Back in January, I remember being startled to see that I hadn't written in my blog since early last November. November and December had been such crazy months that I guess it simply escaped me. So I started to dread writing another post, having to recognize that I'd lapsed yet again. Then we entered the more absurdly longer period of time since the last post. And here it is, in April, and it has pretty much come out the other end and the time since the last post seems so ridiculously long that it doesn't matter anymore. At least, not to me.
There was also the whole "What the heck do I write about?" Because I would occasionally think "Ooo, I want to share this on my blog!" but then remember that there was so much catching up that for some reason I felt like I should do and I'd feel overwhelmed/guilty/embarrassed/etc. So some more time would pass.
So why today, you might ask? Um, why not? True, I've been reading more blog posts at random places which helps get me into a blogging mode/mood, whether I read them with that purpose or not. Admittedly, I have a topic on my mind that I just couldn't let previous reasons to not post stop me from writing this.
I thought I'd let you know about something that I'm quite excited about: the 1940 US Census. So far, however, it's been mostly testing my patience. The Census became available this Monday - for everyone to view for free! With an official government website and everything! Probably because I do genealogical research on a regular basis, for months I have been spotting ads and announcements stating things like "X days before release!"
So, needless to say, I went to the website on Monday. It took me some time to get my bearings on how things were set up and how to get to what I wanted. I was impressed with some bits, notably the ability to find the records of the same physical area by inserting the 1930 ED number. Yet when it came to viewing the actual pages, the only thing I can think of that would be worse is to not have them available (after all those teasing, promising ads).
It is quite possible that they will have the problem fixed by this weekend. It is quite possible that there really are way, way more people than ever anticipated trying to use the site. But I don't see these as acceptable excuses. When you tell people "It's coming out! It's coming out!" and then don't prepare properly for the masses, those masses are going to be frustrated. Access to the 1940 US Census is not like buying the latest iPhones.
Now, I could just wait. I mean, genealogy is a hobby requiring patience and time, after all. My agony might just be the tantalizing, teasing taunt of "It's heeeere," and still not being able to utilize it. But I'm used to my resourcefulness helping me find alternative ways to figure things out and find what I want. There simply isn't anything else I can do to get at the information I'm looking for.
From the news I've read, it sounded like they weren't expecting anywhere near the number of visitors that showed up on Monday. "In a tweet posted after 5 p.m. Monday on its Twitter account, the archives said the website had gotten 37 million hits since the information was released at 9 a.m." 37 million might seem like a lot, but it's just under 12% of the current US population. Is it really that unimaginable? I could be overly optimistic about how many people are interested in their family's past, but I have to wonder if Ancestry.com doesn't realize that those who don't have active subscriptions with them would possibly want to leap into the Census on the first day of its release.
To give you some idea what it's like if you haven't tried it yourself:
There is a drop-down menu for downloading all the pages for one census at the same time, but it doesn't work. Yesterday, I actually found it faster to download each page and scroll down the page before going back and downloading the next page. Today, the downloading is quite a bit slower. The inset viewing option is very slow and the window is very limited (probably more my computer's tiny screen's fault). I have to click 23 times, waiting an average of 2 seconds between clicks, before I am done scrolling down the page and checking all the last names.
I have started playing a kind of "game" - I found while the page is still loading, the clicks to get down the page are faster than they are after the page is done loading. So I'll try to go through as much of the page while still catching the names before the page is done loading. Still, it's slow-going, especially since I take numerous breaks and I went through a whole ED before checking my records to find it's the wrong one (always double check what it says on the actual image whenever possible, don't just go by what the transcription says). So no finds yet, unless you count when I found someone named Moriarty who was a 48 year-old maid.
