Frazzled Friday, Every Good Book Has Errors

Copyright 2010, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

Here is my story, and I am stickin' to it. 

Every book I have participated in producing, which numbers in the bunches for the Lenawee County Family Researchers and about 5 that I have done myself (three small booklets about Lenawee County and two family histories) has errors.  Every single one of them.

The users of our Lenawee book let us know of errors.  One time we produced a Burial book, we were 2 years just typing this buggar, and within days of publication we discovered that 90 pages of the index had disappeared into the computer mists.  It took us another year to find and fix the problem.  We printed a revised index and mailed it (no charge) to every single person or library that had purchased it with our sincere apologies.

The other classic story involves the very first book I published, a family history.  I had worked for several years researching this clan when one of the cousins approached me and asked, "what can I do to help you so we can get this done?"  And, so it started.  She gathered photos, she pushed family to fill in group sheets, she went door to door, she and I spent days haunting cemeteries and courthouses and libraries. 

On January 1st of 1997 I eagerly set a publication date for summer of 97, the family reunion, first weekend of August.  I spent the next 7 months working on it non-stop, 8 to 14 hours a day.  I ate, drank, slept, dreamed, talked, and walked that family book for 7 full long months.  I even took it with me on a few short get away vacations.  Friends from the LDS Family History Center in Westland Michigan helped me, writing and reading letters in Polish and so many other things.  Son # 2 worked in a print shop, he gave me hints and then printed the book. 

Come August, with the ink literally still wet, we delivered the book at the family reunion.  Son # 1 gets his copy, opens, starts reading and in 30 seconds flat finds a spelling error, turns to his ole mom and in his surprise, asks, "MMM, Mom, didn't you run this through the spell checker?"

And, Carol learned a great lesson in the humility of writing a book,

There will always be errors.

* Graphic courtesy of freeclipartnow.com

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Frazzled Friday Here at Reflections, Carol is a BIT Cranky Today

Copyright 2010, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

Finishing up another volume of the Burial series of Lenawee County, Blissfield Township.  Pushing to get to the printer (40 some miles away) and proofed and approved and printed before the end of the month.  Not as easy as that sounds, last book took well over 5 weeks, 2 proofs, both had errors, one mine, one not.

That post back up project is plugging along, and after carefully snooping around in Word (I still DO NOT like that program), I found a way to get the buff background color off the copy/pasted files.  Looks nice that way, so I might redo the 60 or so files already done with the buffy color.  Also have decided to put all comments on a separate page, so if I want to link a file to someone in my data base, I can decide if I want the comments or not.  If not, I ditch that page, resave the file with a new name, link to RM (RootsMagic) and it is a done deal.

New phone, 2 days old, will not turn on.  Seems I can take calls, but, cannot make them or do anything else. Smart phone, smarter than me, knows how to keep me OFF the system, unless I do a  soft reboot.  Making me snarly, as does all technology that does not work the way I THINK it should!  LOL

And, we still wonder, just a little, is our air card grandfathered in, with no 5 gig limit, OR NOT!?!  We call the service provider and get a different answer almost every time.  And,  to the last two people who stated we are grandfathered in, we HAVE YOUR NAMES!!!  And,  I have screen shots from last months usage charts online.  So much fun, one day, 4,300,000 bytes and the next day ZERO bytes used.  Next day, 4,500.000 bytes used.  What a roller coaster of fun that is. Geeshh.

Off to a local cemetery in a few hours, photo op, local paper, hope the article promotes the Lenawee County Family Researchers ongoing Burial Book project more than someone we know who gave the phone interview the other day.  GULP!  LOL

Working on winterizing the yard, semi-winterizing Tana (we hope, well, more on that later).  Garage is cleaner than it has been in several years, we can see the floor!  WOW.  Pole barn, forget it, it is what it is.  I am trying to clean paper piles and such in the stick built.  One day it feels like I made some progress, the next day, what happened overnight??  My trash cans are full, where is all this stuff coming from??

Our doctor is moving OUT of the county because of some legal smegal crud his "group" is enforcing.  For now, we are staying with him, because we like him, have faith in him and don't want to change at this moment.  Frustrating.  Gonna have to drive 45 minutes now to visit instead of 10.  SIGHHH

So, Reflections is a tad frazzled on Friday, and now I am off to conquer the frustrations and life!  Watch out, it might get ugly!  Surely will get interesting!  Here I come!

*Graphic courtesy of Clker.com