dadams.co.uk

September 2006… I had a meeting in Aberdeen and then Matt, Kemal and I journeyed to Edinburgh in Matt’s car. When Matt dropped me off at my hotel, I picked my bag up out of the boot (trunk if you’re American) and immediately noticed it was warm. Closer inspection showed that the ThinkPad T40 hadn’t suspended and had been running for three hours inside the bag (ironically, having two batteries attached is normally a good thing). The hard disk had roasted so I had lost everything (including the presentation I was due to deliver the next day), and this proved to be a monumental pain in the arse for weeks and months to come. Just as annoying as losing work stuff, I also lost the last ever pictures I’d taken of my dad. I think I also came close to physically assaulting several people who said “oh, I hope you had backups”.

Shortly after this I acquired an external USB drive.

February 2008… I’d taken the ThinkPad (a newer one, a T60 which has an annoying aversion to external monitors and projectors which means I still have to cart the T40 around sometimes) to the in-laws to show them the family tree progress and to grab some info from their memories and some birth, marriage and death certificates (jolly way to spend a Sunday). After Sunday dinner we went for a walk, then Lauren spent a while surfing the interweb before we made our way home. I shut the T60’s lid and stuffed it into the Lotusphere 2007 rucksack.

Back at home I experienced a sense of impending doom… the whole bag felt really hot and there was a, well, not burning smell but the smell of electrical stuff that’s got really hot. The T60 was very warm, much warmer than I remembered the T40 being. The battery warning light was flashing and it was back at the boot-up password screen. My first thought was “oh no, not again” and my second was how much of a pain in the arse it was going to be for months, not to mention tomorrow, if everything was gone.

I took the battery off, left it open to cool, went for a bath, and then thirty minutes later with great trepidation attached the power and booted up. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see the Windows logon screen.

Two things I have been reminded of today. Always check your laptop has actually suspended before you put it in the bag, and back-up important stuff even more frequently than you do already. Phew…

I think I’ve used that rather poor-quality play on words before. Anyway, my older brother Florida Steve (who might have had a more prolific career as a guest blogger here) is now the proud owner of his own Wordpress blog. There were a few challenges in setting it up, most of which went away when his hosting company moved him from a Windows server onto a Linux server (say no more).

His debut posting features an account of a no-doubt deafening evening at a gig by a reformed Van Halen at the Amway Arena in Orlando. I know we’ll all be looking forward to a double helping of wisdom and balanced opinions from the Adams brothers in the future.

I was working at the Camberley office today when I heard an all-too-familiar noise. I looked out the window and saw our most frequent-visiting vixen calling her mate who trotted up to her a few seconds later. The female was last seen sun-bathing beyond the rhododendrons on Sunday, and then she ventured into our garden for a quick drink from the bird-bath. Today the ginger twosome (named Basil and Roxy by Lauren) both had a drink - and then while Roxy sat on the steps waiting patiently, Basil scampered off to annoy next door’s dog (Tommy). I bet the cunning devil knows that Tommy is restricted by an electrical circuit running round the garden. After a few minutes Basil returned, nuzzled his mate, and they disappeared into the bushes.

Lauren has mixed feelings about the foxes as they’re one of the reasons we’re not having a pet rabbit. Personally I love seeing them, but I just wish they’d stay away from the dustbin.

A few evenings spent digging through census records have revealed quite a lot. Getting hold of my grandparents’ birth certificates will make some of my findings certain, but I’m 99% sure that I’ve identified one branch of the clan going back to my great great great grandfather Henry Clinch (and we’ll call him Henry Clinch Senior as my great grandfather was also Henry Clinch).

Henry Clinch Senior was born in 1820 and his profession was listed as cheese monger and also ‘butter man’ (so clearly in the diary produce game), but then later (in the 1871 census) he was a poulterer. So far this is scuppering my hopes of turning up a long-lost wealthy relative from which I can inherit some unclaimed fortune. And funnily enough Florida Steve was hoping the same.

It’s possible I can go further back to my great great great great grandfather on the current evidence, but the past starts to get murky. Henry Clinch Senior has no wife listed on any census until 1871. Up until then it’s just him, the offspring and a servant. The offspring included my great great grandfather James Clinch. Then in 1871 Henry Senior’s wife is listed as Ellen (aged 38 to his 51). However, in the 1881 census, Ellen appears in James’ household, but has the surname Manning. So, the question is, was she James’ mother or did she meet and marry Henry Senior sometime between 1861 and 1871? To be sure I’d need James’ birth certificate.

I do hope Ellen was the mother of James, because she was fairly easy to trace on the 1841 census, and this reveals the possible identity of my great great great great (there has to be easier way of writing that) grandfather - David Manning, a labourer (sadly, not a duke) born in 1791. This is getting exciting, getting back to the 18th century, but unfortunately I will then exhaust the census information as a source as 1841 was the first (as far as I know).

This is just one branch of the family. At the moment I know little about my great grandmother Alice West (Henry Junior’s wife), or Mary Ann (James’ wife)… I don’t even know her surname.

More soon, I know you’re all riveted…

The night before Lotusphere Comes To You 2007 (Manchester edition) I sat next to Diane from our Marketing team at dinner, and was absolutely enthralled by her account of tracing her family tree. She’s gone back as far as the 17th century (that’s the 1600’s), and said that some of the ancestors were quite difficult to pin down.

My frolleague Cali Clarke has also done some detective work and has traced her ancestors back to the 18th century. Coincidentally, among the wonderful treasures that the previous owners of Adams Towers left for us before they hoofed it to Spain (that reminds me, I must hire a skip soon) was a CD of a genealogy program. It’s imaginatively named ‘Family Tree’. To give you an idea of how hi-tech it is, the system requirements demanded a 486 processor (hmmm, should be okay with this Pentium), Windows 95 or 98 (XP will have to suffice) and a whopping 8 mb of RAM (yep, I think I can spare that). It looks like it was designed in the Windows 95 era, but Cali confirmed the all-important feature - it supports the open standard for family tree files (GED).

Plotting my past could be a tad tricky on my dad’s side. One limiting factor is that he passed away (and is sorely missed) and is therefore not around to fill in any details. The other factor is that he was adopted, and all we really know is that he was born in Ardrossan (West Scotland) in November 1940. Therefore, it makes more sense to start on my mother’s side. I already knew the details of my maternal grandparents (they died well into my adulthood), and I also knew my grandmother’s maiden name. But that was all. My mum didn’t know much else apart from my great-grandfather’s Christian name.

Fortunately, there are some on-line resources that allow you to search birth, marriage and death records. Unfortunately they only give you so much information, and some sites demand payment for the info. However, there is one site that lets you view the registers for free. The registers only give so much info, but provide the base to then get the certificates which will uncover further details.

So, my next step is to ask my mum and uncle if they have my grandparents’ birth certificates… and if not I can get them from the General Register Office. Then I can get the details on my great-grandparents and start to dig further.

1. Go to Ikea.

That’s all for now folks, but don’t forget to check back here during half-term week for more good advice.

So, here we are, the first post of 2008. After a strenuous first day back at work I arrived home to find two letters for me. Not unusual, I get post but usually it’s either a) bills or b) junk mail. Sometimes birthday cards, but typically only in January.

Since we moved in October 2006 we certainly get less casual delivered-on-foot junk mail. Where we used to live there was a high concentration of houses meaning that all manner of junk mail-delivery offenders could offload a huge volume of their wares in a short time… and hence we used to get a lot, sometimes up to ten pizza delivery leaflets a week. The day when I opened the door, screwed up a leaflet from an estate agent and threw it back at his head now seems distant.

The road we now live in is a bit of a hike for on-foot junk mail-delivery, nowhere near as many houses and wouldn’t be attempted after dark (not because of me jumping out of a bush at them - although that’s a thought - it’s just a very dark road). Hence we rarely get any leaflets through the door, which I count as a huge bonus. However…

The amount of junk mail delivered in addressed envelopes seems to be on the increase. Now, what are we constantly warned against (apart from eating too much saturated fat, binge drinking and driving while shaving or eating a bowl of cereal)? Answer: identity fraud. Who warns us against identity fraud? Answer: financial institutions, banks and credit card providers. Who sends the most junk mail which carries the risk of exposing our name and address details to potential fraudsters? Answer: financial institutions, banks and credit card providers.

Here’s my tip… when you receive junk mail from anyone and it includes a reply-paid envelope, send it back to them. It costs them money to process your incoming envelope. You can send their crap back to them and include a note saying “take me off your mailing list” or just send them back something else you don’t want. After all, they sent you some rubbish, so just return the favour.

Poor Lauren… the terribly deprived child did quite well out of Santa, and today at last got the chance to try out a couple of things that were in her Christmas sack.

The first was a radio-controlled hovering UFO that we’d seen at a large well-known toy store in London (you won’t have to think too hard). We opened the box today and found that part of the structure was broken. Very disappointing, but I have to congratulate the store’s customer service - the guy I spoke to was as polite and apologetic as you could possibly hope for, and he gave me a freepost address for the item’s return and promised a replacement.

Postponing plans for the maiden voyage of the UFO, the other item to try out was the chocolate fountain (what was Santa thinking?). This was taken out of the box, and I discovered that while it did heat up as it was supposed to, the motor (for the purpose of pumping molten chocolate) didn’t work. So that’s another item we’re going to have to arrange the replacement of.

Quality control problems at the North Pole do you think? Thank goodness the Archos 605 is working properly (famous last words).

It would appear to be Christmas Eve, so I’d like to wish the readers of dadams.co.uk a very merry Christmas. The wife’s Christmas playlist is ringing out of her iPod (as it has done since mid-November) so once again I’m struck by the idea of ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ and how grossly impractical that would be. And while we’re on the subject of ridiculous song lyrics… ‘White Christmas’… lovely song, lovely idea, but totally irrelevant as we enter what I believe to be my 37th consecutive Christmas without snow.

Anyway, have a great Christmas, don’t drink and drive, be grateful for what you get and enjoy the Doctor Who special.

John ‘Jim’ Adams - 24th November 1940 to 29th September 2006

I can hardly believe it’s been a year since I got that phone call, my brother Steve telling me that our dad had collapsed and died during his pool maintenance round in Florida. The next week was pretty horrible… I flew out to Orlando with my sister Sue on the Monday morning, attended the funeral on the Tuesday, flew back that evening, arrived home on Wednesday morning… and then we moved house on the Thursday. I was moved by the amount of people who attended my dad’s funeral service. The chapel was crammed full of people… his friends and customers, all of whom were deeply shocked by his sudden passing but full of good things to say about him. Not that I expected any different. Speaking at the service was one of the most moving experiences of life, and it was probably because I do so many (too many) presentations as part of my job that I was able to keep going.

However, one thing I could be 100% sure of today, if he was sitting here next to me now my dad would tell me not to focus on the sad stuff. He’d tell me to lighten up. “Worrying” he once told me “just makes you ill, so don’t do it”. He also once told me to bump him off if he became old and senile (which I didn’t actually agree to and now don’t have to worry about). With this ethos in mind, I’d like to remember his genius and occasional wit with a few choice stories…

Bad jokes - a couple of weeks ago I was chatting with my uncle Terry, and he said that what he most remembered about my dad was his bad jokes. Like father, like son. The one he probably told to everyone, and Terry remembered this, was the one about being a tap dancer and falling into the sink. The ironic thing was that you could tell my dad a joke, he’d tell you it was rubbish, but then he’d tell you one even worse.

He was also very good at spinning stories. Nine years ago I was working in Boston for two weeks and he flew up from Florida to spend the weekend with me. I clearly remember a story he told me about a friend of his who had hit a wild pig with his car, and then later got in trouble with a wildlife warden. It was spun out in great detail for about twenty minutes, until I discovered that it was all completely untrue and had been constructed with the sole intention of delivering one bad punch-line (the pig had squealed on him).

More recently, he’d had the end of one finger amputated due to some damage to the bone. When my daughter Lauren looked very concerned, he just told her that he was special as he was the only guy around who could count up to 9½.

The remote control - nearly twenty years ago (possibly a bit less) Sue and I shared a flat, but as she was a British Airways stewardess at the time she wasn’t there often. My dad stayed in the flat for a few months before leaving for the USA. Mostly this worked very well because he liked cooking and served up some good stuff - his signature dish was mince and potatoes, and also invented the ingenious method of warming the plates by putting them on top of the boiler. Sometimes in the evening, if he was bored, he’d do his best to irritate me for a laugh - things like throwing peanuts at me or hitting my head with a slipper while I was watching television. This was a few years ago, and the television didn’t have a remote control (imagine that kids, the Dark Ages). In the living room there was one prime-position chair in front of the television and a sofa (not in a prime position), so occupancy of that chair was hotly contested - sometimes won by tossing a coin or stealing the position if the occupier moved out. So, the lack of remote control meant that you had to get up and physically go over to the television, which sometimes resulted in a childish race to the prime chair if you could move off the sofa quick enough.

One evening he claimed occupancy of the chair, but then wanted to switch channels. I got ready to make my move - and then I saw it. He had brought in a length of bamboo, and wielded it across the five foot gap to the television to hit the buttons. Genius.

Practical jokes - looking back, one of his pranks stood out. I arrived home from work one day and he announced with the most serious dead-pan face that there were mice in the flat. He then preceded to pull the sofa away from the wall to reveal a number of small black objects which he pointed out were mouse droppings. When I asked him if he was sure, he picked one up, looked at it, popped it in his mouth, and after a moment of serious thoughtful consideration said “yeah, they’re mouse droppings alright”. Of course, they turned out to be small pieces of raisins. Right, very funny. But I had to hand it to him, his face didn’t crack once all through the prank.

I don’t really know how to finish this blog post - I guess I’ll just have to say that he’s very much missed, but we have loads of good memories of the man who loved his family, his wife Susan, and the life that he’d found for himself in Florida.