Personal – Page 7 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Family War Service

Our little adventure out to find Revolutionary War graves over the Memorial Day weekend got me started on a fishing expedition for family information. I feel spurred to share a few of my discoveries regarding service in many of the wars this country has fought because of John Richardson’s Memorial Day post featuring the draft registration cards for his father and grandfathers.

I knew my great grandmother was a member of Daughters of the American Revolution, so I thought I would see what I could do to join since there are multiple active chapters around this part of Pennsylvania. After a few emails back and forth with my grandmother, we discovered that my great grandmother’s membership was no longer valid, not because she passed 11 years ago, but because the only family member she documented to DAR (her 3rd great grandfather) was found to have been turned down for a pension in further record reviews. However, she told my grandmother that she had documented multiple family members who had proven service in the Revolution. My grandmother, happily enough, pulled out a book from her father’s side that gives a direct and handy list of all the relatives back to my 6th great grandfather who is documented to have served in the war.

However, in my little trial of Ancestry.com, I started clicking on random branches with their little leaf hints attached. I am no where near done since most branches of my family have been in this country for a long, long time. However, I did just hit a someone who appears to be a documented veteran of the War of 1812. There’s totally a lineage group for that–National Society United States Daughters of 1812. I don’t really know much about them, but they don’t have a presence in the Philly area.

I also found a documented veteran of the Confederacy on a side of the family I really didn’t expect to see it on. Yup, there’s a group for that, too. (United Daughters of the Confederacy) My grandmother thinks that we also have documentation to prove lineage from a Union soldier as well. That would cover me for Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, 1861 – 1865. I’m seriously thinking that if I can document both connections, I may actually join both. Maybe I’m just silly, but I would find amusement in that.

I haven’t gone digging deep yet, but the family that is reportedly connected to Jefferson Davis, eh, not looking so good. As Sebastian noted, there are probably lots of Southern families with people named Davis who claim a relation. However, that side of the family is really into genealogy, so my mom is going to see what she can gather from those folks and we’ll see if there really is a connection. (Interestingly, if this connection is proven and documented, it could also be a different path for me to DAR, and the only likely path for my niece.)

I set up a tree on my account for Sebastian, and if he has followed the census records properly, he may have found a 3rd great grandfather who served for the Union in the Civil War whose service was previously unknown to his family. (Yes, there’s a Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.) Considering his family on both sides has been presumed to be fairly recently off the boat, this is actually an exciting possible find for him.

Another little tidbit I’ve discovered (though am waiting on family records to verify), is that by moving to be with Sebastian here in Southeast Pennsylvania, I’m apparently simply returning to the family lands of my 5th great grandfather. It turns out he owned 99 acres in Upper Bucks County as far back as at least 1789. I find that very, very odd.

To bring this rambling family war service post back to guns, we have learned that between the two of us, family names include John, Moses, and Browning.

Sorry Again for Posting Delays

Been sitting in our new space all day waiting for PECO to show up to fix our power. After a few problems with a bad fiber splice to our building, FiOS is now up and running. But we still have no power. I’m having to run everything off my deep cycle marine battery and an inverter. Apparently PECO installed the meter, and it’s been spinning happily since they installed it two weeks ago. The only problem is that it’s not powering our bay, so we’ve been kindly providing power to another tenant for two weeks now. PECO says we’ll need to call an electrician, because all they care about is that we have power, but I’m pretty sure they activated our account with the wrong meter. It may be a bit of a fight to make them understand it’s their problem, and not ours. Then I suppose they’ll need to figure out who’s supposed to be paying for the electricity they are charging us for.

I guess the government isn’t the only bit of frustration when it comes to starting up a new business.

Busy Day

I didn’t have any time to queue anything up for this morning last night, and today we’re getting an Internet pipe delivered to our new location for our spinoff business. I’ve been waiting for the telco to show up to run the circuit, but got tired of waiting. I figure it was better to wait in the cafe of the nearby Wegman’s munching on sushi and drinking beer than wait in an empty space with no Internet all day. Wegman’s has WiFi, so let me see if I can find anything to write about while I wait for the telco to call me and tell me they are enroute.

Our current offices, for the main business, are located in an old mansion that’s been converted to office space. It’s nice that some of the offices have ornate fireplaces. Other offices have ornate fireplaces that’s been hidden behind drywall. We even have a dumbwaiter whose shaft is handy for running ethernet cabling through the building. I general, our offices looks like a place where you’d kill Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe. It’s a cool space. The neighborhood is a pretty rich estate community. We’re not far from Radnor Hunt Club, and on calm nights I can hear the dogs from the office. Lots of horse and hobby farms of the rich. It’s not unusual to see people on horseback decked out in whatever rich people wear when they get on horses. Something like this. The big downside is it’s in the middle of nowhere, and Comcast is pretty much my only bandwidth options, short of the ones that cost a small fortune.

The new location for the side business is located next to a junk yard, and our immediate neighbor is an auto mechanic. But for this spinoff we are going to be using it for, it’s perfect, discrete, and more importantly, I can get bandwidth. Speaking of bandwidth, the telco just called and they are on their way. I guess I’m going to have to pack up and head over.

New Technology

We have a new toy in the house. A Samgsung Galaxy Tab 2. This is actually Sebastian, trying to get used to the piddly little keyboard , and setting up WordPress for Bitter. We got this to act as a substitute for a laptop when we go to Houston next week for NRA Annual Meeting . Not a bad toy for the money, when you compare it to the cost of an iPad. I’m still sore Apple end of lifed the iPad 1 two years after I got it.

Burnt Out

This weekend I was looking forward to putting the finishing touches on my office, and getting it ready for the final step of new carpeting. The last part was to be putting up new baseboard covers. Got the first screw secured in the stud, no problem. The second one went in no problem too, except when I stopped the drill I heard the sound of hissing water. That was no stud. Shutoff didn’t stop it. Uh oh. Turns out my water main for the house comes in about 8 feet from where the main shutoff is and runs behind that wall, and right behind the drywall, with little room to spare.

The water company was out quickly, to shut the water off from the street, but no shutoff was to be found. Turns out it had been buried under the driveway, which I just had resurfaced (it was a previous resurfacing that had buried, and apparently bent the shutoff). They had to hack through my driveway to get to the shutoff, which fortunately had not been so bent by a previous resurfacing that it wouldn’t turn. It turned. This morning I ran to the Home Despot as soon as it opened at 6AM. The water company guy gave me a nice shutoff valve to put right where it comes into the house. I’ll have to make a little access door when I replace all the freshly painted drywall I had to pull out to get to the pipes behind. So now I’m not really all that close to being done, since I have to redo a good part of what was already done.

Blogging Delays

Sorry for the lack of weekend posts and for the lack of posts scheduled for tomorrow. You know those home improvement projects that just manage to need one more thing? Then, when you get that thing, something isn’t quite right, but you don’t notice something was missing from the package until you get home after the store has closed? Yeah, it’s been one of those weekends. We’ve got more time sensitive work to do today, so don’t expect much, if anything, on the blog.

On the positive side, Sebastian & I had been going back & forth over whether a decor idea I picked up from Pinterest was at all possible. I insisted it was, but he said no. Weeks of back and forth over this. He finally let me try it this weekend. Let me just say that it looks beautiful. :)

UPDATE (from Sebastian): The good news is that I now know where the water comes into the house behind the walls of my finished basement. This is the only good news.

Is This Thing On?

A bit of writers block this morning. It’s been one of those couple of days when I feel like I’m doing too much. Additionally, today I begin the last year of my 30s. I don’t really like the idea of getting old, but I think it likely beats the alternative. My mom didn’t make it to 44, which back when I was younger I thought was old. Maybe old is what your parents are. When my mom turned 39 she was teaching me how to drive.

Saturday Night Update

Well, the good news is that we’re on to finishing touches of real work in our basement renovation – shelving, picking out carpet, and other room details before buying the furniture. The bad news is that this means we weren’t around to blog. Here are some highlights we missed today.

Banned magazine smuggler David Gregory is hosting a debate between Wayne LaPierre & Mike Bloomberg on Meet the Press in the morning.

The Senate voted in the early morning hours to ban the Obama Administration from signing onto the UN Arms Trade Treaty. Accused Underage Prostitute Solicitor & Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez thinks that voting to uphold the Second Amendment late at night is “irresponsible,” unlike his alleged late night activities with underaged girls.

Democratic leaders are complaining that their staffers who make $160k/year can’t afford to eat on Capitol Hill because of the sequester. Here’s a tip for those who are nearly destitute on more than $100k, on a very, very small fraction of that salary, even I could afford the Healthy Choice Turkey Breast sandwich at Congressional Liquor Store.

I’m sad to report that we accidentally participated in Earth Hour for at least a few minutes. See, Sebastian had to turn off the breaker to the basement so he can replace some plug faces that were black and clashed with our new color palette.

Obama’s weekly address was focused on gun control, including the gun ban that would likely cost his party any chance of winning outside of major urban areas for years.

Bloomberg is putting up $12 million to buy ads in pro-gun states promising that supporting legislation that will turn most gun owning families into felons won’t actually be a bad thing. The ads will supposedly run in Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Sorry for Lack of Posting

Monday we demo our new product to the first potential customer, so this is the culmination of a lot of work happening in the next few days. I just don’t have time for the blog right now. I’ll be posting a bit over the weekend, but until we pull off the demo, I’m a busy bee. If the potential customer shows real interest, then it’s going to be a crash program to get this whole thing ready for the real launch. It is tremendously exciting and scary at the same time.

How Was Your Weekend?

I spent mine redoing the finish carpentry in my office. The original work had no finish. It was all cheap, knotty lumber butted up against rough, exposed drywall. You can see in the stairwell shot where my work buts up against the lipstick on a pig the first owners did. I’ve been slowing adding finish work to the house when I redo each room. I am no expert at finish carpentry, but I can get along well enough.

After doing all this, I don’t know how we ever managed to build civilization without the pneumatic nail gun. I borrowed it from sometimes co-blogger Jason, and it has been invaluable at getting everything placed precisely, quickly, and with minimal labor.

The Stairwell. That’s the kegerator showing on the upper level. We dare not take that out of service, as one needs to keep the priorities straight in any home project. The office is the lower level. It’s a split level house.	Around the edge of the stairwell. Originally all the woodwork looked like the horrid nightmare my unpainted work abuts. You can see nails! They weren’t even trying. I did my best to detract from the suck.
This used to be nothing but rough, knotty pine, with a 1×6 as the sill. The drywall just went up to the pine. There was no trim or finish. The window is level, the ceiling, you can see, is not at all. That is not my work.