Moultrie Creek means many things to me. It’s the tidal creek outside my back door, the name of the business I’m building to support my digital habit once I retire, my web address and screen name and the name of one of my blogs. A native of St. Augustine, I returned home with my husband after more than 20 years of military service – first in Air Force and Air National Guard and later as an Army wife. I’ve been involved with computers since passing a data processing aptitude test in basic training more than 35 years ago. An assignment as a technical instructor taught me to love teaching – something I’ve been doing in one form or another ever since. These days I manage web sites for the Florida National Guard.

Flood tide - view from the back porch.

I started writing Family Matters to demonstrate that “common” computer tools and software were just as critical to genealogy research as dedicated genealogy software and services. Later, I wanted to begin documenting the stories of my family so I created Moultrie Creek. Blogging is the perfect medium for me in that it allows me to research and write in small chunks – one story at a time. I can jump from this person to that location as inspiration strikes. My biggest challenge here is learning to use adjectives again after so many years of technical writing.

Special Articles

At Family Matters, my passion is the technology that supports our research efforts. While the recent Research Delivered series is just another set of howto articles to most of my readers, for me it was a new way to create articles while also allowing re-use in multiple formats. Thanks to my new Screen Steps software, I can now quickly collect screenshots, add supporting text and publish the result to Family Matters and as a PDF document for download. This is a prime example of my mantra that our technology tools should make it easier to do the things we enjoy doing.

Autobahn Adventures was written for the Carnival of Genealogy edition discussing family cars. This has always been one of my favorite stories from our time in Germany – and just so happens to involve a car.

Cherokee Rose talks about the Cherokee rose climbing up my front porch as a tribute to my mother and grandmother. It is my favorite story.

I see technology as a tool to make my life easier and more enjoyable. At Family Matters I’m documenting the things I’ve learned to help research and preserve the history of my family. At Moultrie Creek I’m writing about the people and places that are a part of it. In the process I’ve joined a growing community of family researchers and recorders that has offered both support and inspiration. Yes, technology truly is a wonderful thing!

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Tags: Getting to Know Me
This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Musings. Both comments and pings are currently closed.