After hearing about ancestry.com from my coworker, I'm now hooked. Digging through old census reports, war records, marriage certificates, etc., and piecing together family locations, relations, and histories, it's a fascinating tour through America's past, with the added excitement of finding out about ones ancestry. Check it out when you have a chance, but be wary of that it can be addictive and sap away your hours. I'm just getting started, but here's some of the fun tid-bits I've uncovered about the Cherrys:

Charles T Cherry, my grandfather's great-grandfather, was born March 14, 1801 in England. He moved to the United States in the late 1820s. From what I can gather, he married Ann Mabel in England and had 8 children with her. Later, he married Mary, 20 years his junior (good job C T Cherry), and had Frederick Tinsley Donne, Charles Henry, and Frances. On the 1850 census, however, there were only 10 people living in the household, one of which was not a Cherry (Mary Hatey), not quite sure what was going on there. In the 1850s he moved to Tennessee and by 1880 all the children had moved out and only he and his wife, Mary, lived in the same house. A year later, they moved back to Marston (St Lawrence), Northamptonshire, England without their children. His occupation was listed as a farm laborer.

Frederick FTD Cherry, son of Charles T Cherry and my grandfather's grandfather, was born in July of 1841 in NY. In the 1850s his parents moved to Tennessee. While in medical school he enlisted in the 17th infantry regiment of Tennessee as a private on May 20, 1861 fighting for the Confederacy. He fought battles throughout TN and in Chickamauga, GA. He was captured and was a Union prisoner of war. After the war, he returned to TN, received his doctorate in allopathic medicine from the University of Nashville in 1868 and married Kate Elizabeth Smith in 1870. They had six kids: Mortimer, Charles Quintard, Arthur Donne, Annie Mary, Frederick Smith, and Susan. The youngest, Susan, or "Susie" as she was called in one document, was born when Frederick FTD Cherry was 50 years old. He remained in TN until around 1905 when he and his family moved to Sallisaw, Oklahoma. He died from an aneurysm in his thoracic aorta on June 2, 1913.

Frederick Smith Cherry, son of Frederick FTD Cherry, was born December 11, 1880 in Missouri. He lived in Winchester, TN, until about 1905 when his parents moved to Sallisaw, OK. His occupation was a Drugist. At the age of 38 he joined the army to fight the Germans in WWI. After the war, in the mid-20's, he moved to Okmulgee, OK. All in all, he ONLY had three children, Francis, Mabel Bonnie, and Frederick Tinsley Donne, named after his father.

Frederick Tinsley Donne Cherry, my grandfather, was born February 6, 1912 in Sallisaw, OK. He moved in the mid-20s with his parents to Okmulgee. He went to Okmulgee high school and Oklahoma University participating in football and track. He worked as a "soda jerk" in high school. He worked as an engineer for the British American Oil Company in Overton, TX, where he met and married my grandmother, Virginia Pearl Salyer. He continued working for the oil company until his superintendent told him he would have to quit “preaching” or resign. So, he resigned. He was unemployed and worked odd jobs until he was called into active duty, at which time he had three kids: Starley, Ron, and Mary. Before leaving to Europe, my grandmother was pregnant with number four. He fought in London and Belgium during the Blitz and the Battle of the Bulge. By the end of the war, he was Captain Fred T. Cherry, and had spent forty-four months in the war. After the war, Fred became a Baptist evangelist and preached the rest of his life all over the country. They had eight more kids, bringing the total to eleven, and in 1950, they bought a house in the "country" south of Edmond, OK. Fred had a fatal heart attack in October of 1970, six years before I was born. Grandma, now 92 years old, still lives in the house south of Edmond. She has 42 grandchildren and 100 great grandchildren.

Note: a lot of the specifics about my grandfather were garnered from a letter written about my grandfather by my grandmother that I found on ancestry.com. This much detail is not normal. However, there is an enormous amount of detail on the Civil War, each division and battle described in more detail than I would have ever imagined. Quite fascinating, if not a bit boring after reading through pages upon pages of mundane activities and battle reports.

Simply open up your text messenger on your phone and text "Haiti" to the number 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross to support Haiti relief efforts, or "Quake" to 20222 to donate $10 to the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, or "Yele" to 501501 for Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation. Through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets, donating via text is the thing to do and the cool and tech-savvy way to make donations. The American Red Cross set a record of mobile donations, raising $7 million in 24 hours. That total has now reached $21 million in six days. As a comparison, $200,000 was raised via text messages for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. The American Red Cross, for all charities for the whole year of 2009, received $4 million in text donations. I love what technology brings us. It's a beautiful thing.

As we enter 2010, I wanted to touch on the things I remember about 2009. It was the year of Avatar, District 9, and the Hangover (my picks for the year). Susan Boyle and Nadya "Octomom" Suleman. Tiger Wood's scandal and Michael Jackson's death. Balloon Boy, although he should be called Attic Boy since he was never in the balloon. The media frenzy with the H1N1 swine flu and the media battle over global warming (sometimes I hate the media). Obama's $787 billion Stimulus Bill and a great year in the stock market. Cash for Clunkers, $8000 first-time home buyers tax credit (woohoo!), and Bernard Madoff. Twitter mania, Bing, iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, Motorola Droid, Windows 7, and the Kindle. Tim Tebow and Mark Ingram. And finally a failed bombing attempt on Christmas Day to keep America spending billions in the "war on terror."

It was also the year I met Leenah, started working for ARM, traveled cross country from Miami, Florida to Olympia, Washington, and started a new life in Olympia. I saw Mt Rushmore and the Badlands, traveled to New York, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Cambridge, England. I went scuba diving with sea lions and harbor seals. I bought a new house, bought a new car, and bought an iPhone. It was the year my grandfather died, Wylie passed away, Meredith got pregnant, Holly got pregnant (#2), Martza got pregnant, Elena got pregnant, Sook got engaged, Sam got engaged (Liggett not Thompson), Nicki got engaged, Christia Hayek was born, and Phillip got married.

What a year. I can't wait to see what happens in 2010.

I woke up this morning ready to get back to work, real work this time as my boss and boss' boss came back to work today. Last week was a laid back week as people were just getting back from the holidays and the bosses were out. Anyway, I got into work today, opened up my email, and saw an email from Jim about being out this week. I opened up the email and he said his father died last night. Oh, terrible news. After a split second, it sunk in. That's not just a friend of mine's dad who died, that's Wylie. I was in shock. Wylie. The jolly, happy, guy who sits next to me at work. The guy who makes all the bad jokes. I couldn't believe it. Before Christmas he was fine. He seemed healthy, no complaints. Last week I was told he was out of the office due to some back pain but he would return to work on Monday. I didn't think anything of it. And, just like that, the office next to mine now sits vacant. I remember one day I asked Wylie what he plans to do when he retires. He looked at me quizzically, and said "Retirement?? Why would I retire? I'm having too much fun." Yes, he would curse at the computer and if he ever found a Microsoft bug he would stop by everyone's cube and describe the bug in great detail and curse some more about Microsoft. That was just his nature. He loved talking about differential equations, discrete mathematics, dark matter, quantum physics, gravitation, and would occasionally throw in some Shakespeare or comment on how boring a book was Madame Bovary. He talked about how we humans need to invent a new mathematics to deal with the current problems in quantum mechanics and how string theory is dead since its mathematics result in an infinite number of solutions, which cannot be proven or dis-proven, and therefore was wrong. He talked about how some evidence points to gravity having increased power at very large distances, on the order of parsecs. He always had something interesting to say. He didn't worry much about social norms or etiquette. At the sushi restaurant he once said, in a not-so-low-voice, how absurd it was to charge so much money for uncooked fish. He was a Republican and believed Obama was ruining our nation and politics was an occasional topic at lunch so it was always more entertaining when Wylie joined us. Not to mention his jokes, usually bad jokes, during group meetings and presentations. He was a lot of fun and he will be missed. Going to his funeral later this week will be a very sad day.

The site has been updated from the old HTML tables-within-tables layout to an XHTML and CSS standards-compliant website. Although not much has changed appearance-wise, under the hood it is completely different. Nobody uses the old style of website design as it is inferior on many levels, so it was something I've been wanting to learn and implement for a long time now- I just finally got around to it. Internet Explorer has been the dominant web browser for a long time and as such they did not feel the need to comply with web standards, although IE8 is supposed to be standards compliant. The CSS books are chock-full of exceptions and hacks to accommodate Internet Explorer. All the other browsers, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Konquerer, are all standards compliant. Thus, I decided not to implement the IE hacks and request that all viewers of this website use IE8 or one of the other browsers. This requirement is mostly a pet peeve of mine, in that I don't like Internet Explorer. Don't use it! =)

The radio stations have been playing Thriller, Billie Jean, and Beat It all weekend. I've been listening to Capital FM at home and at work since ARM doesn't allow any personal files to be stored on work computers - it's either streaming or an iPod. Oddly, I never knew MJ sang Smooth Criminal, I always associated it with Alien Antfarm. 80's pop culture isn't really my strong point. Farah Fawcett and Ed McMahon also died this week. I had to look up Farah Fawcett on Wikipedia. What a tragic story. Anyway, I guess Michael's life was quite tragic also. Ever since that Martin Bashir interview I just thought of him as a mental case. But I'll do my best to forget about that and just remember how talented he was. This weekend's playbacks of all his songs reminded me of that.

First off, Opera announced Opera Unite last week which basically adds web service capabilities into their browser allowing a user to share documents, pictures, and music on your computer simply by selecting which folder to share. This is great for sharing a lot of hi-res pictures with friends without having to compress the pics or use a website like megaupload. Also, since it's a web server, you can host your own website instead of going through godaddy or other service provider. Of course, as it is a web server, when your computer is off or not connected to the internet, nobody can access your files/webpage. However, it's pretty sweet. Opera isn't a well known browser, but I hope it takes off.

A couple of Google competitors debuted websites. Wolfram|Alpha showed off their new search engine they are calling an "answer engine". Their video presentation is very impressive, however, I was a bit disappointed when I actually started using the site. The media hyped it as a competitor to Google but really it is a niche market and not a competitor at all. Nonetheless, it's worth checking out. On the other hand, Bing, a "decision engine", is more of a direct competitor to Google. Unlike Wolfram|Alpha, I was impressed with Bing. A funny story, during development, Microsoft was contemplating putting the Microsoft logo on the site and through surveys and trials found that it was a deterrent on user's first impressions when opening the site. As such, only the name "Microsoft" and not the logo appear on the site. The image and video previews on Bing are great, along with the textual description preview of the site which is available without actually going to the site. I really like their homepage image- it maintains the 'simple' philosophy that Google has, yet with a little more up-to-date feel. Like Wolfram|Alpha, and most new websites/features, Bing has a video presentation as well. It actually has more than one.

Regarding the qualifiers for the World Cup 2010 in South Africa, Costa Rica is ranked #1 in the North American group, followed by USA and Honduras. Mexico, whom many thought would be ranked #1 is hanging in at #4 and Trinidad and Tobago is in last place at #6. The top three are guaranteed to go to South Africa; the fourth place team must defeat the fifth placed team from South America to make it to South Africa. Thus, with 5 more games to go for each team, anybody can make it, even Trinidad. I'm rooting for the USA and Costa Rica and Trinidad! The next games are not until August.

Finally, for reading amusement, I bring you 27b/6. I enjoyed the Pets in the Building email conversation along with the Overdue Account exchange. On a more serious note, this article on health care is worth a read. Hope this provides some good reading material for at-desk lunches.

I'm not quite sure what spurred Aramco into convincing the Saudi government into allowing a reunion for westerners (it's almost impossible to obtain a visa to enter Saudi Arabia for tourist purposes only), but they allowed it and it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many former Aramcons to visit. I knew Celeste and Shannon, both from my grade, who traveled there and Celeste documented her whole trip; of which I'm very grateful as it allowed me to get a glimpse of what it might have been like if I, myself, had made the return visit. I'll give a brief overview but feel free to read the whole blog for a full perspective (warning: it may be very boring for those not familiar with the area). The culture clash is still a big problem there. More western companies have moved in such as Starbucks, Forever21, Ikea, Olive Garden, etc., but many stores have separated male-female sections and/or separated family-singles sections. The enforcement of western women covering their body and head seems to have gotten stricter and harassing western women seems to have gotten worse. The women on the trip were consistently told that it's "easier" if you wear an abaya, not to make eye contact with Saudi men, and not to speak unless spoken to. When we lived there it wasn't this bad.

Since I'm giving the highlights it probably sounds worse than it is but some other sad things to note: The maze gardens that I used to play at in the Hills School are gone. The high dive at the 3rd Street pool has been removed. All the snackbars have been remodeled and serve different food; they look nothing like I remember. Camp seemed deserted, quiet, not many people out and about, and there are very few westerners left (Saudis now make up 75% of the population). Overall, it has changed so much that hardly anything looked familiar. An occasional thing here and there but it's just not the same. Celeste posted a bunch of pictures and as I was going through them, nothing clicked; the pictures looked completely foreign; however, it could also be due to my bad memory =). Jet fighters still fly overhead on their training runs, the golf course, although they've added more grass, is still mostly sand, and the desert is still the desert - it hasn't changed much. However, the place that we remember as kids no longer exists.