Social Security Administration Popular Names Database

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If you live in the United States of America, then when you were born your name was recorded by the Social Security Administration. Since 1880, the Social Security Administration has been keeping track of how popular names are and every year they publish those results. There are many places where you can find that information, but if you want to go straight to the source, it can be found here.

There is a lot of information that you can get on that site including up to the 1,000 most popular names for each year from 1880 up until last year and how a single name’s ranking has changed over the years.

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What’s In a Name?

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I love names. First names. Middle names. Last Names. Personal Names. Nick Names. Family Names. The meanings and their history. I find it all fascinating. Over the last two decades or there abouts I have collected dozens of baby name books. In addition I collect links to websites with names and information about names. You might say I am a little obsessed with names.

Hello, my name is . . .

Allow me to let you in on a little secret. If you don’t already know it, names are important. It doesn’t matter if your name is Tom, Dick, Harry, or John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. What matters is that it’s your name.

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Fictional Family Trees: Simple Family Tree

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When a new writing friend noticed that I was doing a series on family tree softwares for writers to use, she recommended Simple Family Tree. I’ve added it to me list on the main page and I’m sharing with you my thoughts on it.

Simple Family Tree allows you to use the program for free, so I will be able to explore the whole software. This should give me a good idea if I am interested in using the software. Continue reading →

Fictional Family Trees and Real Genealogy Software Programs

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I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, maybe younger, the first time I got to hold those precious pieces of paper that my great aunt sent my dad, the ones with information about our family. I remember hours spent reading those pages to Dad so that he could record them in the family tree software he had at the time.

It felt like the biggest most important responsibility in the world at the time. Every person on those pages was family and they had a story. I didn’t know much about their stories, usually not much more than the most basic of facts, but I was pulled into their worlds if only for a few minutes. Continue reading →

Swimming In Salt

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After trying to find a good place to swim, and time to do it in, this whole trip, we went to the beach, Palm Beach to be exact. You get there and you have two options. You can park along the road just outside for free or you can go into the small parking area for $10. We went with some friends who had come down just to see us while we were in the state and we decided to meet at the beach. Continue reading →

The Argument for Seat Belts

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I’ve always been super picky about seat belts. As a little kid I didn’t want to rid in a car unless I had one on. There were times when this meant sitting buckled in an adult’s lap or sharing a seat belt with another kid. Thankfully this was not common, because that probably wasn’t all that safe.

I remember one time we got stuck on a land bridge on the way to my best friends house when I was probably eight or nine, a two hour drive by the time I was about six. I don’t remember what happened, but I do remember the guy that stopped to take us back to the gas station just before the land bridge started so that we could call for help. The reason I remember so much is because his truck didn’t have any seat belts and I was very concerned. I think I considered trying to talk Mom into waiting for the next vehicle to stop or just walking. I did get in and it left a lasting impression on me.

I didn’t like it. Continue reading →

Same Spell Casting Story, Rejected Title

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Spell Caster has gone through a lot since I first conceived it and this is the biggest one yet.

Originally it was the second book in the series, but I soon came to realize that there were too many disparate stories in there, so I took the spell caster part of the story out and renamed the story Hunter. That story went through another split, but with removing Todd and Dan’s storyline from the original story, I had to find a new place for it. It bounced around and found a place after Observer, but after actually working on Observer, I found reason to move once, again, this time before Observer. Continue reading →

Pantser or Plotter

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The first time I heard the word pantser was in the forums of NaNoWriMo. I thought the word looked odd, but it didn’t take long to figure out what it meant.

Someone who is a pantser is someone who “writes by the seat of the pants” or rather someone who starts writing and just goes where the writing takes them. A plotter on the other hand is someone who plots out what they are writing before they start writing. While some people are extreme ends of one or the other, most people are at least a little bit panster or at least a little bit plotter, plantsers or something like that.

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Productivity on a Holiday

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For some people a holiday means absolutely nothing. For others it is a time to spend with family, sometimes the only time with family they get over the course of a year. And there are others for whom, a holiday is a time to mourn.

For me, Holidays are a time to spend with family. We went to my sister’s place to see her new kitten and then we went to my other sister’s place for dinner. After that we enjoyed the local fireworks display.

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