Note: I don’t mean to show a bias towards Kodak. It is strictly coincidence that I found this after my Tech Tuesday post. Except I don’t believe in coincidences, so it’s really one of those crazy freaky things that follows me around. Again, I am not being compensated by Kodak for this post.

I had photos on the brain yesterday. I was actually sorting through some of my scanned photos trying to decide if I was going to rescan the last batch at a higher DPI. That’s when I remembered this box in the spare room. It’s there with a suitcase full of sympathy cards that were sent to Llewellyn after William‘s death.

I remember opening this up before but I think I was too busy pouring over documents. I probably saw that these were negatives of some sort and decided to check later if they were negatives of pictures I already had. I should have been tipped off to the fact that these were kept separately.

So yesterday, I started going through the box. It was then I realized these were slides and not negatives. Or are they negatives that are mounted as slides? Is that the same thing. This shows you how much I know about these things. Obviously I need to do a bit more research.

On this box I noticed a name that I found on the back of a photo. Gladys Walker. I’m almost certain that Gladys Walker is a relation who lived in the Detroit area. This all feels more likely to me because I found Detroit written on the back of some photos and Ralph Leonard even spent a few years there. If there was family there, then Ralph’s brief time there is better explained.

It was when I stuck one of the slides into this that I realized I could possibly have more pictures than I thought.

I’ve got a lot of pictures. There is one big batch of a trip to Florida. So I’m thinking these slides could be from William and Llewellyn’s travels. My father says they traveled around a bit. Unfortunately, the light is broken in the viewer that I found in the box. I’m putting a new one on my Christmas wish list and I’m hoping that my slides will fit into a new one.

If that’s the case, I have a lot of slides to go through.

This box says Moore and 86 Park Avenue. So I’m now positive these slides are William and Llewellyn’s. The date of 1966 gives me a time frame that pretty much matches the photos I have of Llewellyn and William in Florida.

There’s a lot of Kodak in that box. I’ve used Kodak for 10 years myself. It was my first digital camera. It’s kind of comforting when I find these things in my family tree. I’ve grown up without a lot of family around me. So I never really felt a lot of connections to the past. Which is probably why I am a literal sponge when my grandma gave me that family tree. I remember distinctly being amazed that you could actually know your family back that far.

Now that I know my Dad’s side of the family, it’s amazing all the different things I find that link me to things. Just finding a box full of Kodak slides made me giddy. Like I had yet another connection to these people I’m learning were a lot like me. So that’s at least 44 years of Kodak history in our family, it’s kind of a nice feeling.

Herbert Redford (1872-1940)

Note: I have no affiliation with Kodak. I am not being compensated for this post. I’m just a Kodak user, who enjoys my Kodak products.

If you spend any amount of time with my family, you’ll realize we’re gadget people. It’s so very obvious. I’m not talking about my siblings. I’m talking about my extended family too. On my Dad’s side, our family reunions are littered with gadget talk.

When I started to think about what I would write about for Tech Tuesday, the first thing that come to mind is my printer/scanner combo. It’s not the fanciest or most advanced piece of technology I own, but it’s the most used by far.

Don’t let the clutter on top fool you, I use this printer/scanner combo on a daily basis when I’m busy. I only clutter it because I like the tiger and it makes me smile when lines of code make my eyes cross.

What a difference flash makes in a picture, huh? Anyway, here’s the scanner opened up to show you the top. I can easily fit 5 or 6 of my more historical pictures onto this scanner. The Kodak scanner software even picks up the different pictures when it scans. It doesn’t always pick them up, but a quick ‘Fix Scan’ action allows me to delineate where each picture is.

One of the other things that sold me on the printer is the memory card reader. My computer doesn’t have one and I can’t find one that will fit in my computer. So this helps me so much. In fact, ALL my digital camera pictures are transferred to my hard drive through this printer. It’s as simple as putting the card in and selecting the AutoPlay prompt that allows me to Import Pictures through Windows. I set my settings to always transfer to my second hard drive in the Camera Pictures folder into another folder that displays the date of transfer. Organization of my pictures keeps me sane.

Here’s a picture to show where the paper feeds in from. When I’m not printing, I like to keep the tray up to save space. It doesn’t seem like a lot of space but I don’t like a lot of stuff near my arms when I’m coding websites. It’s just one of my things. Also, on the bottom right is a USB slot. I can hook my camera directly into that spot if I need to. I don’t use that slot for the most part. I really only use it when I forget to put my memory card back into my camera and I need pictures off the camera memory.

Here are the controls on the top of the printer.

They have a red blinking light for when you’re low on ink (which I am, but I caught it on an off blink!) and another light for a paper jam (which I don’t have). The Scan button is just what it says. My favorite part of this printer is the Copy button. My mom is a school bus driver and every year she has to make a seating chart. It’s never a quick process. So I usually take her seating chart blank form and I change quantity to 10 or 15 and hit Copy. The printer makes 10 copies using the scanner portion to copy the form. As you can see, you can also switch between black/color and 100% scale or Fit to Page. When I’m copying a form, I don’t worry about the scale. If I were copying a picture though, I might hit fit to page so that I could have a full size picture.

I wouldn’t change much about my printer/scanner combo. In fact, the only thing I’d change today would be to ugrade to the newer wireless model. The picture above is the newer model and it’s about the same price that I paid for mine. So that’s really the only thing I’d change about this. I’m not sure what quirks of fate would come with a wireless setup though, so do that at your own risk.

So that’s my Tech Tuesday pick. I find this a very efficient and useful product. Ink refills only cost $20 for both color and black. The ink does run down a little fast compared to some of my older printers but the quality is also better.

Note Again: I have no affiliation with Kodak. I am not being compensated for this post. I’m just a Kodak user, who enjoys my Kodak products.

Theodore and Grace Leonard

Theodore L Leonard

1862-1928

Grace M Love

Wife of Theodore Leonard

1873-1923

Tombstone Tuesday is a Daily Blogging Topic from GeneaBloggers.

Lewis Thorward

Wordless Wednesday is a Daily Blogging Theme from GeneaBloggers.