The AncestryDNA Kit

     I was very happy to check the mail today and find my AncestryDNA kit from Ancestry.com.  I ordered this seven days ago, so it arrived with decent timing. It's the spit kit, like 23andMe has.  You spit into a tube, release a solution into it that's stored into the cap, and then put it in a pre-paid envelope. Easy!  From what I've seen online, results are coming back in about four week.  Fingers crossed!  Here are some photos:

Prepping for My Trip

     I'm on vacation, starting Monday.  I only have one genealogy themed activity planned, but most activities are history related.  I just got my new iPhone on Thursday and have been prepping it for my trip. A friend showed me how to create folders for my apps, so I created a 'Genealogy' folder, as well as a 'Navigation' folder.

My Navigation apps include: Maps  Maps Default TeleNav GPS Plus MapQuest Destinations Travel NC (my destination) iExit Parks Guide Roadside Oh Ranger! ParkFinder

My Genealogy apps include: BillionGraves Ancestry 23andMe Evernote Blogger iTalk GA Marker

   
     Does anyone have any suggestions for helpful apps for either category? For navigation apps, I'm especially interested in apps like 'Roadside' that help me find spur-of-the-moment attractions. For genealogy apps, anything that would help with recording visits to places or with family. I haven't had a chance to try all of these out yet, so any advice is welcome.

FamilySearch Indexing Daily Stats

     Since 8pm est yesterday, I've indexed 560 names and arbitrated 760 names, all from the 1940 census.  As a whole, 5,412,976 names have been indexed and 2,276,204 have been arbitrated.

     The goal of 5 million names was reached 14 hours into the challenge. I'm thinking that we could actually reach 10 million names if everyone keeps up the hard work.

     But those number I mentioned above, you might wonder where those came from? FamilySearch is listing occasional updates on Facebook and Twitter, but you don't need to wait for them to know the numbers. You can check them out any time at https://indexing.familysearch.org/rss?listType=todaypage. And change "todaypage" to "yesterdaypage" to see the previous day's stats.  For comparison, yesterday 2.3 million names were indexed in a 24 hour period, versus the 5.4 million so far today (17 hours).

    Congrats and keep up the good work folks (and feel free to index some Georgia and South Carolina 1940 Census records!)

Got My AncestryDNA Invite.... Er, Not Quite

     Happy dance! I got my invite for the new autosomal AncestryDNA test!  It's my last chance (when was my first chance?), today only.  And I have the money right now.  Yay!  Not.

     I got this error message when I clicked the link in the email.  I very quickly called customer support, which told me that I had received the invitation in error.  Error!? The rep on the phone seemed to know exactly what was going on, so I'm thinking that this has happened before. But he assured me that I was still on the list.

    Talk about going from high to low in zero seconds flat.  I'm super disappointed.  I kinda think that unless this email was sent out en masse to a few hundred thousand people that Ancestry.com should honor the invite they sent me. If it did go out to everyone they need to push through a retraction email pronto.

     UPDATE: I just got a phone call from an ancestry.com rep who said that the email had gone out to some folks in error but that since it was their error they offered to let me go ahead and purchase the test.  Yay! Thanks Ancestry.com!

     Here's the email I received: