Not much at all. I know my father's parents and my mother's parents, but that's pretty much it.

www.familysearch.org

They're the genealogy portion of the Mormon Church, and they've got millions of things online.

I usually start at familysearch.org.

The non-American aspects of my family make it slightly harder to track down the ones I know little about, but it's a good place to start.

ION I have a car question. Yesterday I was informed that my timing chain is loose or stretched but was advised not to do anything about it. What might be the repercussions of that? Will I be okay to make a 9 hour drive in a couple of days?

My boss says that diagnosis is really suspect. A loose or stretched timing belt or chain is a very serious thing. He thinks if someone is dumb enough to tell you not to worry about it they might not know what they're talking about. You might want to consider taking the car someplace else.

If you get farther into this and want to dig into more detailed information, genealogy is one of the other things the internet is for other than porn and pictures of cats.

My owner's manual makes no mention of a timing belt, so I'm guessing that means it's a timing chain, right?

The SERVICE ENGINE SOON light has been going off and the diagnostic computer said the timing chain was bumping something to set it off.

My family managed to miss all the 20th century wars, mostly through the luck of being the wrong age for them. (E.g. my grandfathers were too young for WWI and too old for WWII.) My dad was in the army during the Korean War, but he was stationed in Germany, and my brother was in the army during the 1st Gulf War but was an instructor at West Point at the time. 19th and 21st centuries are a different story--my nephew did a tour in Iraq with his National Guard unit, and my great-great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier.

The non-American aspects of my family make it slightly harder to track down the ones I know little about, but it's a good place to start.

Yeah, being first generation on one side and second on the other, the Internet is not my friend when it comes to genealogy. Also, the fact that my Polish grandparents who came here died in the 1920s and 30s really doesn't help matters.

My owner's manual makes no mention of a timing belt, so I'm guessing that means it's a timing chain, right?

Cars switched from timing chains to belts a while ago. But now some newer cars have timing chains again. Is this your older Monte Carlo?

I'll ask my boss about the computer diagnostic thing when he comes back. I didn't know car computers could tell you that. (I've only owned one car made after 1984.)

I found a decent amount of Jamaican info, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to make the leaps back to the British Isles. I'm dizzy just thinking about it.

A sad certainty has just set in--I'm totally going to get back into genealogy at least for the duration of my father's birthday celebration. At the very least I have to unbreak what I broke yesterday (now there are parentless children wandering around the family tree).