The newest version of the database is up and over 20,000 individuals. I currently have a few things going on with the genealogy data.

• Finishing up the Drouin images for deaths (hardest ones to locate)
• Sourcing all the marriages in my ancestral lineage
• Adding info to surnames/families that people have searched for on the site

That last item is interesting. I can monitor the visitors on the site and what they are looking at. Thus, I can see what surnames and individuals people have looked at. Starting today, I have been checking the visits and then adding in information (if I have it) that pertains to the surnames people have looked for, that way, if they come back, there will be more information and more sourcing available.

As is typical, however, I fully expect to get sidetracked and start other projects along the way, but those three I outlined are on the front burners. I will continue to provide help as needed to those who contact me. If you do request help, you get my attention first and foremost.

It seems like the genealogy never ends even when it feels “done”.

This is basically just a progress report on what I’ve been up to recently. First off: I am just shy of 20,000 people in my database. I have been doing a lot of data input on one surname right now: Bergeron. More specifically, I have been concentrating on the Bergeon people who were married in Nicolet County, Quebec. I have almost completed those marriages up to 1900. While I haven’t put them all in, I have been collecting the marriages as long as they were descended from Barthelemy Bergeron and Genevieve St. Aubin. I hope to have those uploaded soon.

Also, I have rescanned in some documents I had for better quality. The Almeric Saurette page got some updates as well. I had his death certificate for a long time, but hadn’t scanned it in a while. I finally got that done. Also, his daughter, Marie-Anna‘s page has been updated as well with another copy of her marriage record that just became available to me yesterday.

I will probably head back to finding some Drouin records for that section as well. This seems somewhat urgent to me since the Drouin images were taken down once already by Ancestry. Also on my to-do list is to rerun the descendant reports just in case the information has been changed from the last time. Basically, I’m just trying to keep things current and fresh (for me at least). Look for the new database to be updated to 20,000+ later this week.

I have been doing some other web work for a different site that I currently have in the early development stages. I should point out that I browse with Chrome as my primary browser and if that has any issues, I load up Firefox. I also have the latest versions of Safari and Opera that I can use too to check on various things. What about Internet Explorer you ask? A software abomination I say. I use it *only* for browsing records at Ancestry.com. Firefox used to crash (don’t know if it still does) all the time at Ancestry’s site.

So I was curious what the visitors to Saurette.com were using. I have checked my stats from August 1st up until October 20th and have the results (most to least use):

• Internet Explorer 7
• Firefox 3
• Internet Explorer 8
• Internet Explorer 6
• Safari 4
• Chrome

I was surprised that IE 6 was used so much these days. The top 3 were not far apart from each other. It takes a good sized drop from IE 8 to IE 6. Fortunately for me, Saurette.com renders fine in all the iterations of IE (last I checked anyways). The other site I am developing does not. IE 6 and 7 mess it up while *every* other standards compliant browser renders it correctly.

Maybe it is because I’m a techie, but I really can’t fathom why people still use IE at all. All the other browsers are better – plain and simple. A simple download and install and, boom, you are up and surfing and seeing pages viewed the way they were meant to be viewed.

As you can tell, this has nothing to do with genealogy, but I felt the need to mention it in case you ever visit sites and can’t understand why they look wrong (Steve stares directly at the IE 6 users). Don’t be so quick to blame the designer. Good design attempts to be standards compliant for maximum exposure to all the browsers. Microsoft just has to be different. I should point out that IE 8 is better, but still not 100%.

I want to hear from the few people who browsed the site via their iPhone! How’d that go?

I’ve used a few places to order genealogy materials from over the years. One place I use sells parish CDs which contain marriage records. Those CDs have helped me so much over the years. Last week, I ordered a new CD that covers Bellechasse County. This CD will help me flesh out some surnames that I have in my database – even though they aren’t directly related to me.

You might wonder what this has to do with shipping costs. Well, these CDs are simply a .PDF of the book that has been scanned at some point previously. So the way I see it, when you place an order for a CD, all they need to do is burn the CD and ship it out. You can order these records as bound books also, but they point out on their site that there is a lengthy delay for those as they print on demand. I can understand that completely. I don’t understand why they have faster shipping options, which cost more, if they aren’t actually going to get the item out to you within that time frame.

I ordered one CD. I chose 2-3 priority shipping. That CD is a no show so far. It took 2 days to even get a sales receipt confirmation. I’m a patient person, but I don’t think sites should offer expedited shipping on things if they cannot do it. Or at least have a section on your site explaining your shipping practices based on what you order. This happened to me earlier this year when I ordered something, not genealogy related, paid more for quicker shipping and then was told the product wasn’t even in stock. To their credit, that business was great to work with – they ate the shipping cost for me and send out the product as quick as they could.

So, bottom line? I’m very leary now to order things from a smaller operation and pick quicker shipping. The big boys online seem to have no problems, but the little guys need to figure things out better, or at least have it spelled out on the site what they can do with shipping their goods.

I look forward to receiving this CD this week – fingers crossed – so if you have ancestors married in Bellechasse County, drop me a note and I can do some looking up for you. Here’s to a good week.