-=> Quoting MILES MAXTED to NANCY BACKUS on 17 Oct 10  11:59:58 <=-

 -> Ach!  I had heard about the quake when it first happened, but it's
 -> slipped off our news some time ago... Extreme weather, indeed.

 MM> It's all still happening !   They had a Richter force 5 aftershock
 MM> last Friday,  right in the midst of planning to start rebuilding the
 MM> city... 

Yes, that last is getting on our news again...  will it never stop? 
Perhaps it really is getting to be the end of the world...?  ;0

 MM> Not much one can do about it all now - the weather forecasters (only
 MM> invented to make economics forecasters look good) are warning of

Somedays I've thought it was the other way... economic invented to make
weather look good...  ;)

 MM> El Nino states and horrendous hurricanes ... just as a few fine days
 MM> slip past Thor and his atmospheric friends...
 
We'll just enjoy the nice ones that slip through... 

 ->  MM> There'll be a connection linking the two [Maxted families] lurking
 ->  MM> somewhere...
 -> That will be a fun thing to find... :)  Probaly cousins...?  Or are the
 -> dates such that they could be in the same line?

 MM> The dates are contiguous, but the connections haven't yet turned up.

 MM> I once found a Robert Maxted living locally (who knew of my father,
 MM> Robert Maxted, who had been brought to NZ to live in 1910).  His own
 MM> father was a Robert Maxted who lived in New Zealand, too.
 MM> Both these Roberts had gone to England in the 1920's;  his father had
 MM> gone one day to visit an elderly aunt who lived in Key Steet, Kent, and
 MM> was taking tea when a knock came on the door.
 MM> Sent to answer the door, his father found a young man who said "I'm
 MM> Robert Maxted from New Zealand"...  my father.

How serendipitously coincidental...  :)

 MM> This elderly aunt is obviously the link between these two branches,
 MM> but the participants of the weird coincidental meeting both failed to
 MM> record or pass on the details.  Another mystery that may never be
 MM> solved.... 

No descendants of the elderly aunt still at the Key Street Kent address?
Or nearby?  No jotted notes that would indicate why your father decided
to pay her a visit?  But life is full of such tantalizing tidbits...

 -> I'm not that connected to the I'net.  Other than telnet and email, I
 -> hardly do anything on the net, and what I do is all text-based... dunno
 -> if I even could set up Google alerts with my system.

 MM> I've got google set as a text-only tool to speed things up and avoid
 MM> all the dazzle-rah-rah stuff,  and run alerts on all my main interests
 MM> to keep me up to date usefully....

Hmm...  Guess I don't even have a clue how to start going about any of
that...  Does something like that work when one doesn't keep an always
open connection to the internet?  Or usually has the computer turned off
except for when it is actually in active use?  (Yeah, I know... I'm
Luddite material, for sure... )
 
 -> ... Computers are not intelligent.  They only think they are.

 MM> Sneaky bloody programmers...

Indeed...  :)

ttyl        neb

... No prizes for predicting rain.  Prizes only awarded for building arks.
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.20
 * Origin: The Holodeck BBS Roch, NY telnet://holo.homeip.net (1:261/1381)