Hi List members, Has anyone missed me? No, huh? <grin>. Well I'm still out here, but where that is, at this point I'm not sure!! I have experienced a major computer crash and for now just thankful I'm back online. If any of you have a drive crash in the future, take my advise, make it airborne out the window and go get another one <grin>. Boy, what a pain in the patooty this is. I had to tear the whole thing all the way down to DOS and start over. I finally have all of my programs re-loaded, some of which I had to re-purchase, but don't have all of my files back up yet. I'm still testing the programs to see if everything is working properly. And some aren't! I hope all of you had a happy Halloween, I couldn't even send out greetings on this stupid thing. It was so terribly cold here that I didn't get any little gremlins knocking on the door. So you know what that means, I have to eat all this candy all by myself...I just hate that (yeah right!). Okay back to the treadmill!!! We have entered our "down time" with the Lists and web sites. This is the time of year when everything slows way down. It's okay, but I miss the camaraderie with all of you. Usually I use this time to build new web pages and fine tune the sites. But this time I'm going to be just trying to get everything up and running right again. When the crash happened I lost so much data. Fortunately I had back ups of most of my files, and can re-construct some of the others. But there was a considerable loss. All of my Address Book is gone so I'm hunting addresses for everyone. If you've written to me and I haven't answered this is why, so please re-send your messages. I am sorry if anyone has felt neglected, believe me, it wasn't intentional. On our State List, our SC has opened dialog for keeping our Lists active and has used the Huerfano List as an example of a good List. She says: "Karen's Huerfano County list is a wonderful example of this. She always works with the list members to build a close rapport with them. She encourages them and they help her to provide more information for other visitors. She always finds transcribers, and helpers for any project she starts." That kudo goes out to everyone of you that have helped to make the Huerfano County web site what it is. Great job team!!! Our List has a good status due to all of you! So let's do our exercise now...put your right arm over your left shoulder, put your left arm over your right shoulder, now squeeze...that's a hug to you from me! (We good, uh huh we good <grin>!) Okay, so what do we have going...well you know all of those 6,000 obits that we've been working on? Guess where they went when this thing crashed <groan>. Luckily I had each month backed up on floppies but the database is gone and needs to be re-built. bang bang bang <that's my head hitting the desk>. Oh well, we shall overcome!!!! It's just going to take more time and re-formatting it all over again. One thing about it, I don't get to die to soon, I have to much work to do now. Let's see, this will take me up to about 306 years old. Yep, we can do it. Speaking of old, what month is this <hint, hint>. I had a very happy occasion this week. A lady wrote to me about the Rye cemetery and is trying to identify where her ggGrandmothers unmarked grave is so she can have it marked. She sent me a photo of her great grandfather standing by the grave. I studied the photo and every little thing in it, then I went to the Rye cemetery, searched around and came up with the exact spot that he was standing in. How exciting that was!! Now I have another unmarked grave identified and this family is just ecstatic. Well okay, it wasn't all that simple, it was much more technical, but you get the jist of it. I feel good about it. So that brings me to the next subject...old photos. If you have an old photo of an ancestor that you are trying to find, let someone unrelated look at the photo, they may see clues there that you've missed. And if any of you have photos of ancestors standing at a grave PLEASE contribute them. I would like to post those photos with the cemetery listing of that person. Have an old photo of someone by a grave but don't know what cemetery??? Share it, let's see if we can get them identified. Is the photo of a headstone that we already have posted? Guestimate what year it was taken and we can post those too. In comparing old photos to current ones, we see the changes that have taken place in the area. Do you have any old photos of the County in general? I would like to start posting all the old photos we can find, even if it just shows the country side. I have a few of these that I need to dig out of boxes and get scanned too, so if you have any, please contribute them. I had three more Family Group Sheets come in of the Smith family from LaVeta, but lost them during the crash, and don't have the contributors name or address. Whoever sent them in, PLEASE resubmit them so I can get them posted. Was it Carole? This summer sure put a dent in my plans and I do apologize to all of you for not accomplishing more work. Life just got in the way of my schedule. I sure miss all of you out there so let me hear from you again. Any suggestions for new databases or for the web site? Comments? You all take care and have a GREAT day! Karen