Nick has become the victim of a company down-sizing – a situation which I certainly do hope evolves into a door opening rather than a door closing.

His post reminded me of something I wrote a few months ago about modern-day job-hunting. On another blog, I posted about the notion that your friends may not be the only ones seeking you out on MySpace and other social networking sites. (When I launched DMweblife, I moved that post over here.)

Employers, too, may be checking you out – not just by “Googling” your name but by using social site aggregators to seek out all the various profiles you’ve put on the web. If any of these happen to include information or photos you wouldn’t want to share with an employer, you may find yourself blushing in your next job interview - or perhaps excluded from consideration all together.

Here are a few of the sites potential employers could be using – if they’re social media savvy – to learn more about you. I’m sure there are more, so if you know of any be sure to post them.

• PeekYou.com – boasts some 50 million-plus profiles, but I wasn’t among them. UPDATE: Okay it did find me – lots of info, too!
• Wink.com – this one found a lot older stuff… a few things I’d forgotten about (though nothing embarrassing – LOL)
• Zoominfo.com – focuses on your employment history. It only found my current position, where I’ve been for 7 years.
• YoName.com – searches major social networking sites; found me in lots of places.
• Ex.plode.us – searches major social sites, including some I use, but did not find me by name or username.

And finally, a resource that works for you in the job hunt (well, the above could too, if you always behaved yourself and posted only professional-type stuff…) Anyway, someone asked me recently if I was on LinkedIn yet, and I wasn’t… then a few days later I heard someone else say, “Yeah he’s on LinkedIn…” and so I finally went and looked at LinkedIn – it’s a professional networking site that lets you find your current and former co-workers, network for jobs, etc.

Earlier this week I promised a beginner’s tip sheet on launching a genealogy project. Remember that genealogy is both the search for documentation about family members as well as the gathering of recollections and stories. Larry Lehmer has much better advice than I on the latter, so I’ll focus on the basic tools of gathering and organizing documentation here.

(Note: I began my search with no computer software. I did eventually purchase Family Tree Maker, which I love and highly recommend.)

Here’s how I set up my initial project, which continues to this day. It is not the only way to begin, but it has kept me somewhat organized over the years.

Step 1. Make it your goal (or at least a pledge) to collect as much actual documentation as you can. It’s not likely you’ll ever need to present your research in any kind of formal or academic way, but people can remember things incorrectly and you’ll want documents that give you the facts as well as people who give you the legends. I work toward getting a birth, marriage and death certificate for every direct ancestor. It’s perfectly fine – encouraged! – to collect them for non-direct ancestors too, such as aunts, uncles and cousins.

Birth, marriage and death certificates are generally available from the county in which the event took place, or that state’s archive. This makes acquiring them sound a lot easier than it actually is, but that’s partly what makes this hobby addictive.

Step 2. With your documentation goal in mind, gather two 3-ring notebooks of 3-4 inch capacity, a set of 3 tab dividers for each notebook, and a box of 100 clear plastic page protectors. Label each notebook with the surname of one of your parents, if known. (Adoptees and those with step-parents will have a special and intensely personal decision to make here in as to whether to research adoptive, step, and/or or biological families.)

For the tab dividers, one set of three per notebook labeled “Direct Ancestors,” “Non-Direct Ancestors” (these are your aunts, cousins, etc.) and “Unknown” have worked well for me. Put a supply of page protectors in each tab – you’re going to start filling them with documentation!

Step 3. Gather the following information, as much as is applicable, about you and each of your parents: birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate. Using your computer software (or paper templates if you want to do it the old-fashioned way), start with yourself: create an entry giving as much information as you can based on your own knowledge, others’ recollections, and the documentation.

What’s neat about the software is that when you enter a new person into the system, it automatically asks you for that person’s parents’ info as well. It will therefore quickly become obvious that your task is never-ending. This “auto-create” feature is actually endearing at first… but later it can begin to feel like a bit of a nag – “Yes yes, I know you need Susannah Huffman’s parents – but until I can get to Bedfordshire to look at the Parish records, you’re just going to have to wait.”)

Step 4. With information about you and your parents now entered, add some sibling information if applicable. Then click around in your software a little and note how the program automatically assigns relationships among individuals (based on your input), building Family Group Sheets for heads of households and other useful lists and charts. You’ll immediately appreciate the automation of those tasks, especially once you get past, say, the second generation.

That’s really all there is to it. With these simple tools and tasks assembled and completed, your journey has begun. Hopefully you also have a few stories already collected that you’ve been able to preserve.

You’ll now notice that you suddenly have many lifetimes of new information to gather as you answer the perpetual genealogical question: “That’s nice, dear, but who were her parents?”

I read Larry’s piece yesterday about family audio recordings and left a comment about the first “audio recording story” from my own experience that came to mind. I also remember a couple others:

My younger brother and I used to play with a large reel-to-reel recorder that belonged to my dad. One of our favorite activites was for me to use the mircophone as a public-address system and announce a horse race as my brother would gallop throughout the house. (We were, in fact, recreating one of our favorite Spike Jones tunes, “Feedlebaum.”) Well the last time we ever did this activity, things did not end well. My brother came charging into the living room, rounded a corner, and put out his arms in front of him to stop. And pushed them straight through the plate glass window at the end of the room. He wasn’t injured – heavy draperies protected him from the glass. But how to explain what had happened, when “galloping through the house” was a forbidden activity? As kids will do, we lied. We said we heard a big crash and came in and found the window broken, not really thinking that the glass outside on the sidewalk made it pretty obvious that it was an inside job. Needless to say our lie was quickly discovered and appropriate punishment handed out, and that was the end of our race-calling game.

When recording equipment got a little more portable, we acquired a cassette-recording unit. I used to beg my dad to let me use it to produce my original news program, “Pet’s Answers.” This program was ahead of its time – indeed it was the forerunner of today’s talk radio: I would walk around with the cassette deck hanging by a strap over my shoulder and carrying the little tethered microphone, interviewing our pets as well as my stuffed animals on issues of the day. “What do you think of the Patty Hearst situation?” I would ask the cat, and then I would answer for her in a high squeaky cat-voice along the lines of “Well I think it’s just awful, her getting kidnapped like that, just because she’s rich and all…” Then I would seek out another pet to offer the opposing view: “I say she robbed that bank on purpose, she got in with the bad guys and wanted to be just like them!” The program even had a little theme song: “Pet’s Answers / we got the / Pet’s Answers / we got the / Pet’s Views on World Problems!” (Oh I wish you could hear the tune I’m humming.)

I wonder if Sean Hannity got his start this way?

Another of my “linguistic habits” posts totalled some 32,346 words all on one topic (the movie “Dick”). So, I decided to shorten things up a bit. Here are a few more verbal short-cuts we should eliminate immediately from our daily discourse:

1. Use of the cliche, “as a rule of thumb.” This phrase originally referred to the “rule” (actually a British common law) that the stick with which a man should beat his wife should not exceed the width of his thumb… anyway, since wife-beating went out with the “Alabama Man” commercial spoof on South Park a few years ago, it’s time to retire the phrase.

2. Adaptations of the “If you build it…” line from the movie, “Field of Dreams.” You can, and they might. But not without marketing. Suggested replacement lines: “Don’t throw me down, Clark” from “Christmas Vacation,” or “Sombody’s gotta go back and get a shit-load of dimes” from “Blazing Saddles.”

3. Parodies of the “Got Milk?” campaign. The AdFreak blog compiled a “Top 100″ list of these advertising parasites in 2005, and they’re still breeding. The worst? “Got MLK?” on a t-shirt promoting the Good Doctor. The best: “Got Crabs?” on a t-shirt for Joe’s Crab Shack. Got overused? Yeah, me too.

Every time we drive east on Euclid Avenue, on the bridge over the Des Moines River, we look down at the bike trail that winds along the river’s edge, expecting to see two tired Civil War veterans walking in tattered uniforms with their muskets. Why? Because one day a few years ago, my husband actually saw them.

And now he can’t decide if he was hallucinating. Ever the pragmatist, of course, I assure him that what he saw was a pair of Civil War Re-enactors, probably on their way to or from an event. He says he leans more toward the “apparition/ghost” theory, but I think he does that more for our daughter’s entertainment.

The Register reports today that history-minded Iowans are beginning to think about the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, which took place from 1861-1865 and which claimed the lives of 13,000 Iowans. A few of the folks mentioned in the article referred to the fact that they have ancestors who fought in that war, as do I.

My great-great-grandfather, William L. Thornburg, settled in Winterset with his family around 1847. He was mustered in to the Union Army in November, 1862 (39th Iowa Infantry), and mustered out in August, 1865. Wounded in the hip (or “shot in the @ss,” as my husband likes to tease) at the battle of Parker’s Crossroads, Tennessee in December, 1862, Thornburg spent most of his time being transferred among hospitals as he recuperated. He returned to Winterset upon completion of his service and lived the rest of his long life there.

Are you aware of any of your ancestors who served in the Civil War? If so, tell us a little about them! If you have no idea, searching for Civil War veteran ancestors is a great reason to begin a genealogy project. Need some ideas on how to get started? I’ll write up a quick-start guide and post it here this week.

But beware, it’s addictive!