Reunion is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s designed to complement Reunion for Macintosh and lets you take your family with you. View, navigate, search, and edit your information on the go. You’ll always be ready to add people, document new information, and make corrections to your data. Then bring the changes back to your family file on the Macintosh.

I’ve got 22,000+ people in my family file and everything looks very familiar to the Reunion native app that we Reunion users have grown to love. The only issue that I’ve encountered has to do with pictures not being imported. Once I or Leister Productions works out that kink, all will be good.

This app does not disappoint. I’ll be hauling Reunion into cemeteries without worrying about bringing my computer.

Thank you Leister Productions! Awesome.

Why two images? Well, that’s the cool part. Her grandparents, Wilfred Schulte and Lucille Braun, were brother and sister to my grandparents, Alcuin Schulte and Katherine Braun? She shares the same relationship with her second cousin Sean as mentioned earlier in this blog.

Oh, it gets even better. Courtney was a journalism student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison back in the late 1990′s. She obtained a student worker job within the Office of News and Public Affairs. Turns out that I also worked (and continue to do so) there. I’m slow, I admit that. I didn’t put two-and-two together for a little while as Courtney worked not 15 feet from my office area. I go all the way to Madison and I’m not looking for relatives, especially ones that are right under my nose!

Good to reminisce.

I love introductions. For me, it’s like pulling teeth. Oh well, on with the show. I have recently been nominated and have accepted the opportunity to be a candidate for election to represent you. The Northwest Plains Region CC represents County Coordinators from a wide range of states (Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wyoming) on The USGenWeb Project Advisory Board.

It might surprise you to learn that I have been the Stearns County, Minnesota County Coordinator for nearly eleven years. I’ve devoted approximately one third of my life to supporting the research activities of other interested Stearns family history buffs. I have strong ties to Stearns County and when the MNGenWeb Project was born, it seemed natural that I would jump at the chance to take on the challenge this county.

As a thirty-five year old husband and father of three boys, I have been engaged in my family history as long as I can remember. My introduction to my Stearns connections started because of my dad. We would take trips to cemeteries and he would set me off to run the rows looking for certain monuments. I had no idea what I was really doing as a kid (it was fun!), but I look back on those times with fondness. I really took interest in my family history years later when I attended college at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. Not only is SJU found within Stearns County, I had numerous relatives living as students on campus as well as past and present members of the Order of St. Benedict. It was a boon of information plus it allowed me to have a central location within the county to move about and do research for my dad. After I left college, I came to appreciate that the resources I had at my easy disposal were not readily available to those that lived outside the county…heck, the state. I knew when I volunteered and adopted Stearns that I would make it my mission to aid anyone researching information about the area and their respective families. My county has a tremendous group of people that share my interest in the county — their support over the years dwarf my own contributions.

In 1998, when my dad passed away, I took full hold of our family history files and my interest in supporting the research in the county has never waned. Much time has passed since I initially volunteered and I have largely worked independently of the hierarchy above my neck of the woods Stearns. I’ll chalk it up to youth…I’m much wiser now than I was at 23. So, I figured I should throw my hat into the ring (by the way, thanks for the nomination).

I generally like to fly under the radar, but I would be grateful if you would consider voting for me. As your Representative, I want to guide the project in such a manner that it benefits and supports the County Coordinator. The USGenWeb Project is only as good as its volunteers. County Coordinators will ultimately make this project successful. I would like to ensure, as long as I’m on the Advisory Board, that the County Coordinators I represent are well-informed about the activities and actions that may impact their ability to support their county. If it impacts me, it impacts you.

Thanks for opportunity to represent our region — please contact me if you have any questions.

So I whipped through the rows and took 44 pictures. When I got back home I surveyed the results and did find a few people that I either didn’t have a clue who they were or how they connected. I’ve got some work to do to sort them out.

My cousin Quincy Stroeing, while at the auction, relayed to me that he was “getting into” Find A Grave. I had been to it before, but never contributed. I thought I should offer up some of my recent pictures and I started uploading pictures and information.

After 25 interments and 31 photos, I do have a few initial gripes. The images that you upload need to be less than 250KB. That size is fine, but they should remove this hurdle from the contributor. Let folks upload any size photo and let the server make the appropriate size reductions. Another gripe is linking of photos. There’s no need for me to upload two photos if two people share a monument. That seems like a tremendous waste of resources when I could just link things together. Lastly, the site needs a healthy dose of Ajax. Drilling down through country, state, county and city could be done more seamlessly and without page reloading. Find A Grave is cool and all, but it could be a lot more sexy.

Anyway, the Day-2-Day Greg and Tony blog is there to keep friends and family updated with the latest and greatest news.

Shameless plug: If you’re close to Jersey City, New Jersey, get in touch with the Animal Relief Foundation Fund to find out how you can help reduce the surplus of unwanted cats and kittens in the world.

What I’ve realized is that I need to “thieve” some biographical information from the site one of these days.

To add to his notoriety, he even got an email from John Larroquette himself. Now that is pretty cool. The comment area from the post about the email was particularly amusing. Well, I thought so anyway!

Peter doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall, but I thought I’d blog about him just the same.

Modern web applications are different from their forebears, and I’m going to try to show how they should be approached. I’ll try to include all the information you’ll need to learn and write modern web applications (and I won’t even use the term “AJAX”!). Check back often, because I’ll try to put new tutorials up frequently.I must admit, 99% of the stuff he writes about is nothing I’ve ever dealt with, but he does offer some insight and I’m compelled to check in from time to time to see what he’s been fiddling with of late.

It’s my intent to drop an occasional relative blog into the category (as I find them). I wouldn’t be surprised if some third cousin, once removed, shows up among the mentions.