Oliver is home.

I know, that doesn't explain why patanoid is the new paranoid, but it will make sense by the end of this blog. Or so I hope.

Like I said, Oliver is home. He got in a week ago Friday, and leaves early, early Saturday morning to go back to the place where it is dry and dusty and gets far warmer than Phoenix. Because he has been here, so has my oldest sister, Tina, this weekend. And that is where the story begins.

You see, I was sitting on the other side of the room from Oliver. He was logged on to instant messenger on his laptop, and I was logged in on my laptop. We sat just on opposite sides of the room from each other, and Tina on the couch with me. I did the most natural thing I could do in a situation like that. I IMed Oliver.

I think you know this quickly turned into a running joke with me and Oliver until Tina realized what was going on. She peaked over my shoulder, asked me if we were talking about her or if she was just being paranoid. Oliver, loser of many elementary school class spelling bees, says yes, she is being patanoid. No, I'm not making it up. Oliver typed in patanoid instead of paranoid.

Which is exactly how patanoid became the new paranoid.

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In other news, it isn't official official yet, but as soon as I turn in my paperwork, I will be the fifth person I know of from NAU to go on the World Race.



I will be leaving in January of next year, and I am incredibly excited. I still can't believe it's happening, and I've known for about a week now that I'm accepted to go. Please, please, please be praying!

On a day like today, I really wish I had bothered to keep up with computer programming.

You can laugh all you want at the fact that I spent many hours in high school sitting at a computer, programming my life away. Bet you didn’t know I got a 3 on the Computer Science AP for C++ (because saying something like that makes me feel like an uber-genius, when in all honesty… I’m just an uber-dork who wasted two and a half years of high school on something I barely understood instead of two and a half years of college, thousands of dollars, and GPA points).

But, in all seriousness, today is one of those days.

I wanted to get a start on my NaNoWriMo preplanning. Some people start this process December 1^st  (the day after NaNo ends). Some never preplan. I’m starting about ten days early because I want some idea of where I need to go with my story, but I don’t want the rigid outline I know I would break if I spent months ahead of time planning it.

My pre-NaNo planning stages:

·         Characters:

o   Biographic info

§  As extensive as the character will allow it to be, plus the effort it will take to pull teeth to get the rest of it

o   Relationships

o   Identify MC (Male or female)

o   Establish POV characters

·         Plot

o   What personal catastrophe is going to hit the MC? How will he/she deal with it?

o   POV characters – how are they going to take how the MC is dealing with this?

o   What kind of an ending do I want to see it have?

·         Research

o   Maps

§  Familiarize myself with the place where this is supposed to be taking place.

§  Possibly create a map if I end up making up a place

o   History (if location is real)

§  What has happened here? What kind of history does this place have, and how do the people here treat it?

·         Etc., etc…

I think you get the point.

However, in my pursuit of pre-planning, I ran into the one snafu that I always get caught up in when creating a character. The name.

Almost anyone I have collaborated on a writing project with can tell you I am great when it comes to developing plot twists. I chew them up and spit them out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, at the same time. Chuck Norris is the only one who can do any better, and that’s because he’s Chuck Norris. My fatal flaw, my Achilles heel, my poorest showing is in generating character names. I cringe to think about anyone reading my Left Behind fan fiction stories, or Flyboy Club RPG posts, because I have had as many as three or four characters with the same first name.

We’ll talk about the fact that I used to write fan fiction about the Left Behind series another time… right now, focus on the character name issue.

I have found tools on different websites which randomly generate names. For a while, they worked – but eventually the same names came popping back up, and I was stuck in the same boat as before.

So I started searching for computer programs whose sole purpose was to generate character names. Multiple exist. However, the freeware versions (the only ones I can afford) suck… because you can’t get to the full features without buying the program, which I am apparently too cheap to do.

Picture starting to come clear?

Basically, I would love to be able to write my own random name generator program, but because I focused on other things besides programming in college (i.e. history, creative writing), I couldn’t write a program to save my life. I wouldn’t even remember where to start. Thus, the reason why today is a day like today.

Well, I was all fired up to continue the discussion of MSIE and what it stands for on Xanga’s footprints page, but I got distracted when I opened up Word (2007, not 2003) to find the handy menu at the top was gone. I really could go either way as far as its existence on the screen, but since its existence keeps  Dad (or Papa P, which I will refer to him as from now on) happy, and its disappearance makes him angry, I just spent the past five minutes making sure it is there for him to enjoy the next time he chooses to type up a document on his laptop.

The only real continuing of discussion as far as MSIE goes is that it does, indeed, stand for Microsoft Internet Explorer in the footprints, and its sole purpose seems to be to tell inquiring minds like mine which internet browser is being used by the people who are viewing my Xanga site. Why I would need to know this, I am not sure, but I think that if I go back to the official Xanga team blog which details such matters, I will find the answer to my question.

Lesson learned? If you are not logged in to Xanga when you read my blog, then I don’t know who you are, but I do know which browser you use.  *shudder*

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In other news…  Erin Bjorklund, a student at NAU, died over the weekend after being hit by a train in Flagstaff. I don’t know that I necessarily need to go into much more specific detail, as I have no doubt that most NAU students have heard a great deal of speculation and details about what happened, other than that she was drinking prior to this happening.

I bring it up for a couple of reasons. One is because I did know Erin – I had a class with her last fall. The other is because I’ve been trying to keep up with the comments being left on the stories on the Arizona Daily Sun website, and I wouldn’t mind being able to process them.

The biggest issue that has come up is the number of bars located in downtown Flagstaff. Saying it’s an unusually high number is an understatement, and it always comes up when something happens because a student was a drinking. People get angry because (their words, not mine) most students will get drunk over the weekends because it is the only thing to do.

Also, what has come up this time is the Safe Ride program started a couple of years ago by the Associated Students of NAU. People blame it on the university providing a shuttle downtown so that students can go out and “get drunk”.

Other issues brought up have been where the train tracks run (between the university and downtown), and a 2% bed, board, and liquor tax that may be in place in Flagstaff.

My digestion –

NAU tries to make sure things like this do not happen. This is a big reason why SUN Entertainment exists in the first place – to provide entertainment for students on campus, in a safe environment where no one is going to be drinking. Their Friday night programs, their weekend movies… that is the point. To keep students from spending their weekends getting drunk.

Student safety is also the reason for the Safe Ride program. While I agree that it probably encourages drunkenness more than anything else, the point of Safe Ride (which is having issues staying funded) is that it keeps drunk students from driving themselves, and away from the train tracks. It was started because in part because something like this happened a few years ago – two students affiliated with a fraternity walking back to NAU campus after a night of drinking who got hit by a train while they were crossing the tracks, one of whom died.

Where the train tracks run is an issue, but that’s not something that can be changed very easily. The tracks are where they are, NAU is where it is, and what happened to Erin points out that this is a bad combination, the most people can do to avoid it is to drink responsibly, and make use of the resources they have so they aren’t crossing the tracks late at night.

As far as the tax goes… whether it exists or not, all the responsibility cannot be heaped on a tax that encourages drinking anymore than on the Safe Ride program. At the end of the day, what happened does partially come down to Erin’s decision to go out and drink, and to walk home after doing so- and that is probably what will hurt the most.

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Wow, I think I had some other thoughts for the blog tonight, but this is looking like another long one. I’ll save them for another night.