I started a business

I figured 2 months without a blog post is long enough. I am still new at this blogging thing. I decided to write a post on my business, The Family Historian.

In 2011, I somehow thought up of the idea to start my own genealogy business. At this point, I had just graduated from community college and was ready to pursue by Bachelor’s degree. I created a business plan and thought about the idea for some time, but ultimately, I decided to focus on college. Fast forward to my second semester in early 2012. I was taking four history courses. All of them were very interesting and I did enjoy learning new things, but there were a number of things that didn’t feel right. Some of the classes I was “learning” things I had already learned either in high school, community college, or by personal studies. The same feelings returned in the fall of 2012 through a number of different struggles. I only attended classes for 4 days that third semester. September 6, 2012 was the last time I ever attended a class. I did consider shifting to online classes in early 2013, but ultimately the desire to continue college faded.

I had only attended college in the first place because that’s what everyone else was doing.
And that is not a good way to approach college or anything for that matter. I am glad I realized that before I borrowed more money from the government. I could go on about the present state of the higher education system, but I would be getting off topic. As 2013 continued, I began to shift my focus toward that business idea I had back in 2011. I actually purchased a domain and started AMK Genealogical Services. AMK of course are my initials. I never really liked the name at all. It wasn’t until later in 2013 that I actually thought of the name The Family Historian, and so I purchased a domain and changed my logo.

As I worked, conducted my personal genealogical research, and went about my daily activities in 2014, I began researching ideas for growing my business, but it wasn’t until this week that I actually paid for advertising for the first time, on Facebook.

So that is the story of how I started my business. At the present time, I am searching for any opportunities to grow and find new clients.

For more information, visit my website: http://www.the-family-historian.net

500 gigs is plenty. Yeah right.

In September of 2013, after much research including changing my mind and returning a PC with 750 GB, I ultimately purchased a MacBook Air with 500 GB. My third computer and first Apple computer. My previous
computer, an HP with Windows 7, contained 581 GB (I just checked to see how much I had in there). In other words, the amount of space was not very different. I wasn’t even pushing the limits. It’s been about a year since I got my MacBook Air, but I was using perhaps 200 to 250 GB of data.

In October 2013, I purchased a video camera. Videos do take up a lot of space, but I had plenty on my computer. I was especially excited because I could use iMovie, which is MUCH better than Windows Movie Maker. As time progressed, I took more photos and videos, downloaded more music and videos, and ended up with some rather large files. That 500 GB was filling up rather quickly.

A couple of months ago, I had a storage crisis, in that I was coming close to filling up the entire 500 GB. In order to save space, I moved my videos to my 2 TB back-up external hard drive and purchased another 2 TB external hard drive to back up my MacBook Air. This opened up about 50 GB of storage, which was great until my most recent upload of voice recordings from my iPhone to my MacBook Air brought me to another storage crisis.
When I learned about the iPhone 6, while I was excited about the iPhone 6 Plus’ 5.5 inch screen, it was the option of a 128 GB iPhone that brought me more excitement. The 32 GB of data on my iPhone 5 is not enough. I keep filling up that space, then I transfer the data to my MacBook Air, which then pushes the limits to my 500 GB.

Now, I have to figure out which large files I can delete or move to my external hard drive. I have less than 400 MB of space on my MacBook Air, and I still have 17 GB of data to move from my iPhone to my MacBook Air.

I should have purchased a larger amount of storage for my MacBook Air. It has been said that bigger isn’t necessarily better. However, in the case of data storage, bigger certainly is better.

I started a blog.

I started a blog. I actually started a blog back in September 2011, just over 3 years ago. It was a genealogy blog which I began at Blogspot. My second post occurred just over 4 months later. I blogged a couple more times in 2012, with another random blog post in September 2013. But that’s it. I have never blogged since, nor have I ever regularly blogged.

I began thinking about writing a blog about a couple of months ago. I even posted on Facebook last month that I was thinking about starting a blog. Of course when the thought of a blog comes to mind, the question is, what do I blog about? That is perhaps one of the most common questions someone may ask if you tell them you have a blog. “What is it about?”

That is the same question I asked myself a couple of months ago when I decided to seriously consider starting a blog. Actually, I have wanted to blog regularly for years now. When it all comes down to it, I don’t want to limit my blog to just one topic or theme. I have interests in more than one thing. So the question is, what will I be blogging about? The answer to that is more clear–“Anything I want.” I don’t have a set theme. I am a writer and there are numerous topics I could blog about, so I will not limit myself to just one theme.

So, I purchased a domain. I installed WordPress. I found a theme, and I wrote this first blog post. There are numerous themes I could have chosen. I just picked one that looked alright, so that I could get my blog started. Although there are many themes I could simply install, I have considered designing my own blog design. I taught myself HTML back in 2003, and so I know coding. However, coding the right theme will take time to explore different options. As time progresses, I will have a design I will truly like.
So there it is. My first blog post without limiting my scope. I talked about how this blog came to be. It’s nearly midnight, and so I am going to end this blog post and explore the administrator panel of WordPress. It will be interesting to see where this blog goes.

Edit: On August 29, 2015, I merged my old blog with my new one.

End of Winter Break

Well, it is the end of Winter Break. I go back to College tomorrow. I was able to get a lot of research done this past month and a half. I have even worked more on my manuscripts for Johnson, Washburg, Harrington, Buskirk, Harrison, and Wheeler. We are also less than 2 and a half months away from the release of the 1940 census!

January 16, 2012

I really don't write in my blog much, but I might write a little bit more. As I write here, I have do not have a lot of followers and I don't think anyone is really reading this. I think I will write more on my genealogical research. Maybe I will post some jokes or link to some interesting articles or websites. We will see.

First Blog Post

This is my first blog post. I decided to start blogging about my genealogical research, in part to reflect on my research, and to hopefully find distant cousins who are out there lurking on the Internet.