) ( ) Good Morning Family! .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . \| |// ...and we even have decaf, | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! \ / ------ Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. GENWEB.NET back online 3. Bower Community update 4. Colleen's Chatter If you've been with the family for at least three weeks, you'll probably want to skip the following paragraphÂ… TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur ancestors or any of the 81+ variant spellings we research that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. If you haven't visited the homesite of this list yet, you are encouraged to do so. Our home is Bower Community, located at <http://bowercommunity.com>. There, we currently have two sites: The Bower Family Homestead [a.k.a., the Homestead] is our main homesite and the gathering place for much of our information. It waits to join us all in welcoming you into the family at <http://www.bowercommunity/homestead>. Smaller and just opened this year, our sister site, the Bower Cottage, houses most of our projects including an online GEDCOM fed by quite a few cousins from our lists. The Cottage is still small as far as material goes, however give us time and we'll have it filled really soon. The Cottage is at <http://www.bowercommunity/cottage>. GENWEB.NET BACK ONLINE Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Randy Haight brought his hacked domain back online only last night. After a quick look around, it appears everything and everyone is still intact, however it _was_ just a cursory look so don't rely heavily on what I just said. Many of the genweb sites, not knowing whether or not Randy would be able to recover the material, moved their sites to other hosts. If you're new ~ Randy Haight is webmaster of <http://www.genweb.net>, a site which hosts hundreds of free genealogy and history Websites as well as thousands of genealogy lists. His domain was hacked into sometime during the weekend of 7/8 October and it's been offline since that time. I have no idea whether or not the hackers were caught. BOWER COMMUNITY UPDATE With exception of a few wayward files, our home is completely online! YIPPEE!!! We're moved in, we're settled, and any dust bunnies you find laying around are ours ... ALL OURS!!! <g> Has anyone noticed how much faster the pages are loading? It's the ultimate in fantastic that not only is everything showing up like it should, but it's showing up QUICKER! We owe special, special thanks to Gloria Motter <[email protected]> and her team of link checkers ~ Lureigne Gimay <[email protected]> and Lynda Boone <[email protected]>. Together they checked every link on every page at the Homestead and Cottage, finding quite a few dead links and helping me to get us updated and corrected. This is not the most fun job in the world, but it IS a critically important one to make sure we not only connect to everyone (and ourselves) correctly, but to root out those pages that are no longer existent. I thank you so very much ladies. Without your help our sites would still be in the 'moving-in' stage. I still have quite a bit of work left to do with our sites, however my priorities are now shifted. With the WHOPBOF competition just around the corner (starting December 5th) for the Homestead, it's imperative that I concentrate all my time on that effort. However, you can help me a lot, please, by notifying me immediately if you should find any broken graphics or links, or pages not loading there. Our last competition was tough, but this next one will be even worse because this time we compete against all the quarter finals winners for this year. COLLEEN'S CHATTER It's been a long time since I sent a few personal lines in to everyone ... but I wanted to share with you the consummate and majestic beauty of the snowed caps of Pikes Peak I see out my living room window every day. For four days this past week the Peak was enshrouded in gray blankets of clouds, reappearing here and there for a few moments to show us the splendor of her new winter coat of snow. I am always inspired by the solitude and serenity of a heavily-clouded winter morning, knowing that all too soon I'll be wrapped in comforters here at my computer with a heating pad warming my frozen toes! But, I find the beauty of winter surpassed only by the colors of fall. We're supposed to have snow from today until Tuesday. Does anyone have a snowplow I can borrow? :) And as we prepare to enter our season of holidays and 'hibernation', I end this Coffee with ... Happy birthday to all our November babies! The family and I send special greetings that your coming year is filled with health and enjoyment. You are loved! Family ... it's what we're all about ... I so enjoyed this time with you. I hope your upcoming week is filled with health, productivity, fun, and above all, filled with love. ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.' P.S. Happiness is getting your word processor/HTML editor back up and working right after two weeks of fighting and frustration! Today is truly a WONDERFUL day! :)