friends and family about it, and before too long I was creating CD's and shipping them all over world, as far away as New Zealand. Because the program I made was HTML based and the tutorials were on PDF's, this allowed for an easier time for people worldwide to enjoy the contents of the CD. Pretty soon, though, I was spending hundreds of dollars on CD's and shipping charges, so I made the decision to post it onto the internet for easier location and ability to use.

Thankfully the Church now has a new secured system that has combined membership records with the genealogy records to give members a centralized location to locate, submit and collaborate with family on their genealogy and temple work.

I've left up the Ascending The Temple Steps web site though, it's a little more of a nostalgic look at how far things have come within the last 10 years (even more depending on how long you've been doing genealogy) with the technology.

http://members.cox.net/dawnbushman1/StartHere.html

The New Family Search web site for the Church:

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

After the success of the Ascending The Temple Steps program, I was asked to be a part of a Stake Committee to create a Family History program to teach children via our Primary about Family History. The result of our work can be found on my web site, an internet version of the paper workbook and disk the committee made called Turn Your Hearts:

http://members.cox.net/deckerbushman1/turnyourhearts.html

These and other links can be found on a section of my personal web site called Genealogy Pages:

http://members.cox.net/dawnbushman1/genindex.html

Happy hunting!

A Little Post Halloween Fun

I love this movie and have bought it on DVD.  One of my favorite scenes is the class Halloween party at Frankie's school.  It brings back so many memories...

Can Large Companies Still Innovate?

Google On Innovation

This is an outstanding question to be asking when many jobs, particularly those in the tech field, rely on innovation.  It's also something the smaller companies should think about, in looking for ways that they can innovate in a way that provides more bang for their smaller bank accounts.

One Last Message Before Tomorrow's Vote

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/01/election.main/?hpt=T2

This isn't the only story coming out of Washington - from other news medias as well, so we cannot blame Democrat biases here - about the Republicans planning a gridlock in the Congress if they win back the majority, particularly in the Senate.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear to the elected officials in Washington, D.C.  You are being elected to get a job done, not to shoot your mouths off.  I can assure you that if, under your watch, Americans see more of the same pandering to the special interests, you too can find yourselves out of office.

The Republicans already messed things up under George W. Bush, if you mess up again with this new found "voice" you think you have, I think I can pretty much guarantee "We The People" will have the last word in the argument.  It is, after all "We The People"'s money you're spending.