happy(?) new year

Usually I enter a new year with a little bit of regret but a whole lot of optimism. This year, I enter with not too much regret, but no optimism either. I know it's going to be a difficult year, and honestly, I'm not looking forward to dealing with it.

This year has been so intense. I've had some incredible opportunities and it's been a lot of fun, but there's been a lot of work and tears that's went into it too. I know that this new year holds a lot of change and I'm not looking forward to it. I will be deciding on grad schools, which will narrow my options for the next five years or so. I'll be graduating, which means that I'll be saying goodbye to a lot of my best friends. I will be moving away somewhere for grad school, which means adjusting to a life farther away from my family than I'm used to, and finding a new place to live, new friends, a new church, and all kinds of new responsibility. It's a really big life change, and it will affect everything from closest relationships to everyday routines. I know I can handle it. I don't doubt my capability because I've proven it to myself many times that I can grow where I'm planted. It's just not always fun to start over, especially when it's like right now and I feel content and settled. Classes are not fun, but besides that I live in a dream come true. I love where I live and what I do. I love my church very much, and it's taken me three years to find one where I'm happy. I have awesome friends, an incredible family, and a supportive boyfriend. I have everything I need and most everything I've ever wanted. It feels like I'm going to have to give most of that up in five months or so, and I'm not okay with that yet.

I am trying very hard to see this as an opportunity, because it is. Starting over is bittersweet. You leave a lot behind but at the same time it's awesome to be able to become whoever you want to be, with no reputation or expectations preceding you. I'm going to love making new friends. I hope to buy a house and I am going to be so happy to live in the same place for an extended period of time and not always be dragging things in and out of boxes. I want to play an intramural sport (need to learn how to play something first) and to be involved in the community where I live. And of course, with grad school, I get to invest a lot more time and thought into the research that I'm passionate about, so that'll be awesome. I have all these pictures in my head of a very happy grad school Lauren. I wear my glasses a lot more, and I spend a lot of time doing research but I'm also doing a lot of other things I enjoy. I have a house with a kitchen that is painted green and has enough counter space and cabinet space for me to actually work in. My house is big enough to host dinner parties in. There's a back porch, and I've planted a summer garden. I run in the mornings, work hard during the day, and spend time doing what I want to in the evenings. I play piano because I want to, I have people over for dinner, I spend all kinds of time outside. Yeah, I know it may not turn out this way, but that's the picture that's in my head and it makes me happy.

So anyhow. I'll begin this year both excited and afraid. I know God is sovereign and that he works things together for my good. It will be difficult to start over but well worth it in the end. Between now and then I'm going to try to be fairly short-sighted. There are some things I have to think about well in advance, but I'm going to delay dealing with other difficult matters until later because I'm just not ready to address them now.

Happy new year, everyone :) I hope it holds a lot of growth and opportunity for you!

now for the rest of break

Christmas with my family was just plain wonderful. I can't tell you how much I love these people. The more time I spend with my family, the more I wish that I could go back to being 17 or something and just staying here forever. But people grow up, move on, and begin their own lives. That's the way things go.

I haven't been doing much beyond family stuff. I'm still not ready to pick up something requiring persistence or thinking yet. Maybe it's senioritis. Or maybe I'll get over it and start reading a book tomorrow.

Victoria and I have been going to the Y every morning, which is nice. I want to get back into routine with things again. Plus, that gives me a chance to spend some time with Victoria. We've done a lot together over break. Nothing exceedingly exciting, just shopping and cooking and that kind of thing. It's been good because I still consider her one of my closest friends and I miss her a whole lot when she's away. I've also got to spend a good bit of time with Briana, which is good as well. My family is just full of awesome people and I'm so thankful that I get to hang out with them over break.

Well, tonight Alex and I had dinner and we said goodbye since he's moving to Boston. I hate goodbyes. I'm already bracing myself for all the ones I'll have to say at the end of this semester. It's not happy, but I'll deal. I have no choice. It'd be nice if things stayed the same all the time (I'm a fan of stability) but they don't so I have to grow up and deal with it.

As for the rest of break...not much planned. On Monday Patrick & I are going to the state museum together. Victoria and I will be going to the Y every day it's open. Andrew, Chad, Jason, & I leave for Rhode Island to visit Brown on January 5, and will be returning a few days after. No plans beside those. I'm going to try to scrape together some motivation to do something useful, like read a book or two, or finish a grad school application. We'll see.

Mmk. Speaking of doing something useful...I think I'll clean up my room so that I can eventually go to bed tonight! 'Night, sleep well.

merry Christmas!

 Usually at Christmas, we are focused on a thousand things that distract us from anything Christ-related at all. We're caught up in finding perfect gifts, in organizing things with our family, in sleeping in for a couple days to enjoy our time off, in mourning the loss of the people who have left us since last year, in preserving the traditions that we associate with the season. But every once in a while, God is exceedingly graceful and breaks through all the noise to speak and remind me of who He is and why we should be celebrating.

Growing up I associated Christmas with Christ's birth--which is, of course, fitting and proper, because that's what the celebration is about. However, this year more than ever I've been thinking more about what Christ's birth has to do with the rest of his life and with our lives. Yes, it is incredible that God chose to become a person, that he chose to come to Earth as a baby into a humble family and that the angels announced his arrival to shepherds and not kings. However, if Jesus just came to be a person to show solidarity with us, or to be a perfect person, then overall it requires nothing from us and it's just a warm fuzzy story.  Fortunately, this is not the case.

This Christmas I have been thinking about the implications of Christ's coming.  The Bible makes it clear why Jesus came:

Isaiah 53 (ESV)

1 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief; 
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, 
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, 
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Jesus didn't come to be a cute baby or a role model (although he was those things and we are thankful). He came to bear the wrath of God that stood against us. He was sent to die for our sin, to be our covering, to pour out grace on us, to live out and show in his death the heights and depths and widths and lengths of God's love for us. It was God's will to crush him. Jesus was born to die so that we could be reconciled to God and spend eternity with him, and if we don't associate his death with his birth, we miss the whole point of the Christmas story.

I've also been thinking about the future implications of Christ's coming, particularly the fact that he is coming again. Even in the celebration of Christmas we find ourselves broken in so many ways. We hurt the people we should love the most. We are wrapped up in selfishness. We mourn the loss of the people we love and wish that they were here with us. The wonderful truth of the Christmas story and Christ's death and resurrection, though, is that he has promised to come again and to take away all sin and sorrow, taking his rightful place as Lord of all and demanding submission from the enemies that pull us apart from him. And that will be beautiful. I look forward to it. 

This year it has been incredible for me to think about the big picture of Christ's advent, of his coming near. I am so thankful to be loved by God and to be covered by his grace, and his arrival deserves a response of worship and submission. I adore him and I want to live my life in awe of who he is and what he has done.

May God prompt the same sense of wonder in your hearts. Merry Christmas, everyone :)

grades: A A A A B (i deserved a C)

i feel like last semester has permanently exhausted me. Usually by this time of break I'm ready to start a project, read a book, write some code, something. Right now though I am perfectly content to stare idly out windows, or sit watching TV, or do some other mindless task for hours on end. This can't happen. I have to finish school, five and a half more years of it. I need apathy to leave.

break (so far)

I have been home for three and a half days and it has been absolutely glorious. I haven't written a line of code or read a sentence of a textbook. Victoria & I joined the Y for this gap month and have been going to work out together every morning. I've been to two parties, spent plenty of time with family, and completed most of my Christmas shopping. And today, I got up, went to the gym, put back on my pajamas, and sat around forever. I was going to go to the Sarahs' Christmas party but I had a headache so I just stayed in. It was wonderful.

Speaking of wonderful :), on Tuesday Patrick brought me these beautiful flowers that I have in my room now--lilies, chrysanthemums, carnations, daisies, some other stuff mixed in. They make me smile. Things are going well between us. He's coming up for his church's Christmas Eve service, and I'm going with him to it. That should be good.

I'm enjoying spending time with my sisters. Victoria and I have done a bunch together and that's been good. Briana and I haven't got to hang out much but we have been beating each other up as usual, so I've enjoyed that, haha. I love my family. I'm not sure there are any others like us. But I think it's great that my sisters and I are 21, 18, and 13, and still wrestling each other to the ground, and that Mom, Victoria, and I randomly drift into heated theological conversations, that we make art out of tangerine peels at breakfast, and that decapitated gingerbread people are legitimate works of art in our household. I love it. Go ahead, you can think we're all crazy, but I wouldn't want it any other way :)

I anxiously await my class grades. Those last two weeks were intense. I've never worked so hard as I did the week following Thanksgiving with all those projects due. I was sleeping far too little and writing code for 6 and 8 hours at a time. It was terrible, and I have no idea how my grades will turn out, but we'll find out in a few days. I'm not even thinking about next semester until later. I can't handle any more class right now.

In other school-related news, on Tuesday I think I finally decided that I'm definitely going to Clemson and I may not even fill out any grad school apps. I don't know, I just think I belong there. It feels right. And if I hate it, I'll finish out my masters there and go somewhere else for the Ph.D. I'm not giving an official answer yet. I'm not quitting my other applications yet. But I think I'm getting closer being okay with making those decisions.

Well, I think that's all to report on that's of significance. I'm sure there will be more reflection later. Not being in class all the time frees me to think about other things like God and myself and overall just processing everything that's happened in the past semester because it's felt like a blur. It'll come clear later when I have time to think about it. 

If I don't write before, I hope that you all have an awesome Christmas :)

Can I just tell you how nice it is to be called anything but "smart" sometimes?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your respect for my intellect, and I want that to be one of my better qualities. But I hope that there are other adjectives that describe me as well. For the sake of humility, I will not list the characteristics that I aspire to embody, but I'm just saying, thank you to anyone who's ever used another word to describe me. 

I don't want intelligence to be my ultimate value.

that's all.

come on, guys.

from http://xkcd.com/513/

Sad story. It happens a lot.

Step up, ask the girl out. There's no gain without risk.

break (almost)

Well, classes are over until next Monday. I desperately need this break. I am exhausted in so many ways. But I'm staying here tonight and working on my schoolwork so that I can hopefully take a few days off to spend with my family and to not do schoolwork. I really don't want to do any schoolwork Wednesday-Friday. I'm trying to make that my goal. 

I got back a test today that I made a 95 on. I'm really proud of that. I studied so hard for that test. I'm trying so hard to do well in that class but it's very challenging for me. As soon as I get back, I have three projects due: finishing up software engineering stuff, a network processing application I need to write, and a program in Scheme that is killing me. Besides that, I'd like to have all my grad school apps out by December 7 or so. I also need to get in a good bit of piano practice; juries will be here soon. Other than those few outstanding items, I'm on track to end the semester well. There's SLC stuff to be done but I think I can handle it.

This semester has been incredibly intense in every aspect. I don't think I have ever been so stretched, but I'm making it. I'm very ready for it to be over though. I need rest and time to process all that has happened.

In other news...I am "Facebook official"-ly in a relationship :) Patrick has been a bright spot in the otherwise chaos of everything else the past month or so. He treats me so well and I'm really thankful. This is a bit of a first for me and I'm really afraid of making mistakes but I guess there's no choice but to figure it out as I go.

I called Mom to tell her yesterday before she saw it on Facebook, and I told her I'd tell Dad later since Dad was kind of having a bad day. I'm going to tell him over Thanksgiving. This whole thing is awkward. "Hi Dad, I know this is totally irrelevant to whatever we're doing, but I wanted you to know that I'm dating someone." I have no idea what his reaction will be. Mom called me back today and wanted to make sure I knew that Dad wouldn't be angry when I told him. Well, I'd hope not. I'm 21 years old and these kinds of things are bound to happen sometime. 

Mom said, "Well, in a little way you'll be breaking his heart, that his little girl is growing up." Well, that made me cry a little. I hate growing up, especially when I know how hard it is on my parents. But what can you do? It's life; this is the way things happen. Whatev. We'll work through it and it will be okay.

All right, it's time for less blogging and more coding. And also time for dinner :) Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

during class today

as soon as I hit the "post" button, person goes to trashcan and pulls out stick figure.

just so you know.

today in between classes

Person is standing at side of class near door holding book. He looks confused. As soon as conversation dies down: "Okay, I'm really really depressed. I need you to do something that will make me happy."

Class is sympathetic. Everyone asks why, he says he can't talk about it. I draw a happy stick figure and give it to him. He takes it, walks out the door and throws it away on the way out.

Aww. Rejected.

thinking about this poem lately

All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

I talk of love--a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

-- C.S. Lewis

Selfish love is not love at all. I'm pretty sure that there are people who love me selflessly and I'm also pretty sure that I'm bad at that. I want to get better at showing real love to the people around me...may God grant me the grace and character to do so.

yay.

Still a whole bunch to do, still a lot to deal with, but hours of sleep, a couple miles of running, some food, and some other stuff has made life a good bit happier :)

Now watching House and writing a paper. I suppose I'll write more when I have more time...

exhausted.

physically, emotionally, mentally. this month has absolutely devastated me.

Last Sunday I finally sat still long enough to process a chunk of all the things that have just happened to me and I cried for a good hour. There are more tears to come, I just have to deal with it in little slices. It's not like any one thing has been incredibly detrimental, but everything together has just worn away at me. I want to hide from everything for a few days but I can't afford to do that because there are still things to be done, and the problems follow me wherever I am. 

I feel broken. I am always tired and cold and hungry, but I can't sleep at nights, I can't change the weather, and when I make food I lose my appetite. I haven't been going to the gym in the mornings like usual because the last time I tried that I got really dizzy and thought I was going to die. I realize that right now I sound like a depressed, anorexic person, haha. I'm not, I promise. I think I am just exhausted...I'm confident that this is going to fix itself with enough sleep and food that's good for me and getting back into a workable routine. I am taking Benadryl tonight so I won't wake up, and I don't have to be anywhere until 2 tomorrow, and I bet that more than 6 hours of sleep is going to fix a lot of things.

So what's happened lately? A bunch. I submitted my GRF application. I found out that the friend I was planning to live with at Clemson is probably not even going there, and I found out that all my friends here violently oppose my going to Clemson at all. I submitted my Clemson application, haha. I visited Clemson and ate dinner with the Hodges. 

I took a test in each of my classes, I took the computer science GRE, I made at least four batches of cookies for various occasions, I helped throw a Halloween party. I played Bach's Invention 13 in rep class, I completed a software engineering deliverable, I worked on a program for hours yet did not complete it on time. I voted for the first time. I planned a Girl Scouts event and put it into the hands of other capable people. I wrote detailed mentoring plans for five people. I spoke at FMHS career day, wrote all kinds of thank you notes, got a paper accepted into SIGCSE, went to the opera for the first time, participated in programming competition in Savannah. I found out one of my cousins attempted suicide (and lived) and have been broken by the aftermath of that, knowing that to my whole family it is an echo of my grandma's suicide nine years ago, I've hoped to spend time with my sister while she was home from college but found that she was busy with friends so we couldn't, I've thrown two dinner parties, I've dealt with friends' drama and a stressed out roommate. I've had more boy drama in the past three weeks than in the rest of my life combined...some good things, some bad things, some things I don't even have categories for. 

I've felt completely alone sometimes, completely understood other times, and at the end of all this my accomplishments ring empty. It kind of sucks. I do all this work for silly numbers. So, I went out last night and bought some yarn and a crochet hook. That way I can sit here and make a scarf and see something tangible come together quickly as I work on it. It's instant gratification. It makes me happy. Now to shake free of this apathy about all else and keep pushing towards the end of this semester. I need Christmas break desperately, but three grad school applications and a whole bunch of school stuff stands in between now and then. I have to be persistent and disciplined.

* sigh *

Cheerier days soon. This is almost over! I say this to my friends a lot but sometimes I need to be reminded myself. I think I will start a countdown somewhere. It will be good. :)

hope everything is going well for you!

broken?

is blogger broken for everyone or just me?

i need to use my blog more.

I'm learning a whole lot right now and I should be writing about it but I am so overwhelmed with work right now :( In the next two weeks I have the following things to do:

- submit NSF Graduate Research Fellowship application (personal statement, research plan, previous research statement)

- study for and take computer science GRE

- network processing test

- software engineering test

- 431 programming assignment

- mentoring plans for five people

- event reports for about 50 hours worth of stuff 

- plan Girl Scouts event

- software engineering project specifications due

- volunteer time at Adult Day Care Center

- memorize piano piece

- play in piano repertoire class

So...I'm doing okay so far, except that I'm so stressed out that I can barely bring myself to eat :P It's okay though, I keep making myself eat little things. I've also started running in the mornings again and that makes me feel better. I'm also trying to get back to going to bed at 12 and getting up at 7 or 7:30. I can work better this way. I've also scheduled out my week and am trying to stick to it so that I get everything done in time.

More than anything right now I appreciate the supportive people around me. I have awesome family, friends, and professors, and I plan on writing a whole bunch of thank you notes very soon to everyone who's helped me so much this semester. I know that a lot of them don't realize how much they mean to me and I need to be sure to communicate that. It's like the world has bent around me in so many ways this semester; I ask for things and they're done. I don't deserve the kindness others show me. I am so thankful to God for letting all these people be a part of my life.

I also need to apologize to a lot of people...and probably to the same people I'll be thanking. I get so focused in on the things that I need to be doing that I forget to care about others, and the people I am closest to get the worst of that. They hear all my whining and have to deal with me when I'm difficult to work with and don't get much in return for it. I want to be a better student/friend/family member/church member/Christ follower/servant...okay, a better person overall. I need better balance. I'm working on it and getting better but I'm not there yet.

I'm truly thankful and truly repentant. I'm changing for the better. You'll hear about it as I have time to blog. In the meantime, thanks so much to all of you who have been there and put up with my stupidity. I love you all.

Mk. Back to class. Hope all is going well for you :)

miscellania

Today I spoke at Nations Ford High School career day to a bunch of freshmen about careers in computing. I talked about misconceptions about computing and about how diverse people and careers in computing are. I think it went really well, and it was a lot of fun presenting to the groups.

My favorite question asked today: "So do you party?" (My response: "Well, I have a lot of fun, but I mostly study really hard.")

List of careers that don't involve computing composed today: Child Watch at the Gold Hill YMCA (but not the Fort Mill one), being a hairstylist if you only take cash and don't put the money in a bank, a lemonade stand if you pick the lemons yourself, make your own sugar out of sugar cane, build the table out of sticks you gather in your yard, and paint the sign using berries.

High school students are great. We also made a connection with a programming teacher there at NFHS who said he would have me out to speak for his class soon. That'll be cool.

Other than that, it's just been a busy week. I spent a lot of time with my family on Monday night; my grandma had everyone down for dinner. It was a good time, and really rare, actually, since everyone was there. I had to say goodbye to Victoria, which made me sad, but that's okay. She'll be back for Thanksgiving and maybe I'll go see her one weekend too (although there is no space in my calendar for that). 

I'm watching the presidential debate. Hmm. I have no idea who I will vote for. 

Mk, I really have nothing useful to say, mostly just procrastinating from this work. I'll start working now. I have piano tomorrow morning and then it is finallyyy fall break! I'll be working on things all day tomorrow. It'll be good.

fall break?

No, of course not. I don't really get fall break this year. My days off will be spent writing pages and pages convincing people to accept me into their schools/give me money to go to school/give me a good grade on this assignment.

I am at home this weekend, though. My middle sister is home from college for her fall break so I came too to come see everyone. It's been good. I actually slept last night, and there's good food to eat here. Plus, I love my family a lot and I'm glad I'm getting to spend a little bit of time with them.

It's been a rough semester. I am exhausted. The schoolwork doesn't end and on top of that there's graduate school applications, fellowship applications, ACM stuff, and SLC stuff. I may have signed up for too much this semester. I wasn't counting on my grad school apps taking this much time and energy. 

On a happier note, it's beautiful outside! Next Monday Sarah, Sarah, Lea, and I are going to Crowder's Mountain, and I'm pretty excited about that. I love the fall. Now that my laptop has battery life, maybe I can take it outside sometime while I'm working through all these applications.

So the GRE went well. I was delighted with my scores. I sent the scores to Clemson, Virginia Tech, Brown, and MIT. I don't know that I'll complete applications for all of those but I aim to. So far, half the Clemson personal statement is written, and that's it. Still working through the rest of the personal statements.

I'm applying for somewhere between 1 and 5 fellowships. The biggest one is the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. It is a monstrous application. I've completed a pretty close draft of the personal statement of that one, almost a full draft of my previous research statement, and have started thinking about my research plan. The other applications are less intense, and I can kind of bend the GRF materials to fit them, so that's what I'm planning on doing. (They also have later deadlines!) Anyhow, the fellowship list is: GRF, NDSEG, Anita Borg, NSSE, and...DOE? I can't remember. I have a list somewhere.

I'm taking the computer science GRE subject test on November 8. I need to begin studying for that. It's a really difficult test. At least several friends are taking it with me. We can study together.

Classes are good. I barely think about them since I'm so buried in all else, but I'm getting the work done and doing okay in all of them. I can't complain. I work really hard but I have a lot of fun too. 

Here are the things I am looking forward to in life right now:

- the Halloween party Samantha and I are hosting

- going to Crowder's Mountain

- getting the bridesmaid dress for Sarah's wedding

- being done with all these applications

- getting enough sleep at night

- going to see my sister in Charleston one weekend

- getting my ESV study Bible in the mail this week

- Chad's musical theater thing on Tuesday

so yay. I won't die.

Hmm...what else...

Guess that's about it. Nothing outstanding or insightful, just getting through things right now!

I hope you all are doing well :)

october really?

nononono it can't be.

that means there is just barely a month for me to finish this fellowship application.

Apparently things are getting darker outside; I was wondering why I was waking up later and felt like days were shorter. Right...that's because they are. It took Mom saying something on the phone for me to remember about that even happening every year.

The weather's getting colder; it's nice and cool out during the nights. Cold, even. Supposed to get down to the 40s tonight, I hear.

I adore the fall. Hopefully I'll be able to finish these applications so I can spend some time outside one day.

for serious?

oh come on people. you're single. get over it. it's not the end of the world.

a short and scattered summary of this week

ants came back. i got bitten on the face. i was not happy. like a three year old I called my parents crying at 5am. i went home.

planned game night. worked really hard for it. only sixish people came.

saturday was one of the top ten worst days of my life, i think.

tried a new church Sunday. liked it. staying there for the next six weeks to complete this study. someone came up to me, asked me what my name was again, and then said "Well, Lauren, I hope you find a home here." and that's exactly what I want.

it was good seeing everyone at bible study.

didn't practice piano as much as I should have this week. got yelled at for my fingering on the Bach piece i've been working on. sorry ms. austin.

planned wednesday ACM meeting. only six students came. not as disappointed, it was still good for the people who were there.

software engineering is my new favorite class. i love my project. i love my team. i love the adult day center. and i owe my class a red velvet cake.

looonggg meeting with my advisor. we talked about everything. i feel better now.

forgot my homework for class thursday; left it on my desk. she doesn't accept late work >.<

made 60 cinnamon rolls last night. they turned out really good, but i should have been doing homework instead. oh well, i had committed to making them for Emily's shower. btw, apparently Earthfare does not sell crescent rolls.

meeting with STARS team went well today. i'm looking forward to this semester.

Amy defended her dissertation today. congratulations Dr. Ulinski! guess i'm not going to her wedding, today was rsvp day and i didn't :( i don't think i can just go to pittsburgh alone.

lane and i drank coffee and did schoolwork. well, i did schoolwork, he went through his rss feed. after that i went home and did more schoolwork. and now i'm still left with schoolwork to do. i'm behind on everything.

tomorrow = writing documentation, making SIGCSE draft, enough piano practice to make up for three days of slackness, math problemset, homework for programming languages, homework for networking, homework for programming competition, reading for allllll of those classes, drafting a personal statement, GRE (the real thing), dinner with awesome people, and a party. don't even ask me how that's supposed to fit within 24 hours. it'll have to be magic. right now i am nicely lining up all the little blocks on google calendar.

enough for now. 'night.

story of the day

This morning I woke up at about 3:30 AM and my legs were really itchy. I thought it was dry skin so I tried to go back to sleep, but after a few minutes I decided to get up and go put on lotion. Well, when I did, I found four brand new bug bites that were quickly swelling. I didn't know what they were from, so I put Benadryl on them, kind of freaked out for a minute, and then decided to go look in my bed to see if there was a spider there or something.

It was dark and my roommate was sleeping in the room. I didn't want to wake her up. I threw back my covers and looked around by the light of my cell phone. Nothing. Weird. I decided to change my clothes and sleep on the couch just in case there was a spider in my clothes somewhere.

I slept well. Finally I woke up at 9:40 when I heard my roommate get up. I told her about the bug bites, and she said that she had seen an ant on her arm last night. She proceeded to get ready. I went back into my room, threw the covers off my bed to find hundreds of black ants in my sheets and blankets, on my curtains, crawling on my floor, all over my walls, on the baseboards...

Bethany (roommate) and I sprayed everything with Windex. I threw all the linens in the washing machine (which surprisingly did not kill the ants, it took drying everything to handle that!). I brought ant spray after church, and we've sprayed everything down twice now. I also wrote an unhappy note on my RA's door asking for help.

So how was your morning?!

:)

much more to write about later.

dear myspace,

If you have to put things on your website like "Note: do NOT click back in your browser window!" then that probably  means there is something wrong with the way you are coding things.

Tom's notes about things being "down for maintenance" or "we're fixing this soon!" are also not very reassuring....

Please fix things.

Stop adding new features. They're confusing and only make things worse. Take a course in HCI and do some user studies about how people like your site...everyone's accustomed to it, but that's not an excuse for poor design. On my home page I see at least eight ads, seven drop-down menus, eight tab menus, six boxes, and five edit links. Do you really think people enjoy it being that complicated?

Instead of adding new things, make your code bulletproof. Fix your design. Then, focus your energy on doing what you do well first, and then expand after you've got something stable going. There are challenges to building and maintaining something so big, but I have faith that you can handle it.

k thanks!

lauren

i'm not necessarily pro-Obama, just anti-ignorance.

visiting Clemson

Well, I just got back from visiting Clemson yesterday/today because it is currently my top choice for grad school.

I really don't even know how to begin reflecting on or processing the visit in my head. It's so weird because I only applied to Winthrop for undergrad so I've never been through this whole visiting potential colleges thing before. I mean, I've stayed at UNCC and Virginia Tech for extended periods of time so I know what it's like to go to a unfamiliar school and to settle there, but with REU things I was just kind of thrown in there and figured it out as I went. It's not like I visited the schools first and then chose where to apply. With this decision, it's all my choice (assuming they accept me). I'm the one picking what I want to study and where I want to live and it's overwhelming.

I liked Clemson. It's a really pretty campus and the surrounding area's pretty as well. It's a very small town and the people I met were very friendly. It feels safe, and it feels like people are happy to be there, which I think is a good sign. There is a lake and trees and open fields and overall lots of good places to spend time outside. I feel like I would be happy living there.

I think I'm about 90% sure that that is where I'll be going next fall. It meets the characteristics I think I want in a grad school (smaller town, east coast, nice people, good professors, temperate weather, safe). Besides, Dr. Hodges is there. I know how important the advisor/student relationship is during grad school and I really can't imagine having a better mentor. We've proven we work well together and that's extremely valuable. 

Also exciting is that we'd be practically starting a new lab. That means we get to define who we are, what we do, what lab culture's like. It might be more difficult building from scratch but I think it would be worth it to have that kind of freedom.

It was a good visit. I'm glad I went and that I was able to go with people I knew. I know I was quiet most of the time but I was thinking a lot about things...it's just a really big decision and I want to make the right one. I'm sure I will :)

Soooo sleeeppyyyy...but no nap for me this afternoon. Mom's invited the new music minister from their church over for dinner tonight, so she'll need my help cooking and cleaning and such. It's okay, I don't mind too much. Maybe I'll just take an early bedtime tonight.

Four days of real summer left. I move in Sunday and classes begin Tuesday and then time begins to move a lot faster. As soon as school starts there will be more things to do than there are hours in the day to do them, but with only 14 hours of classes I should be okay. I need to start planning and writing about all the things I need to accomplish this year. I have to do things like grad school applications, research paper conference submissions, SLC team leader stuff, finding someone to mentor, applying for graduation, taking GRE, programming competition studying...the tasks are endless. Once I get in school I'll be able to get everything organized in paper and in my head and it'll be okay. Right now, though, with so much family-related going on and my things scattered in boxes all over the place it's so hard for me to focus and write down what all I need to be doing, much less actually begin to accomplish things.

short-term tdl:

- Pack boxes to go to school

- Write documentation for Virginia Tech research project

- Spend some time with Victoria before she leaves

- Practice piano (scales & new piece) so Ms. Austin doesn't think I forgot everything over the summer

- Make a list of grad schools to look into

now to accomplish it. later!

mccain & obama in tonight's civil forum

Well, I watched it. I usually don't pay attention to political things, but I figured that I have a responsibility to begin thinking about who I will vote for this November, and when I heard that Rick Warren would be interviewing each of the candidates I decided that that would be two hours well spent. And it was.

First of all, I really like the interview technique used. When candidates try and debate they always get all angry and competitive and so off the point. This way, they don't know what their opposition said, so they don't get all defensive. I enjoyed hearing them just talk about things and hopefully answer honestly.

Cool points to Google for indexing things so quickly! I can almost find a list of the questions asked right now. I think for the moment I'm just going to address the ones that stood out in my mind though.

How do you define what is rich for purposes of taxes?

Neither answer was perfect, but I much preferred Senator Obama's answer over McCain's. Obama gave a number ($150,000, I believe) and said anyone below that was middle class or below, and anyone above $250,000 was rich, and that the rich should be taxed more, and the poor taxed less. Senator McCain said that it doesn't matter, he wants tax cuts for everyone and wants everyone in America to be rich. He said that he does not favor redistribution of wealth.

I disagree with McCain on this point. I don't think that everyone should be rich, and I am very much in favor of redistribution of wealth. The growing gap between rich and poor is unacceptable and one way we can balance that is through taxes.

When does a baby get human rights?

From a moralistic perspective, I agree with McCain's answer: "At the moment of conception." From a holistic perspective, though, I enjoyed Obama's deliberation: how can we decrease the number of abortions? We have a pro-life president right now and still abortion stands; I doubt it will ever change just because that's what society wants, apparently. I appreciate McCain's pro-life stance but I would like to see him address the root issues like Obama did as well. You kind of have to take what you can get. It doesn't look like abortion is going to stop so you have to move forward from that and figure out how to make the best of the situation.

Is there evil and what should we do about it?

I appreciated Obama's broad view of what evil is and his humble admission that we can't conquer it, only God can. I thought McCain's view of evil was narrow; he only addressed terrorism related issues, and said we should defeat them. I'm all for defeating terrorism but I think that evil is more extensive than bin Laden et al. .

What is your definition of marriage, and would you support an amendment to the constitution defining marriage?

Both gave good, appropriate definitions for marriage: one man, one woman. I liked that Obama highlighted that it was a sacred union as well. Personally I think I support Obama's stance in not supporting a constitutional amendment and allowing for civil unions. I think McCain said he would support an amendment, which is actually probably okay too. I wish McCain would have talked about what he thought about civil unions.

Ummm...yeah, those are the ones that stood out. Overall observations:

- McCain tended to use more of a storytelling approach, while Obama used more of a "show my train of thought and how I got here" approach. I think that these are both valid means of expression but that each may appeal to different groups of people. For example, I think college kids will be a lot more open to Obama's "showing his work" than McCain's short, pat answers, while older generations may be much more comfortable with McCain's confidence and unapologetic stances.

- They both agreed that their quest for presidency is about inspiring Americans to live for something bigger than themselves. I thought that was cool.

- Both affirmed faith in Christ as being forgiven for all their sins.

Such difficult, weighty decisions.

In other news, I'm back from Alabama, it wasn't as bad as I expected. I survived, anyhow. :) I learned a bunch and I met new people and it was good. I'm home for a few days, visiting Clemson Monday-Tuesday, and back to school the following Sunday...ahhh craziness!

More later, I'm sure.

What'd YOU think about the interviews tonight?

i'm in alabama

and dealing with a variety of social issues that literally make me nauseated to think about.

This is not like me. Generally I'm outgoing and confident and can handle pretty much anything you throw at me, but a few events that have happened over the past weeks along with my momentary disposition are just not making this a good time.

pray for me. i have three more days here.

paradox

Coming back from the Y this morning I was thinking and I realized that my current reading list will soon be God's Passion for His Glory by John Piper & Jonathan Edwards, and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Hahah.

I really do want to read both of them. Reading them together should make it even more interesting.

Vacation was good. I read/finished four books over the past week: Pride & Prejudice, A Prayer for Owen Meany, In the Beginning Was The Command Line, and Flatland. They were all good. I would recommend each of them wholeheartedly. Other than that, I spent a lot of time being at the beach, sleeping, spending time with family, etc. We went into Charleston a couple days. I finally got to see The Dark Knight! It was good.

Since getting back I've been working on presentations for the STARS Alliance conference in Alabama in a couple days. I'm looking forward to it; it should be fun. I need to finish my presentation. I've also been catching up with a bunch of people. Friends from Virginia were visiting Charlotte on Saturday so we went to dinner and Southpark (where there was a 50 person line for the Apple store, with it being tax free weekend and all. Craziness.). Kaci and I went to Target and the Phat Burrito on Monday, Maleigh and I are supposed to be hanging out tomorrow, and I'm going to dinner with Laura Friday. It'll be good.

I ordered a MacBook. UPS says it's in Charlotte now. *taps foot impatiently*
I also bought a new camera since I broke mine, and I got a free iPod Touch with my MacBook. I have spent sooo much money this week. Oh well, all these things are investments. I'll keep and enjoy them for a long time. (Well, as long as technology can be kept and enjoyed. I guess about three years? Four or five if you're pushing it...)

K, sorry to be boring. I'm done!

vacation(?): day one

Yes, that's right. I lied to you. I said I would not have Internet until August 2 or 3 and now I am sitting here typing a blog entry.

Sorry, the truth is, whether I have Internet or not, I am ignoring all of you this week. I will not answer my phone, I will not text you back, I'm not replying to your e-mails, I'm not commenting on your Facebook photos. Nothing. This week is time for me to get away and clear my head of all the craziness that comes with having to keep up with so many people at once.

Anyhow, for your enjoyment while I'm gone, I would like to outline the first day of my vacation so far.

I was up until 1AM last night, talking to people and completing Round 1A of Google Code Jam. I didn't get through it. I solved one small set and that's it. I had a good grasp on the third problem but my math in C++ was just not precise enough to do what I needed it to. I was also kind of close on the second one, but just unable to solve it.

So, I had another opportunity. Today at noon Round 1B happened. Actually, it's not even over yet. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I woke up at 7:30 this morning and got ready to leave because we were planning to be in Charleston by noon so I could be at Panera Bread to compete in this other round. We're driving down our road (the one we live on) and Mom says, "1:00, right, Lauren?"

"Noon," I reply. We're all quiet for a minute. And then the parents erupt into panic. We go and get my GPS from my car (we're not far away from home) and for the next hour we utilize every resource we can to figure out where I can be that has wireless access by 12:00. I text about 10 of my friends looking for a friend's number who lives in Summerville, where we'll be in about 3 hours. While waiting for their responses, we're mapping, GPSsing, 1800GOOG411ing...considering crashing in hotel lobbies, trying to find Panera Breads...it's chaos. Finally my friend from Summerville texts back and tells us there's a McDonald's with wireless just outside of Summerville. I set my GPS and we drive there (we can all finally breathe).

I sign on. And then they charge me for wireless. Whatever. $3.00 for two hours, I can deal. Much better than Starbucks or something. And I sit down with CNN in the background and a screaming baby across from me and begin to figure out these problems.

After about 45 minutes of working on a problem and looking at all the problems, I have decided that I can't solve any of them. They're hard, really hard. Last night's were much easier. These are tedious and mathematical and I don't have the capacity to figure them out, not without some friends to help me out and/or more time than two hours. I can talk about them more after the time is actually over, but not now.

* sigh *

Oh well. GCJ 2009 anyone?

But seriously, from now until August 3, I am purging my brain of all things code-related. I look forward to reading books, ignoring my phone/computer, getting a suntan, and overall just getting out of the typical. It'll be fun and really good for me.

My family will be here to pick me up soon, so I'm out! Enjoy your week.

summer

Since I left Virginia Tech, my life has degraded into pretty much sitting in front of Facebook clicking refresh, refresh, refresh until something interesting shows up.

Okay, not really, but I have spent several evenings doing approximately that. Things are boring around here. In the mornings I wake up, get dressed, and go to the Y with Victoria for a bit over an hour, then I come home, take a shower, eat lunch, and attempt to figure out what to do with my afternoon. I've been catching up with family and friends some over lunch, and I've been going to Bible study on Tuesdays at UNCC. I also went to The Cheesecake Factory with UNCC people on Saturday where I ate a 1009 calorie slice of Dulce De Leche cheesecake. 1009. That's, like, 1/2 of recommended daily intake, and probably way more than half of what I generally eat in a day. Oh well. I enjoyed it. And I've been working hard at the Y.

I've practiced piano some, read a little, fixed a few computers, debugged some code for friends. I registered for the GRE and am starting to think about graduate school--I saw Dr. Hodges on Sunday and am working through scheduling a Clemson visit with him. I really think that is where I belong, but I want to consider my options carefully as well. I know there will come a point in my Ph.D. work where I wonder why I'm where I'm at, and at that point I want to be able to know for sure that I made the best decision.

I guess I just need to start calling my friends and asking them to do stuff with me. I feel a bit disconnected from all my social groups right now: school people are at home, UNCC people are busy with their program ending, I don't fit with a lot of my old church friends any more. But that's okay; I'll get it figured out.

Google Code Jam Round 1 Friday night, then leaving for the beach Saturday morning. Yay. It'll be nice to have a week away. I hope to get a lot of reading done.

I'm ready for the semester to begin. This is going to be an intense but good year :)

things I appreciate about home: the post-VT edition

Every time I come home from a new place I compile a list (even if only mentally) of things that that place made me appreciate about home. So here is the post-Newman Hall at Virgina Tech edition of that list.

- air conditioning
- a shower where I don't almost die trying to shave my legs, and I don't have to wait for 30 minutes for the water to get warm in
- carpet
- clean kitchen (ie no bugs)
- bookshelves (there was NO space for books in my room)
- living space in general
- free laundry
- there is not a construction site in our backyard that turns on equipment at 7:40 every morning
- a variety of food (ie not D2!)
- a piano downstairs
- house furniture, like sofas and stuff (I only had bed and desk)
- real closets
- a shoe rack

mmm, I love home :D

reflection on a couple things Google

1) Google Lively

Soo Been, my roommate from VT, told me about this when it launched, and I just got around to checking it out yesterday. Pretty much, it's avatar based chat. You have an avatar that you design, and then you choose rooms to go into--but they're like real rooms. They look dimensional. You can walk in them, put furniture in them, sit on the chairs. When you type, text bubbles come above your head. It grabs words out of your text to show your character's emotion (type ROFL sometime, you'll see what I mean). You can also choose to interact with other characters with actions and not only words: right click and you can kiss, kick, slap, dance with, etc. someone.

I'm not a chat-roomer. I instant message my friends and don't have time to actually "chat" with people I don't know. But, from a HCI/virtual humans/virtual environments standpoint, I think it's really interesting. Here are some observations:

- Navigation is difficult in the rooms. Click and drag to move works okay, but the mouse was just not designed for dimensionality. This is a known problem that a lot of people are working on.

- The avatars are quite, well, lively. Motions are overexaggerated, and I think that's interesting. A "haha" typed in my chat bubble made my character bend at the waist laughing for at least 10 seconds. I wonder why the creators chose to do that. So that others were less likely to miss the cue? To promote a less serious chat environment?

- There is limited choice of avatars. I had two representations of female characters to choose from (although I could customize them a good bit). I'm guessing that's because it's fairly new.

- It's amazing what proximity can communicate. In a chat room, if you sign in and observe, it's hard to follow who is talking to who. In the Lively rooms, several times, someone would say "hi" to me, and I wouldn't be sure if they were talking to me, but then they moved their avatar closer to me and turned towards me and said "hi", it was immediately evident that they were speaking to me. Cliques formed in the rooms based on where people were standing. If I was sitting apart from the group, someone usually came into my area to ask if everything was all right. People would walk up and introduce themselves a lot as well.

- There are gender differences. In every room I visited, there were many more male users than female users (judging by screennames and avatars). But when I did come in, many times the guys paid more attention to me than to the other males in the room.

- For a two-person action (dancing, kissing, handshake), the consent of the second party was not required. So, if someone chooses to kiss me, my character kisses back, whether I wanted to kiss or not. I imagine this would make for some interesting social dynamic sometimes.

- How do people respond to actions towards their character? At one point, several characters came up to me and started kicking and punching me. Of course I didn't take it too seriously, but still, I wasn't very happy to have three avatars beating me up. I walked away from where they were and sat down so that they couldn't hit me any more. I wonder how others respond. I also wonder if having the possibility for violent action will serve to encourage cyberbullying and that kind of thing.

- How do people represent themselves in their avatar? Do they more or less look like themselves, or do they choose to look totally different?

- How do people use their avatars to interact with their virtual environment? What comes intuitively to them? What do they wish they could do, but they can't? How high is immersion?

2) Google Code Jam

Well, I made it through the qualifying round for Google Code Jam. Me and about 7000 others will be fighting for $10,000, 10 lunches at Google, and a whole bunch of cool points ;)

The first problem (the one I solved to qualify) was fairly straightforward; I solved it within two hours and not working on it all of that time. The second problem was within my reach, but some of my logic is wrong and I can't figure it out. After competition, I saw Chad's code (who also qualified) and he took a much better approach. I overcomplicated things by a lot. The third problem was way over my head. I could have worked for two weeks and never solved it.

Lessons learned:
- Use good variable names. REALLY. When you're trying to work quickly you don't want to have to remember whether you were using i or j for your loop iterator. Put in the couple extra keystrokes and make something readable.
- Debug little by little.
- Make sure you understand the problem first. The second problem kept confusing me, and I wrote bad code because I was misreading it over and over again.
- Plan first. It's tempting to immediately code but it's important to draw a few pictures, write a few formulas, etc.

What's cool about this competition is that I can go download everyone else's source now. I look forward to learning from it. I doubt I'll make it through the next round on the 25th, but I'm going to try my very best!

Well, that's it for now. If you want to track my work, my screenname on Code Jam is laurenelizabeth and my Lively screenname is lcairco. So...see you around!

home sweet home

Home finally! I miss Blacksburg and everyone there, but I am so happy to be here with my family and to have a bit of time to chill out. Today was Victoria's (my middle sister) 18th birthday so we celebrated that. Actually, both my sisters and I returned from trips this week, so it's kind of a special time for our family. This is the first time we've been all together in over a month.

The last week of REU was especially memorable. After an incredible weekend in DC our adventures continued for our final four days. There was an ongoing battle between Meeks/Tim and Soo Been/me for various possessions that spanned the entire week, and that was a lot of fun craziness involving stealing keys, kidnapping basses, Nerf weaponry, photoshop deceit, and IM negotiations. It ended in a ceasefire until next time.

Other activities included making/eating dirt cake, a surprise water balloon fight, card games, a dressy dinner & movie, building a raft out of water bottles and sailing it, and early morning goodbye breakfast.

I miss everyone. Somehow life's not the same when I'm not running down the halls hiding from someone attacking me with a Nerf gun every night...

Anyhow. So this summer culminated in 3016 lines of code, a bunch of new friendships, and a whole bunch of fun. I feel like I've grown up a lot over this summer. I've learned a lot technically and personally. It's been good.

As for the remainder of the summer, here is my TDL:
- Google Code Jam qualifying round, July 16
- Beach with my family last week of July
- Prepare presentation for SLC conference
- Go to SLC conference
- Decide which grad schools I am going to apply for
- Tie up loose ends of the summer project
- Finish Invention 13 (Bach) on piano
- Begin Danzas Espanolas, 2:Orientale on piano
- Buy a laptop

Probably some other stuff too. That's just off the top of my head.

Well...more later!

dear facebook & facebook advertisers:

This morning in my newsfeed I find you boasting of your highly targeted ad system, and then glance to my left where the typical ad is placed to find taglines such as:

How I Got Skinny
21 and Overweight?
T-shirt for Math Geeks
Out of Shape at 21?
Single? Meet 5 Guys in 5 Minutes!

Awesome. Thanks for those highly targeted ads. But actually, I thought you might be interested to know that I am perfectly happy loving math, being single, and wearing my average-sized jeans.

However, on my off-days, I feel like you're taunting me. And I'm sure a lot of other people do too. I know it's just marketing for all you advertisers, but still, it attacks points of weakness for a lot of people and it's just not cool. We don't appreciate it, and you insult our intelligence when you assert that clicking on a link and ordering a product will fix our lives. Nothing's that simple. (Btw, losing 37 pounds in a month is unhealthy, if not impossible, for the vast majority of people. That would be called anorexia/bulimia, not some crazy diet plan.)

Okay, I'm done ranting.

last day.

i hate hate hate goodbyes.

unforgettable

I just wanted to outline my day on the 4th. I've never laughed so hard in my entire life, I don't think.

So we drove into College Park on the 3rd and slept until about 8AM, when we got up and ate breakfast at our hotel. We decided that we would eat an early lunch around here and then pack a picnic dinner to eat in the city so that we could get a good spot to see the fireworks at 9:15 that evening.

There was a 60% chance of rain.

So, we went on our quest to find groceries. First, we went to "My Organic Market," which is completely windpowered and had tasty food. Yay. However, since they're into saving the planet, they did not have ziploc bags, which are necessary for putting peanut butter and jelly in your pocketbook. So, we GPSsed it and found that there is a Safeway. We drove in that direction.

Well, when we got to the Safeway, it was not a Safeway; instead, it was a Bestway, which is a Latino market. This was quite funny. But the food was really cool-looking so we bought some. We also found some "Awesome!" brand ziploc bags, but alas, there were no umbrellas. So, we went over to the Rite Aid to buy umbrellas. And chocolate. And card games to entertain us while we were waiting on the fireworks.

So far so good.

After that, we headed into the city on the Metro. The station we went to has a "Kiss and Ride" parking lot that we find amusing.

So we get off at the Capitol South stop and try to go to the Library of Congress, and it's closed. So we take pictures there, take pictures at the capitol, eat Snoopy bars (which I forgot existed), continue to head towards the national mall...and there are all these tents there! The first one we see is for "Vegetarianism." We continue to wander around and figure out that we're in the middle of a Hare Krishna festival tent outreach thing. But they let us try on saris and gave us vegetarian food and books about their religion. I've always wanted to wear a sari, and now I have. *checks off of life to-do list *

After that we continued to wander around the mall. We tried to get into the national gallery but it was closed. After that we decided that most everything was probably closed since it was the 4th and we wandered around in the Smithsonian Folklife festival, where they covered the random topics of Texas, Bhutan, and NASA. There was some pretty cool stuff there.

We were going to visit the monuments/memorials but found most of them were blocked off. So, we just headed down toward Lincoln Memorial where we had decided to sit and wait for the fireworks. There were a whole lot of people there, and by this time, probability had won and the rain had started. We hung out under cover of the Lincoln Memorial until the rain subsided, then sat down at the bottom of the steps there, spreading out our plastic bags and the sheet we brought to sit on.

We ate dinner and started playing Uno, and then...start feeling rain drops. It's getting faster, not slower. We have nowhere to go, so we form a tight huddle and make an umbrella dome where we're way too close and all getting wet anyhow and laughing so hard. It rained for so long and the entire time we were laughing and trying to take pictures and hoping it will stop soon. Soo Been starts trying to grab the ankles of the people walking by us, because that's all we can see. She succeeds in touching one guy's leg. hahaha.

Finally it did. We did damage evaluation. Victoria's purse is soaked all the way through, the blanket is completely wet, we're wet, the ground's wet, everyone's wet. But we survived!!!

Still dripping wet, two high-school age guys approach us, one explaining to us that the other does not have a 4th of July date, and the dateless one expressing what a horrible idea this is. We take a picture with him.

The fireworks were incredible. We watched them, got our things together, and began to leave. People are wading in the Reflection Pool. And they're not getting arrested. This is a golden opportunity. We step into the edge of the reflection pool and take pictures of us jumping out of it. We don't get arrested either, only warned by a kind bypasser that we should put peroxide on any open wounds since we will get infected by the goose poop in the pool. We get out of the pool. We walk forever to the L'enfant station, which I call the "Elephant" station or the "Infant" station. We get back to my car.

It's late now. We GPS a Seven Eleven to get peroxide. GPS leads us to a nonexistent Seven Eleven. We GPS another Seven Eleven and find it. No peroxide; there's only Neosporin. We'll settle. I'm completely disoriented. I GPS the hotel, so I think. I start driving and we end up on a freeway where traffic is crazy and drivers are inconsiderate and we almost die like three times. I say, "I know our hotel wasn't this far away." I hand the GPS to Soo Been, and she discovers that our hotel is on Baltimore Avenue while I chose Maryland Avenue...which is the location of the Elephant station. Oh. That's where we're going.

GPS finds us. We get back to the hotel without dying.

The end.

Best, craziest, fourth of July ever.

the fact is

that i am living in a dream come true.

taming the infinite loop

Because I have made this mistake more times than I can count, I thought I'd write a bit about it.

In operating systems we often learn this type of construct in order for sharing resources:

ask for a resource
if (resource isn't free){
while (resource isn't free){
do nothing
}
}


use the resource
release the resource

This is kind of a semaphore, allowing only one process to access the resource at a time. It works great for operating systems. However it is not an okay construct to use in a single process.

Why the difference? Well, in operating systems, each process is scheduled out--one process does not have to complete before another process executes. So, in the middle of that busy wait, the operating system stops that process from executing and gives the other process(es) a chance to execute. If it didn't, then that first process with the busy wait would never complete because all the CPU time would be used just waiting for that while loop to be over instead of executing the other process that's currently using the resource. That's called deadlock.

Deadlock is exactly what happens when you use that kind of construct in a single, non-threaded program. Instead of executing that other function all your resources are dedicated to wait in that busy loop.

Sometimes this kind of thing is necessary, though. In the program I'm working on right now, I need a function to wait until an object is not null in order to continue. So I've been working for three days on this and this morning I finally realized that I was in deadlock like that. Easy solution: add a timer.

function myFunction(){
if (we're calling this function for the first time)
send request for the resource
else
after a set amount of time call timerFunction
}

function timerFunction(){
if (the resource is available)
do what I need to with it
else
call myFunction
}

Problem solved. While that timer is waiting to execute, it gives the other functions a chance to return that resource.

And now to more interesting problems, such as data logging over a web application. Eww. The stateless nature of web programming makes this an unhappy task. Yay PHP sessions!

crunch time

two weeks left.

feels like about three weeks of work to do.

wonder how this is going to turn out.

In other news, I went to see my amazing sister in WV yesterday. I miss her a lot. I miss my family and my friends back home. I am ready to go home.

I've been making important life decisions, since one day I woke up and realized that grad school applications will be due unbelievably soon, and since time is moving unbelievably fast. I am pretty sure that I will blink and it will all the sudden be Christmas.

I have decided that I am not moving across the country until I am married unless crazy things happen. If that makes me weak, then whatever. I don't care about your opinion. I'm all for seeing my dreams come true and moving across the country to take that perfect job if the opportunity arises, but being near to people I love is part of that dream. It's so important to me to be working with good people and to have people to share my life with. Life is so much richer when you're sharing it with someone, and here close to my friends and family I can do that. If I'm a day's journey away from the people I love it is harder to communicate and much less fun. If/when I move far away I want to have someone to share it with. It's not an independence or incapability issue; I have proven to myself many times that I am capable of starting over in a new place and taking care of myself. It's a matter of my priorities, my desires, my dreams, and what I am convinced will be the happiest life for myself.

I love my life. I'm pretty excited about all that is to come. It's awesome to be here with so many choices and opportunities, and I mean awesome in the full sense of the word: bringing about awe, admiration, wonder, terror. Who would have guessed that I would end up here and now? It is intimidating and unbelievable and incredible. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

And now...to fit three weeks worth of work into two. I can do this if I work at full potential. Here's to making the most of every moment.

a simple guide to static variables

I have been doing programming type stuff since middle school now (nine years, whoa) , with my first object-oriented experiences in high school Java class. I remember talking about static variables then (maybe in college too, I don't know). However, last Thursday I was writing some Actionscript code for my research project and realized I was mindlessly typing "public static var" in front of all my declarations, and that I really didn't know what "static" meant. So, I checked to see who was online, and my friend Lane was, and I asked him what static variables are. He explained it this way:

class Orange{
public var count;
public static var staticCount;

Orange(){
count++;
staticCount++;
}

}
...

var valencia = new Orange();
var navel = new Orange();

So, what will valencia.staticCount be? What will navel.staticCount be? What about valencia.count and navel.count?

Turns out that static variables are shared across all instances of a class. So, either of the staticCounts will be 2 after each instance is created (since each time the instance is created, the class increments staticCount), while each count will be 1, since the constructor also increments the non-static, unshared variable as well.

After I asked that question I figured out that a whole bunch of my program's bugs had to do with me declaring static variables where they should not be.

I don't know, it seems like several people I've talked to don't (or didn't) fully understand static variables either, but it's something really helpful to know.

i think this happens a lot

...wellll, except for the whole jumping out the window part, anyhow.


Planning ahead has its merit, but at the same time I think we miss a lot of opportunities in life
if we're letting our planned future get in the way of things that could be really good here and now. That's just my take on it.


(by the way, that's from http://www.xkcd.com)

a bit of coding wisdom

"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"
-- Brian Kernighan

"Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live."

via http://www.codinghorror.com/

the demise of fish #2

Lynn (named after my academic advisor) died today, after Dr. McCrickard confessed at lunch to deriving enjoyment from giving his students sick fish to try to nurture and bring back to health, and after Stacy confessed to licking Larry previous to his death. Hahah.

The third fish is named Tiffany, after Dr. Tiffany Barnes. She's made out of construction paper. I think she'll live a bit longer than the other two.

Other than that, things are going great here. I'm a bit behind on my self-made project timeline, but it's all good, I'll still make deadlines.

Not much else beyond the typical is happening. I'm sure I'll post more later.

any summer internship where you end up having nerf gun wars/pillow fights/throwing things at your coworkers both in the lab and in the dorms has to be good.

i'm just sayin.

miscellany

So, things are going well. Three weeks down at VT. I like my project, and I love the people I live and work with. We work hard, but we play hard too. We play volleyball almost every night and frisbee twice a week. I've learned how to do a cartwheel. I've had my hair completely done in braids. I've seen waterfalls and climbed trees and gone to the duck pond. It's been good.

On a sad note, Larry, my fish, died. He was sick. I was taking him to Petsmart, but he died before I could get him there. Sad day.

This weekend I'm home for my sister's graduation from high school. I'm so very proud of her. We did graduation this morning, and afterwards I got to see a bunch of people from the church I grew up in, which was good. A bunch of us went and saw The Strangers tonight. I laughed the whole way through it, but that's just what I do during cheesy scary movies

Tomorrow, I go to church and then head back to Virginia. For some bizarre reason I volunteered to watch the one-year-old nursery tomorrow during Sunday school. I suck at dealing with kids. I think that when Mom said that they needed help down there tomorrow I thought, hey, this is my opportunity to prove that I can totally take care of small children, despite common belief. So I told her I could help. She laughed at me. I took it as a challenge. I can so handle this.

Today I came to the conclusion that writing code soothes me. I think I take comfort in knowing that my carefully scripted lines will be interpreted in the same way time after time after time and that they won't change by themselves. I'm in control of my code. Nothing else has the power to change it. If there's something wrong, it's my fault, and it is within my power to fix it. I like that.

Does anyone else feel this way?

I think it's why I like housework sometimes too, especially when I'm nervous or upset. It is good to be able to put order into disorder, to make chaos livable.

I'm reading Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, and it's been talking a lot about how much resistance there was to zero or infinity existing. Early mathematicians had no notation for zero or infinity, and no representation of irrational numbers (numbers that can't be written as fractions), and in many sects suggesting the ideas of these things was tantamount to heresy. People were uncomfortable with the idea of void--it breaks a lot of properties that hold true for every other number. People were also uncomfortable with infinity, mostly because that's something we can't wrap our minds around. Yet zero and infinity are incredibly important concepts for higher level math. Calculus and physics are impossible without them.

To be honest, I'm afraid I'm a bit uncomfortable with infinity and void as well. Not in a numerical sense (I don't run away screamign from calculus textbooks!) but in a "I want my life to fit within these neat constraints" sense. Every day I learn that things are a lot bigger than I am and that there's a whole bunch that is out of my control. There's seemingly infinite time ahead of me and a void filling it. I have no firm plans. My life is different than I expected it to be, in the best of ways. It should be a comfort to me to know a sovereign God who brought all of creation into being even though it started in chaos, but unfortunately I am not as trusting as I should be. I wish to arrange these things myself...but I can't.

Sorry, guess this post was a bit disjointed. My thinking's disjointed right now too. It's time for sleep.

fish

So yesterday Dr. McCrickard, my research mentor, walks into our little desk area, stares at a box full of fishtanks, and tells me to pick out an aquarium, put water in it, and one day he'll come in with fish. He put one on my teammate's desk too. Well...I got busy yesterday and didn't do it, not sure if he was serious, and thinking I had a couple days lead time if he was serious.

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up, spent time with God, went to breakfast, took a shower, got out of the shower at about 9:50. I turned on my computer and checked my e-mail...and there is a message from my mentor saying that he will be there this morning at 10:00 or 10:30 with the fish and that he trusts the aquariums are ready for them.

I threw on clothes, grabbed my bookbag and my makeup and ran to my car with wet hair and all, hahah. I got there just after 10:00, filled the aquariums, put on my makeup in the bathroom there, and got to work. Dr. McCrickard showed up at 10 :45 with the fish.

I strongly believe in showing responsibility in the small things :)

The policy is to name fish after former students. Apparently there was a former student named Larry, which is the same first name as Dr. Hodges, my research mentor at UNCC, so Dr. McCrickard felt that was an appropriate name for my goldfish. I told Dr. Hodges on Facebook. He said he would find a way to exact revenge. Hahah. I am terrified of this thing dying...

good night.

first two weeks at VT

Well, despite initial fears and a bit of homesickness, things are going just amazingly here. I am having a LOT of fun. We do a lot together. Tonight, we played volleyball and then played manhunt with some other people living here on campus that we just met. I looveee playing outside.

Sunday was probably the best day since I've been here. I woke up and went to one of my friend Andrew's churches and was surprised to see my roommate there, since we had left for supposedly separate churches that morning. So after church Elly, Soo Been (roommate), Andrew, and I went to this waterfall called the Cascades. It was beautiful and there were butterflies all over the place and it was a really pretty day outside. After that, we went to eat at Cabo Fish Taco, and then Soo Been and I went to ice cream with our REU peeps. We finished off the evening with some intense volleyball. So much fun!

There's been a lot of other random goodness too. A couple guys placed bets on them not giving high-fives for a certain amount of time...and now Meeks is required to run around the drillfield dressed in drag, and Sir has to wear makeup to work one day. Yessss.

So I like my project. I'm working on implementing software that lets you storyboard, in short. I'll be able to explain better once I get deeper into it. But for now it's good and I'm enjoying it. I'm learning Adobe Flex (mostly ActionScript 3.0) and enjoying it. Not much of interest to write about with that. Yet.

More later!

perspective on photoshopping

Reading an article about photoshopped magazine covers, I stumbled across this:

The point is that we're living in a world where the truth is more blurred than ever, and we're used to it. And, Susannah Frankel says, we're guilty of it:

"We may not, like Elizabeth Hurley, go to the trouble of using Photoshop to tidy up our holiday snaps. But which of us is not guilty of editing them, of casting aside the pictures showing extra chins, blotchy skin and wobbly bits? Of making sure that only the loveliest, happiest, glossiest versions of reality are left behind for posterity?"

If we're so interested in the truth, why don't we start with ourselves?

Something for us to think about.

I want to work towards finding the beauty in things that are real.

three days

and I'll be living in another state. I'm superexcited. I'm ready to have stuff to do,and the change will be good. I got in touch with someone from VT that I met at a conference previously, and he's going to help me move in and show me around and everything once I get there. That's exceptional kindness, and I really appreciate it.

Well, most of the social craziness is over. I skipped a few appointments, scheduled several more, and in the end I think I've seen (or will see shortly) everyone that I wanted to say goodbye to for the next couple months. Success.

My birthday was awesome. I got to celebrate it three nights in a row--Monday with a cookout hosted by my parents and attended by some of my friends, Tuesday with a family dinner where Mom got out her china and everything, and Wednesday at a FCL/Vislab (FCL is my research lab, Vislab is a lab down the hall) party for multiple occasions. I have such amazing friends and family.

I turned 21. I did not get wasted. Yay accomplishment. Haha.

My stance on alcohol: fine to do in moderation. Being drunk will NEVER be an option for me. So last night, I drank my first (almost a whole) glass of wine (thanks Alex!) and, surprisingly, took a (weak) jello shot (thanks Amy!) I tried sips of what everyone else was drinking (thanks everyone!). And I didn't die.

My parents' stance on alcohol: NO. Interesting conflict.

Anyhow. At the beginning of this blog I vowed to try my best and only write about important things. To me, these things are. They're probably not to you, though. Sorry. I'll do better.

until may 18...

...my life remains crazy busy. And probably after that as well, considering May 18 is the day I will put all my things in my car, drive to Virginia Tech, move in, and get ready to begin my research job. It's really exciting going to a new place with new people and new research. It's an opportunity for me to kind of recreate myself, to get a clean start and become who I want to be again. Not that I'll change that much, it's just nice to not have a reputation preceding me occasionally.

But between now and then:
Today, May 7: party with graduating CSCI majors, UPE members, etc. at Thacker's, and then party at Monique's with friends from freshman year
Tomorrow, May 8: go to UNCC and teach Morris & Vicky everything that I know about Avari, our research project, since I won't be there this summer, probably eat dinner with people afterwards
Friday, May 9: hang out with Kaci, Joanie, & Sarah (people I grew up with), dinner with the grandparents
Saturday, May 10: flag football with old church people, possibly a graduation party for one of our lab members who is completing his masters
Sunday, May 11: Mother's Day, which I still need to get a gift for
Monday, May 12: Mom & Dad are hosting a birthday dinner for me and some friends
Tuesday, May 13: My 21st birthday...woooo. (No crazy drunkenness, I promise)
Wednesday, May 14: My friend Jason is taking me out for my birthday
Thursday, May 15: Birthday party for me & Evan with our research lab

And in between all that I've got to fit going out sometime with my friend PJ, spending some time with my family, possibly going to Olive Garden with Theresa...

Since when did I become so sociable? A year or two ago, "shy" would have been an appropriate descriptor for me. And now I find myself not even having enough time to hang out with the people I want to. Craziness.

Anyhow, it should be fun. I'm looking forward to it and enjoying the lack of schoolwork for the moment.

back to unpacking these boxes...

!

I took one of my friends to church yesterday and just found out that he made a commitment to be a Christ-follower.


this is incredible.

finals, finally

This semester has seemed eternally long and infinitesimally short at the same time. January seems a lifetime ago but I'm still not sure what happened to the time between now and then. I remember going to California, being sick for one week, throwing a couple parties, going out to eat a few times, and meeting some deadlines that seemed impossible, but other than that it seems that my weeks have disappeared into nothing. Strange.

I don't feel like I've learned enough academically to merit an accomplished semester. I feel like I've learned enough personally to be the equivalent of five years of life, though. In many ways this semester's been quite a stretch. I found myself to be capable of a lot more than I thought I was as far as getting things accomplished, and I found myself to be far more patient with people than I thought I could be. Countless times I was at my breaking point but somehow magically (or better expressed, by God's grace and his character in me) my mouth stayed shut and I continued to serve gracefully.

I've learned a thousand other things more difficult to express concisely.

The semester's just left me tired and emotional. I'm not enjoying the goodbyes that I'm saying, and not looking forward to the many others I'll be saying next year. I feel out of balance and in disorder, desperately seeking for some form of stability and routine but finding none. It's just been like that all semester. I schedule things neatly into my calendar and then they take longer or shorter or fall through or change and it makes me tired to keep up with it all. Oh well. That's just the way it is at the moment, and it will get better, no doubt.

I'm ending this a little nervous about what's to come. New research this summer. Senior year without research, and the impending grad school applications--can't delay it any longer. And grad school stuff is a whole new flavor of scariness in itself. I'm not going to think about it right now.

I think I am just too tired for things to make a lot of sense. I haven't been sleeping well (nervous about exams) or eating well (never hungry) and that's not good for me. I'm working to get back into balance, though. Early bedtime tonight, and a pretty chill day tomorrow. Vicky, Joshua, and Kyle are all coming to Meck (church) with me in the morning, and then Lane & I were going to do this thing with making a Wiimote an IR camera but I think he's staying home instead, so if not I'll just end up out in the sunshine somewhere studying. I need to get away from this place. Can't focus here because there are boxes and such all over the place.

Somehow this song has been comforting to me lately:

There ain’t no reason things are this way.
Its how they always been and they intend to stay.
I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday.
Preachers on the podium speakin’ of saints,
Prophets on the sidewalk beggin’ for change,
Old ladies laughing from the fire escape, cursing my name.
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same,
A window and a pigeon with a broken wing,
You can spend your whole life workin’ for something
Just to have it taken away.
People walk around pushing back their debts,
Wearing pay checks like necklaces and bracelets,
Talking ‘bout nothing, not thinking ‘bout death,
Every little heartbeat, every little breath.
People walk a tight rope on a razors edge
Carrying their hurt and hatred and weapons.
It could be a bomb or a bullet or a pen
Or a thought or a word or a sentence.

There ain't no reason things are this way.
It's how they always been and they intend to stay
I don’t know why I say the things I say, but I say them anyway.
But Love will come set me free
Love will come set me free,I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set me free, yes.

Prison walls still standing tall,
Some things never change at all.
Keep on buildin’ prisons, gonna fill them all,
Keep on buildin’ bombs, gonna drop them all.
Working your fingers bear to the bone,
Breaking your back, make you sell your soul.
Like a lung that’s filled with coal, suffocatin’ slow.
The wind blows wild and I may move,
The politicians lie and I am not fooled.
You don't need no reason or a three piece suit to argue the truth.
The air on my skin and the world under my toes,
Slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes,
Chaos and commotion wherever I go, Love I try to follow.

Love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set me free, yes.

There ain't no reason things are this way
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay
I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday.

--brett dennen/ain't no reason

Well that's enough for now. I need to start a study guide or three.

quite possibly the worst thing about programming...

...is that everything is your fault. Everything. It's not the user's fault, because you should be validating that input. It's not the computer's fault, because they are only capable of logical following of instructions. You're the one telling it to make the error, whether you think so or not.

There is this difficult to kill bug coming up in Avari. I have three lines of code. Looks something like this:

printToLog("User says: " + phrase);
otherFrame.location = "avari.php?userphrase="+phrase;
printToLog("Question recognized: " + phrase);

So the first line does what it's supposed to, but the third line never executes. Obviously there's something wrong with that middle PHP file. But even if there is, Javascript should continue executing. It's not waiting on PHP to return for it to do anything. That third line should still happen.

And worst of all, this only happens sometimes. I can't replicate this. It happens when people come up and try to talk to Avari but never when we're sitting there testing it with all our debugging statements in place. How does that even happen?!?

It frustrates me. A lot of times when there are deep errors like this the answer comes to me in some kind of insight while I'm sleeping or something. Not this time. I have no ideas. I've checked everything as well as I possibly can. There has to be something else interfering with the process.

The best I can think of is a workaround. Call a function to wait for 3 seconds, then call the PHP function. If the character isn't speaking after those 3 seconds are up, something is wrong; refresh the entire page and hope that that fixes it. I hate hacks like that, but it's the only thing I can think of. I'm not sure that PHP and Javascript were meant to handle such complexities.

In other news, there are two weeks left now and things are even crazier. The kind of crazy that leaves clothes and coffee cups littered all over the apartment and a box of Frosted Flakes by my desk that I eat straight out of. It'll be okay, though. Things are almost over. There's much to be done, but I'm fairly confident that I can handle it from this point.

Victoria & I went to West Virginia this weekend to check out what she'll be doing this summer at Global Outreach, a missions organization that my friends Kevin & Emily are at. It was pretty exciting. I have a lot of pictures and stories. Ask me sometime. But as for now, I must study for this 11:00 physics test, get dressed, prepare for the ACM meeting, and get my things together for research...