Hey y’all
My name’s Kimberly. Since I’m a new community member, I figure the polite thing to do is introduce myself before piping up about stuff.
First, a thank ya to the staff member, whoever you are, that approved my request to join.
From a personal perspective, if you’re familiar with Myers-Briggs, I’m an ENFJ. My greatest joy comes from lifting up others. I like learning about other cultures & languages, and consider myself a champion of diversity, equity and inclusion. Languages I’ve studied include Latin, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and French (which is my strongest 2nd language at B1 level). Some other things I’m interested in include: space exploration, science fiction, backyard birdwatching, Trance electronic music, and I’m a wanna-be hiker. And I can’t stand to be cold. I tell people I’m part lizard, because I’m only happy when it gets to be about 30° C. My favorite movie quote is from Buckaroo Banzai: 'Hey, hey, hey. Hey Now. Don’t be mean. We don’t have to be mean. Cuz remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
From a genealogy perspective, though I’m new to using RootsMagic, I’ve been researching my genealogy for some time. (I do have an app feature request re TreeSync, but as I said, it’d be rude to post that right out of the gate.)
My paternal line is mostly from Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Iowa, Tennessee and Kansas, with a smattering of immigrants from Ireland & Switzerland (that I’ve determined thus far). Most of my maternal line is from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Arkansas. According to Ancestry’s DNA ethnicity estimate, I’m about 85% England/Scotland/Wales, 7% Irish and 6% Germanic Europe, which seems spot-on based on what I know.
My ancestors are a mix of saints & sinners, like most of us have: Mine include everything from American Revolutionary Patriot, US House of Rep members, judges & Union volunteers, to enslavers, Confederate volunteers and a Prohibition bootlegger. And more farmers than you can shake a stick at. For my direct ancestors, and a few extended, I light a candle on their birthday and sing them ‘happy birthday’. It’s not really for ancestor ‘veneration’. The saying is you die twice, once when you stop breathing and another the last time someone says your name. So, just doing my part to keep their name alive. The oldest ancestor I knew was my maternal/maternal great-grandmother, who lived to 104.
I maintain personal trees on Ancestry and MyHeritage, with max subscriptions for both. (If y’all need something looked up or to beta test a sync feature, I might be willing to help out occassionally.) I also follow several generations of my ancestors on FamilySearch and Geni, to make sure they stay well-sourced, etc. I bought RootsMagic primarily so I could maintain a decent offline version, in case things go awry, and to use the nifty reporting tools. (I’m a big fan of the Fan Chart, pun intended!)
Find A Grave is a volunteer effort I’ve recently also gotten started on. There’s a cemetery in my area that has quite a few outstanding photo requests and a big GPS gap. When the weather gets nicer, I plan to spend lots of time seeing if I can help that situation. Transcribing headstones is something I enjoy and frequently find really touching. I cry a lot when I transcribe a child’s headstone. I’ve also taken over the memorials for my mom, grand and great-grand parents, shoring those up with obituary transcriptions and some basic data to help others who might be searching.
From a professional perspective, I’m a 3-decade I.T. professional. I’ve held many positions, including system engineer, business analyst and project manager. Even before I was an I.T. professional, I was an avid user of computer systems. I was using the Internet before there was the original Mosaic browser (Lynx, Gopher, FTP, bang addressing anyone?) and was one of the early users of the first commercial ISP, The World by Software Tool & Die Co. My current professional role is where I’m finally in my sweet spot: Agile software development coach. I am Professional Scrum Master (certified by Scrum.org) and also hold a Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise (SAFe) cert for RTE. I have a general understanding of relational database terminology and concepts, but I’m not a developer by any means.
Well, that’s more than most probably care to know. But I’m a Chatty Cathy and I’ll talk your ear off, lol.
PS: Forum admin … there’s not really a ‘category’ or tag for user intros, otherwise I’d have used that (instead of ‘question’) so folks could filter out / mute this post if they wanted to.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
TTFN
Kimberly
. Thank you for enjoying & replying!