Ah, the good old days: Super-8 movies, playing music on an audio tape, TV channels with a single digit, rotary dial televisions with no remote control ("Hey Junior, will you change it to channel 5?"), 8-track cartridges, or vinyl records. How about Betamax tapes?

I was a bit surprised when I recently talked with my daughter and mentioned I would call her. I made a rotary motion with my forefinger, as if I was dialing an old-fashioned rotary dial phone. You know: the kind of phones we all had before touchtone phones became available. My daughter had no idea what I was doing.

Boy, did I feel old!

Wired Magazine has a list of 100 such things that your children or grandchildren will never know about your life. I found this to be an interesting article. Strangely, it was nostalgic. You can find it at http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/100-things-your-kids-may-never-know-about/.

Remember the "good old days" of booting your computer from a floppy disk? Or when Spam was just a meat product?

For years, handwritten records and large books of onionskin paper detailing Indiana University Bloomington's earliest graduates were kept locked inside a vault on campus. A recently launched, first-of-its-kind online database makes it easier for people to access information about when alumni graduated and what they studied.

All records prior to 1966 were paper, so the Office of the Registrar hired a third-party vendor to digitize them and put the data into a spreadsheet.

Degrees awarded from 1830 through 1890 are presently available and the data will soon be expanded for later years.

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3LJHPuB.

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

Thaís Pacholek has a degree in performing arts and journalism. Born in Curitiba, Brazil, she first went on stage when she was 9 years old. When she turned 18, she moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's film capital. Thaís's acting talent was widely recognized a few years later, when she accepted her first of many telenovela (soap opera) roles at age 23. In a country generally recognized as a pioneer in the genre, participating in telenovelas in Brazil was a rare achievement. Now the Brazilian public can see her in Record TV's new super production, Reis.

We are pleased to welcome Thaís Pacholek as a guest speaker from Brazil among the keynote speakers at RootsTech 2022! Join us on 3–5 March where Thaís will share her story of family connection.

The Role of Family in Thaís Pacholek's Success

Thaís Pacholek is not a one-dimensional talent. She was elected Miss Curitiba in 2005 and has starred in 15 live theater productions, 3 films, and 5 television shows in addition to the 8 telenovelas in which she played a prominent role. She recognizes that much of the reason for her professional success is due to her family. "My family made me feel secure that this was the path I should take," she said. "Without them, I wouldn't have had the confidence to venture to Rio de Janeiro. My family—my family is my foundation; they were there for me. They guided me emotionally, as they still do to this day."

In contrast to her acting roles, Thaís says her family is a "very true family" and that all her relationships are "always very true." Although her family did not have many resources, she describes her childhood as a beautiful journey where the things she most appreciated were the moments they had together. "These are very good memories that I carry in my heart—the struggle of a family to succeed in life and never give up. And when the whole family is together, the result is always prosperity," she said.

She found similar traits in her husband, country music star Bruno Belucci Pereira, who performs as part of the famous duo under the stage name Belutti. Together, Bruno and Thaís have a son, Luis Miguel, who Thaís describes as her "soulmate." Her son is also the inspiration for her passion as an advocate for respectful childhood education. She said, "I think change in the world comes through children because they are what all of us adults should be."

Thaís also values her family history, saying: "I really believe that we are what we are today because of all those stories that exist in our family tree, which we all belong to. So, I believe that the strong woman that I am, the positive woman that I am, the optimistic woman that I am, the hardworking woman that I am—it's all because of all these [family] stories."

Thaís Pacholek at RootsTech 2022

Learn more about Thaís Pacholek's story of family connection at RootsTech 2022 on 3–5 March. RootsTech is the world's largest genealogy and family history conference, which will be held online this year for free. You can participate by registering today at www.rootstech.org.

NOTE: This article is off-topic. That is, it does not concern anything to do with genealogy, DNA, or related topics normally found in this newsletter. However, I suspect that many newsletter readers will be interested in this article for many different purposes:

I have written often about the numerous advantages of Chromebooks. I own two Chromebooks and love 'em both. One Chromebook has become my primary traveling computer, even though I already own an expensive and much more powerful Macintosh laptop. In short, I prefer to risk the low-cost laptop when exposing it to travel damage and theft. Besides, the Chromebook does everything I need to accomplish when traveling.

Now Google has announced a future product that will convert older, lower-powered Windows and Macintosh computers into Chromebooks. If you have an older computer in the closet that you are not using any more, this might be a great zero-cost project for you to use, either for yourself or for a family member (either an adolescent or adult) who does not yet have their own computer.

Google today announced early access to Chrome OS Flex, which makes the Chrome OS operating system found on Chromebooks downloadable onto a Mac or Windows PC.

Chrome OS Flex allows individuals, schools, or businesses to download Chrome OS onto a USB drive for free and install it onto their Mac or Windows PC. The OS could also be booted from a USB drive instead of installed or launched via network deployment by an IT department.

Google is positioning Chrome OS Flex as an answer to old Mac and Windows PCs that might not be able to handle the latest version of their native OS and/or that might not be owned by folks with budgets to replace the devices. Rather than buying new hardware, consumers or IT departments could install the latest version of Chrome OS Flex.

Google's Chrome OS Flex is currently available as early access in the dev channel with bugs expected. You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3HWzbXn.

If you are researching Black ancestry in Nashville, you will be interested in a new spreadsheet listing more than 14,000 rows of data, which might bore you – until the names stop you cold: Eliza, age 3; Peter, 11; Martha Foster, 1. After each, it reads “child of Albert and Betsy.”

On Nov. 1, 1852, it says, John Nichol sold Albert and Betsy, along with Eliza, Peter, Martha Foster and their other five children to Bradford Franklin. Davidson County legally recorded this enslaved family as property, bought and sold.

Metro Archivist Ken Fieth has spent some 25 years compiling a searchable spreadshee. Transaction by transaction, it lists buyer, seller, enslaved person’s name, gender, age and relatives (if known).

These transactions are part of what made us who we are, what made Nashville the place that it is. It is the big “how” and the big “why” of the racism that still plagues us.

You can read more in an article by Karen Johnson and Learotha Williams, published by the Tennessean, at https://bit.ly/3I2CE6U.

The spreadsheet may be found at: https://data.nashville.gov/Genealogy/Nashville-Slave-and-Free-People-of-Color-Database/fqu3-hv5z.

Jackson State is one of the inaugural recipients of Getty Images grants to help historically Black colleges and universities digitize their photo archives to preserve the photos and help document Black history at the universities. "The goal is that everybody knows what we have," Locord Wilson, Jackson State University interim dean of libraries, said Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022. "It's a hidden treasure."

You can read more and view a number of pictures at: https://bit.ly/3gOn6ra.

The Dodge/Jefferson Counties Genealogical Society’s library at 504 S. Fourth St., Watertown, Wisconsin, is temporarily closed as the society installs improved shelving and rearranges its materials.

The society hopes to reopen the library two or three weeks from now. Status updates on the library’s reopening will be posted on the society’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/dodgejeffgensoc.org/.

During this transitional time, there may also be a delay in online orders for obituaries and in answers to lookup requests. As always, questions about the library or about genealogical concerns can be directed to dodgejeffersongensoc@gmail.com.

The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:

Love is in the air! Celebrate Valentine’s Day by diving into the love stories in your family history with this special offer: all marriage records will be free to access from February 13–20, 2022.

Search free marriage records on MyHeritage 

Marriage records provide a fascinating glimpse into the moments when new families are born. They usually contain the names, birth dates, birthplaces, and places of residence of the bride and groom, and sometimes contain information on the parents of the bride and groom or witnesses, who may have been family friends or other relatives. MyHeritage is home to 164 marriage record collections containing almost 600 million records from all over the world, some of which include beautifully scanned images, and some of which are exclusive to MyHeritage.

Since last Valentine’s Day, we’ve added some essential and intriguing collections — for example, France, Church Marriages and Civil Marriages and Brazil, Pernambuco Marriages, 1800–1960.

Normally, a Complete or Data plan is required to view these records, but for 8 days only, you’ll be able to search and view them for free.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and get searching! We can’t wait to hear what you find.

Search free marriage records on MyHeritage

I have no idea if this is a valuable product or if it is based on a fallacy. However, the announcement is interesting, to say the least. The following is an excerpt from a (sponsored article) at: https://nypost.com/2022/02/11/rootine-uses-your-dna-to-build-a-personalized-multivitamin/:

"Rootine understands the multi-nutrient is only effective when it’s addressing what that specific user needs. That’s why the company devised a process to create bespoke nutrient supplements engineered for each individual user, augmenting natural vitamins and minerals their unique body needs to best optimize their health.

"Unlike other services offering customized supplements, Rootine goes even deeper, using lifestyle factors in conjunction with DNA, blood levels, and even artificial intelligence to create a personalized daily multi-nutrient formula that best addresses each person’s distinctive biology.

"After taking Rootine’s short lifestyle assessment covering your health goals, current lifestyle choices, and more, its process devised by expert geneticists and supplement technicians gets even more granular. Users submit a DNA sample for testing or even their own blood to help get the most precisely accurate picture of their particular metabolism.

"For users who recently did bloodwork through their doctor or received DNA results from a service like Ancestry.com, those results can be submitted straight to Rootine, saving customers the cost of those added tests."

You can read the article at: https://nypost.com/2022/02/11/rootine-uses-your-dna-to-build-a-personalized-multivitamin/.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

Warning: This article contains personal opinions.

As you might expect with any conference of 150 or more presentations, there are many stories to be told at most any major genealogy conference. One that I hear often concerns the high failure rate of hardware and software among the presenters. At some national conferences, I have heard stories of no less five or six different presenters who experienced major problems with their laptop computers, operating system, projectors, PowerPoint slides, or other critical computer tools.

Some of the problems happen at the very last moment as the presenters are setting up at the podium to begin their talks.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/12593392.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077.