Hunting for arrowheads

I'm thinking about taking up a new hobby: Hunting for arrowheads.

Not far from where I live is a hill called "The Claremore Mound", where an Osage Indian village used to be. A Great Granddad of mine used to live at the base of the Mound, and right after it rained he would climb up the hill and look around for arrowheads that had been newly exposed by the rains. As a child I remember seeing hundreds of the arrowheads he had collected over the years and I always wanted to give it a try myself someday.

The thought of finding artifacts of civilizations long-extinct has always intrigued me. When I held some of my Granddad's arrowheads in my hand, I would remember wondering what the person's life might have been like who made it and how different life must have been in general: What hardships did the individual face on a daily basis, and what joys and sorrows had they experienced during the course of his or her life? I would also wonder how old the arrowheads really were.

Interesting food for thought.

A friend and I were talking about hunting for arrowheads the other day and he knows a guy who paid cash for a new Toyota pick-up, which was funded solely by the sale of his arrowheads to collectors. Evidently, if documented accurately, hunting for arrowheads can also be aprofitable endeavor.

I don't know if I'll have the time to do this anytime soon, but when I do get the chance I'll post more about it.

Denbo Cemetery

I paid a visit to the Denbo Cemetery today, a very old, mostly-forgotten family cemetery in Catoosa, OK, where a lot of my ancestors are buried. I didn't photograph this stone when Dad and I were there four years ago. I think the child may have been Mattie (Denbo) Daughertery's daughter, since its name is also Mattie and the stone sits right next to Mattie's stone.

The date is hard to read in the large photograph but I when I blew it up I realized the child was only seven months old when she died, not an uncommon thing to happen back then, unfortunately. :(

Mattie was a Great, Great, Aunt of mine.

Spring is in the air

Spring is in the air once again here in Oklahoma after a long, hard winter. I heard the birds singing their hearts out this morning just outside my window -- one of the simple pleasures in life I truly enjoy, especially since it brings with it the promise of green grass, warmer weather, and flowers and trees soon to be in full bloom.

On a different note, this looks like a great film to see.

Computer been a bit sluggish lately?

If you have the McAfee antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall software bundle, my advice is to get ride of it because it's basically junk! I have worked on four different computers for people who have had this software bundle on their PC's, and without exception when I deleted the software from their computers their problems went away.

Symptoms of a McAfee-infected computer will include sluggishness, not being able to access certain (and usually harmless) web sites, and undoing changes the owners have made to their own computers. The McAfee bundle is truly totalitarian in nature and Dell seems quite content to bundle it with their machines for some reason, as the machines I worked on were all Dell's.

The alternatives?

Here is a list of freeware (which I also use) that will do the job of protecting your computer just fine, and without cost to you.

1) Ad-Aware se for getting rid of spyware
2) AVG Antivirus
3) ZoneAlarm Firewall

I've been using these products for some time now and they are worth every penny, even though they won't cost you a dime!