RANdom capiTALIzation SyNDrome

If you're not an engineer, it's possible you've never experienced this. And its possible that if you're not an engineer who is in the aerospace industry or ever worked for or with the government you've never experienced this. But for those of us who are aerospace engineers, whose lives revolve around government organizations like NASA, we tend to have this syndrome quite badly.

You see the government is a world made of abbreviations and acronyms. I have received entire emails written in acronyms and abbreviations. It's really insane. There are possibly good reasons for this, like its basically writing in code so if anyone intercepts your email they can't understand it. But sometimes its just crazy.

But if you work in the aerospace industry or for the government, no matter how crazy you think it is, at some point you will find yourself uttering a sentence that sounds like this "Hey, I'm going to the VAB to work on the MLE with my LDE. Don't forget tomorrow I have RDO and my LT has PT, so we'll be MIA."

Utter nonsense.

Then if you continue working in the aerospace industry or the government, something nefarious will start to happen to your brain. You will start thinking that things that aren't acronyms actually are. You'll forget which words require capitalization and which don't. And to be on the safe side, you'll start capitalizing everything.

For myself personally, I see this most often with the word "CubeSat." A CubeSat, for those who don't know, is a little 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm satellite. Basically "CubeSat" is an abbreviation of "Cubical Satellite"; hence, only the C and S need to be capitalized to show the beginning of each word. Yet for some reason, I want to call it a CubeSAT. As if SAT is an acronym for something. Of course, it is in other worlds. The SAT is a huge test. But that doesn't apply here.

The other day I was writing down some instructions when I paused. Is the word MOSFET all capitalized or not? I want to say it is, but I don't know. And Cornell's Violet mission. Is it Violet or is it VIOLET?

I realized at that point, I had full blown Random Capitalization Syndrome, or RCS.

There is no cure for RCS. Even if you leave the aerospace industry--or the government--you will find you do this for years after. You will have relapses when the news reports NASA's latest findings. There is no escape, no cure, no hope.

And the worst thing is, you can never even get your acronyms and abbreviations straight. All the different branches of the government use the same acronyms to mean different things. What some people call a 9/80 schedule, others call RDO. While VAB might stand for the "Vehicle Assembly Building" in can also stand for "Virginia Associations of Broadcasters." And one satellite might just be a word, like Violet. But another satellite will be an acronym, like MESSENGER. (Heck, if you want to see a perfect case of RCS, MESSENGER is it: MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER). Methinks, someone was trying a little too hard to find an acronym).

The truth is that you can never be sure in this business what something stands for or if it should be capitalized. So every year RCS gets worse and worse. Essentially, we're doomed.

Plotting

When it comes to writing, I've always considered myself a "pantser" or a "gardener". For the uninitiated, let me explain.

All writers essentially fall into one of two camps. They are either pantser/ gardeners or plotter/architects. Pantser/Gardeners tend to write by the seat of their pants, or in the secondary metaphor, by having an idea and the nurturing it without being entirely sure what its going to grow up into. Plotter/Architects like to plot everything out before hand and plan everything out.

Though I sometimes make crazy excel charts that relate to my stories, they're rarely plot related. Usually they keep track of characters and their histories. My excel charts might "plot" out the lives of my characters that led them up to the story, but I never actually plan out what the story might be. I generally have a point A and a point B. I know where to start and where I want to end, but what goes on inbetween is up for grabs.

Well, yesterday, that all changed.

For the past week I've been working hard on my story "The Descent of Chris Chappell." You might have noticed that the word count on my Works In Progress page has increased by 10,000 words. I did not "plot" out per say this first 36,000 words; however, I did write it in a different fashion then I normally do. When it comes to chapters, usually I just sit down and write and then break where it feels right. But this time when writing, I know what event I wanted to reach by the end of each chapter. It was strange.

So yesterday, I reached "the event" that I had been working towards with this 36,000 words, the event I decided was a huge change/twist in the plot and would therefore mark the end of the "first part" of the story. I then sent out the story to my critiquers. I don't want to go much further until I have feedback, in case I need to make huge changes.

However, I was feeling restless. I wanted to know what was going to happen next in my story. I knew where I wanted my story to end, but I had no idea how I was going to get the characters from the end of Part 1 to the climax of my story. There were things that needed to happen and the characters needed to change and develop for those things to happen. And I couldn't see it.

But I did have some ideas. So I thought "heck, why don't I write my few ideas down?" So I broke out some index cards and colored markers. I assigned each character a color, even non-main characters, and started writing down my ideas on each notecard. As I wrote my ideas down, more ideas came. But I had to keep track of them all, when my ideas would happen in the plot. So I started laying the notecards out chronologically. But I had too many cards for my desk! So I started taping them to the wall.

And suddenly we got the monstrosity you see in the picture above. My entire novel plotted on notecards.

It's insane. It's crazy! I've never done anything like this. But it feels good. Now when I next sit down to write, I know exactly what I should write.

Granted, these cards don't cover everything that will happen. If I had written out everything that was going to happen, I would have written the novel. But they cover all the big plot points that essentially each chapter should be working towards. And I completely discovered how the climax is going to work. It's crazy how some things clicked together. Crazy how things I "just made up" because they seemed to fit clicked together to make the climax work at the end. I mean that's how a story is supposed to work, but it's still amazing.

I don't know if I'm going to forever change my ways and become a plotter/architect, but for this story, I think it has definitely helped me see the way forward. Who knows! Maybe this is the start of a new era in my writing.

If you're a writer reading this, are you a panters or a plotter? Have you ever tried writing using the other method?

The Movie Channel Conspiracy

I think movie channels are purposefully working with my favorite SF/F things to keep me out of the loop. I don't know why. Maybe my geek status has ratcheted to such heights that they feel the need to knock me down a few. Maybe they just hate me. I don't know, but I would like it to stop.

When "A Game of Thrones" premiered on HBO, I let it slide. A Song of Ice and Fire is not my favorite fantasy series. I'm pretty sure it scarred me for life by exposing me to sexual acts I never wanted to know about. It might be a good series, but lets all be honest with ourselves. It's rated at least NC-17. (Wait, is that a rating, or the number on the Enterprise? I can never remember and I'm constantly getting them confused.) I would have liked to have given the show a try, but I understand. I have no expectations that George R.R. Martin would try to appease me, since I'm not a huge fan.

But Torchwood? Really? Come on! How can they lock me out of the Whoniverse? I need to see this. "Children of Men" left me with nightmares and questions. I can't leave it like that. I need my Captain Jack Harkness. I need to know how he can get on with his life after what he did. I need to know if Gwen and her husband are going to stick it out. I need to know how the universe can go on.

Just thinking about how I can't watch it in another two and a half hours, when it comes on, is making me sad. Why did they have to put it on Starz? I mean, I understand they can have more gratuitous sex by putting it on a movie channel, but Torchwood did fine on regular cable before, or at least BBCA. Just put it on the Syfy channel and show it late at night so kids don't stumble upon it. Pleeeease. *sad puppy dog eyes*

Please don't separate me from my Captain Jack Harkness. The real Captain Jack. The only Captain Jack. Johnny Depp doesn't hold a candle to him.

So if anyone out there knows where to go to watch Torchwood online, I would really really appreciate it. I'm counting on you geek community.

Faith Thursdays

I know in the past, I never had a scheduled day of the week to discuss my faith, or God, or anything like that. This was for a very good reason. I didn't want to become fake or rote, or feel like I had to write something because of a schedule. It's sort of like when you close your eyes while singing. Sometimes you do it because you really feel it, and sometimes you do it because you want people to think you really feel it. I never want to be that second scenario. It's so easy to become fake, to know the Sunday School answer and so just write about it. Therefore, I never scheduled a day of the week. I only wrote about things when they came to mind.

This summer is different. Why? Well, there are a lot of things on my mind and heart. A lot of issues I'm struggling with. Well, maybe struggling isn't the right word. I feel like that conveys I'm having a hard time believing something. I'm not struggling with my faith. I'm struggling with what I've always been told to believe about issues in my faith. I'm struggling with things that people don't like to talk about. And I struggle with the role of adviser that so many of my friends give me. As someone other people respect, I have a responsibility to know what I'm really talking about, to know it and really believe it.

So this summer I plan to do some research on certain topics, research it and sort of write essays here on what I think. I'm no C.S. Lewis, but I do take the Bible seriously, and I think too often as Christians we let our American culture infect what we think we should believe. So here are a few topics on my heart that I'm going to explore:

--The American Dream: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
--The Responsibility of the Wealthy
--Divorce and Remarriage
--Marriage and the Wife
--Marriage and True Love
--Singleness

You'll notice there seems to be a theme here, and there is. A lot of my friends have gotten/are getting married this year. From February to December of 2011, there are eight weddings. Eight. It's crazy. It really is. And essentially all my best friends now have either gotten married or are getting married. And as I think about marriage, the Bible, and American culture, I have some thoughts and questions.

And these thoughts and questions have led me to other thoughts that mainly directly correlate to happiness. I have a lot of questions about happiness and what sort of goal it should be in our lives. Clearly, American culture says its should be pretty high, but lets just say, I'm not so sure.

However, in addition to these topics, I will also write about other things I've promised in the past to write one: namely, I'll finish my evolution series, which I started and never finished due to the chaos that occurred in my life at the end of the last semester. (You know, getting a new job, moving to Albuquerque, etc). But there were be other little topics, but I'll leave those for a surprise.

And just so we're on the same page, the reason I'm doing this is not so I can show off my flashy Christian knowledge. I'm partly doing this because I have friends who ask me questions about these beliefs a lot and so it would be nice to have an essay I could direct them to do. I'm also doing it because these are topics I want to/need to study, and by mandating that I will post my results here, I'm giving myself deadlines and accountability. I really need that sort of thing sometimes. That's what happens when you've been in school all your life. You need someone to say "this is do then". And if no one gives you a deadline, you don't do it.

I also just need to organize my thoughts, and as a writer and engineer, if I don't write my thoughts down they're not organized.

So I hope you'll all bare with me as I stumble through the Bible and try to figure things out. And if you have any topics you would like to suggest, I'm open. I intend to use the topics as a study guide through my Bible study, so extra direction is always appreciated.

Prairie Dogs

(Sorry about not posting yesterday. I had a post planned, but as it was the day after the fourth of July, things were crazy. You see my dog absolutely hates fireworks. It was a late night and an early morning. Bleh. Anyway, on to a new Western Wednesdays.)

Being from the South I'm used to squirrels. Crazy, crazy, attack squirrels. Squirrels that have absolutely no fear and will come right up to you and eye you like crazed animals. Anyway, being used to said squirrels, I don't usually see any other small rodents. Chipmunks? Never saw one until I visited Boston. We don't need them in the South. We have squirrels, which not only fill an evolutionary nitch but scare all the other creatures of that sort away.

Here in New Mexico we don't have squirrels or mere chipmunks. No, no, we have prairie dogs.

Next to my apartment complex lives a whole colony of prairie dogs. (I'm not sure if they're called colonies but go with it). They kind of act like merekats, which I've seen on the Lion King and at Disney's Animal Kingdom. They live in burrows in the ground and occasionally you see one stand up on its back legs and just stare into the distance, as if on lookout for predators. They also run between the holes in the earth and occasionally wrestle with each other. I think they're incredibly cute. Apparently native New Mexicans think of them as pests.

I mentioned them to a New Mexican coworker. I expected her to react like we might react at the mention of squirrels in Atlanta. They look cute from afar but be aware. Those squirrels are vicious and they're not going anywhere. Instead she reacted as if I might have mentioned rats. In her mind they're pests that need to be gotten rid of.

It's weird. They don't seem like pests to me. They just stay in their little colony; they don't infest my apartment. It's possible they carry diseases. But it seems that if I just stay out of their little colony and don't bother them, they won't bother me.

Anyone out there know about Prairie Dogs? Or have local crazy rodents?

Fourth of July!

Happy 4th of July! To celebrate this, here is the greatest speech ever given by the greatest American President.

My Science Fiction Hierarchy

I believe I've been pretty clear that I'm quite the geek. I love science fiction and fantasy. But my friends often confuse what aspects of science fiction and fantasy I love the most. This is especially true when it comes to science fiction. I have had a number of friends come up to me and say, "Such and such said such and such about Star Trek, but I don't think that's right and you're such a Trekkie..."

At which point I interrupt them and say, "What? I'm a Trekkie?"

They sort of pause and stare at me sideways, and then say, "Aren't you? Don't you love Star Trek?"

Me: "I like Star Trek but love might be too strong of a word. I definitely prefer Star Wars more." At this point my friends' heads usually explode in surprise. For some reason, being a geek seems to automatically translate to Trekkie in most people's minds. And I do like Star Trek. Star Trek has played a huge role in my life. But to be honest, Star Trek doesn't even make it into my top three favorite science fiction things.

So what is the order in which I love Science Fiction? I'm glad you asked! Here is my top five.

1. Star Wars - Star Wars will always hold a number one place in my heart. When I was young, my family only owned Episode IV, and it was a version we taped off the TV. Whenever we watched it, it was a huge deal. We would have to go down to Blockbuster and rent the other two. It would be an all day affair, involving popcorn and ice cream. I loved it. Then when I was in the 5th grade, my uncle loaned me the Thrawn Trilogy. It was like a whole world opened up to me. While most girls my age spent the next three years obsessing over boy bands, I spent them obsessing over Luke, Han, and most importantly Wedge Antilles. I love Star Wars. I always will. Not even the new movies could destroy that.
2. Terminator - Most people see this as a curve ball in my list, and especially that its so high on the list. This is because I don't talk about my love of Terminator much with my friends. But ask my family, they know. I can't remember the first time I watched Terminator 1 or 2. Terminator 3 was the first rated R movie I saw in theaters. My entire life I've known the name John Connor, and that he will save the world from robots. My family loves discussing these movies and the time travel paradoxes. I love the ideas. I watched the short lived television show avidly and still lament its end. I wish Terminator had an extended universe like Star Wars. I want to know what happens. I need to know if humanity wins!
3. Stargate - Most people who know me expect this one. When I was little, every time the movie Stargate came on TV, I would drop everything and watch it, glued to the screen. Stargate SG-1 is the one show my little sister and I could enjoy together, the archaeologist and the engineer both enjoying a show. Colonel O'Neill is one of my favorite characters, and I would be lying if I didn't say Stargate SG-1 directly influenced why I work where I do today. I own all 10 seasons and can identify an episode by any ten seconds within the episode. I also enjoyed Stargate Atlantis. But don't get me started on Stargate Universe. It was an abomination.
4. Planet of the Apes - People don't usually expect this one either, but once again my family knows. My brother has purchased me five gifts in my entire life, and the best one he ever gave me was all five original Planet of the Apes movies on VHS. I own the book in English and the original French. Like Terminator, I enjoy the philosophical questions it brings up, the conundrums and paradoxes. I didn't much like the new movie, but when I saw the new X-Men movie recently, I saw an interesting trailer. As soon as they mentioned a smart monkey named Caesar, I thought to myself "If this isn't a remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes then someone is certainly paying obvious homage to it." Turns out it is a remake. And despite the awful new movie, I have high hopes that James Franco will do my number four on the list justice. (EDIT: I've seen it, and it was awesome.)
5. Asimov's Robots/Empire/Foundation Universe - This is a book series, but there is no denying that I love Asimov. Daneel Olivaw is one of my favorite characters of all time, and Asimov is a genius. From short stories to novels to epic histories of the universe, the man was amazing. I reread Caves of Steel yearly. A science fiction murder mystery? Genius!

So that's my top five, which doesn't include Star Trek. Surprise, surprise, but true. So if you're a science fiction fan, what are your favorite shows/books/movies?