laurenelizabeth

porter square

2011-07-31T20:51:00.000-04:00

the neighborhood I live in is called Porter Square. It has the largest escalator/flight of stairs I've ever seen.

That's 117 steps. I've counted them. I walk them from time to time. There's an additional two sets of stairs to get from the surface to the subway--I think there's about 200 total steps.

That's probably about the most notable thing about Porter. The other squares seem to be more interesting/trendy/busy, but I'm kind of glad to be living in a fairly lackluster neighborhood. It means there aren't tourists everywhere all the time and that there's a regular grocery store within walking distance. Also, there's the occasional turkey. I spotted a turkey in the Star Market (grocery store) parking lot one afternoon, and then again several days later in a neighbor's driveway. Apparently wild turkeys make their way into Somerville every now and then. I have pictures on my phone but I can't figure out how to transfer them over to my computer at the moment.

getting places

2011-07-26T20:00:00.001-04:00

I've been wanting to write about public transit for a while but it's something that seems mundane when I try to put any structure to it. It's like if you were to ask me about a morning run--there are so many things I find interesting about running every day but once I start to talk about them I realize that they're probably only interesting to me, and I sift out the only things I can think of that might make sense to someone else--"Oh, it was good. I had a little bit of back pain though"--instead of saying "well at first I really didn't want to be running because the wind was against me and I don't like being windburned but then I saw the person who takes the money out of the parking meters and I think the contraption they deposit the quarters into is interesting and I think that homeless guy lives on that park bench because I see him every morning and the traffic is much different at 7am then 8am and that's strange to me and I feel less guilty running through Harvard Square than walking because the homeless people don't expect me to have spare change when I'm running and the river is really pretty in the morning although I'm afraid of getting run over by bicycles so sometimes I run on the apartment side of the street which is interesting too because there are sprinklers that I can cool off in and I wonder why none of these parks have water fountains and the mile between these two bridges seems to be way longer than a mile and a bird has built her nest under the bridge...", on and on for five to seven miles of distractions I found while running.

If you stuck through those sentences I figure you might stick through a few more about other ways of getting from point A to point B.

The thing I find the most strange about living here is how close together everything is. Work, in the city of Cambridge, is about 2.5 miles away from my apartment, in the city of Somerville. Church, in Medford, is three miles away. The middle of Boston is about 4 miles away. In the South cities have gaps in between them, while here they run into each other unceremoniously.

I live near the Somerville/Cambridge city line, so I have seen at least four of these on the streets I frequent. I wonder, why not merge them all into larger cities? Is it really that different to live in Somerville than it is to live in Cambridge? (Two girls on the bus today seemed to think so, at least, as I overheard that one was sad to be moving away from Cambridge to an apartment in Davis Square, which is in Somerville, about a mile north of the Cambridge city line.)

The density of the city is also different than anything I'm used to. I feel like the entire city of Clemson, people, campus (well, minus the farmland), businesses, and all, could probably be squished together and contained in about three city blocks here. There are two grocery stores and probably about 50 restaurants and small businesses within easy walking distance from me. It's overwhelming, really.

It is amazing how long it takes to get to places that are so close together! Work, which I could run to in well under 25 minutes, takes me 30 minutes to get to every day. Getting to the USS Constitution, only 3.7 miles away (which I could probably run in 35 minutes) will take 41 minutes using public transit. Do I want to run everywhere? No. I just think it is interesting to think that I'm faster than a train at getting places sometimes.

There's just a whole different mentality you have to take with public transit, a certain amount of patience and flexibility that you have to develop. The train or bus is not always going to be on time, and there's nothing you can do about it but wait for it or catch the next one, so you never can plan on being anywhere at a precise time as you might be able to do with a car when you have control over the route you take and the speed you travel. One of my roommates got stuck in the subway tunnel for three hours. It happens sometimes. Several times the bus I've been on time and waiting for has driven straight past me, and I've had to wait for the next one. It's infuriating, but what can you do? And everything takes so much planning. Getting from A to C can be a totally different route than from B to C, even if B seems to lie directly in the middle of the two. Buses may take more direct routes but may come too early or too late, while trains will be consistent but may take longer, so you have to weigh route decisions carefully.

And it may be quicker to walk, or wait for a bus, but what if it is pouring down rain? I'm only home tonight because there was a chance of strong storms and hail that I wasn't willing to risk. I was supposed to be going to a demo night at MIT, but that requires about 15 minutes of walking outside and a 10 minute subway ride, and those 15 minutes in the wind and rain (and possibly hail!) would have been enough to leave me dripping wet by the time I got there. So, no demos for me. The weather is a constant factor in deciding how to get where, and whether getting there safe and sound is even feasible.

There's also the continual variability of the driver (friendly? cranky? overly aggressive in driving?) and the variety of the other passengers that keeps things entertaining. The homeless and/or drunk folks are often the most chatty. If there's a sporting event, the whole train or bus might be cheering together. I think that the T is interesting because it might very well be the most casually social place in the city. Despite the general reserved nature of the folks in New England (people raise their eyebrows when I say "good morning" to them on my way to work) it's not uncommon to strike up a conversation with a stranger at the bus stop or subway. This is especially interesting because so many different people ride the T--different nationalities, socioeconomic levels, and age groups. So it's probably also the most diverse place in the city.

I am so glad I didn't bring my car here because I would have been a nervous wreck trying to drive in all the traffic and general chaos of a city, but I do miss being able to go where I want when I want to and not having to take into account transit schedules, maps, and weather before I go anywhere beyond walking distance. It'll be another two and a half weeks before I am reunited with Big Red (my car) but I am certainly looking forward to it!

memorable

2011-07-17T23:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm certainly glad I decided early on to not try to do a blog post a day because if I did I would feel like a miserable failure by now. There have been a lot of things happening that I think are interesting, but in the past month or so when I get a spare minute it's been spent doing something else--catching up on sleep, calling my family on the phone, cleaning my ever-unruly room (I am typically a neat housekeeper but there's only so much you can do without enough organizational space for things!), or other mundane housekeeping kind of things. It's amazing how much time the necessities plus a full time job can actually take--from 7am to 7pm I'm pretty much booked, getting ready, commuting, going to work, and making and cleaning up from dinner.

At any rate, there are things that I do want to record about this summer, so here goes.

Last year, when my family went to Kiawah Island for the week (we typically go every year), one day we decided that we were going to ride the Thriller boat. None of us were quite sure how good it would be but Dad was really excited so we started driving into town for it.

On the way from Kiawah to Charleston, it started pouring down rain--not just a summer shower, but cold, hard rain, and wind. The boat ride was rain or shine, though, and the tickets were already paid for and nonrefundable, so we proceeded on to the parking lot. We were all in kind of a poor mood; things that day weren't turning out as planned overall. Once we parked, all of us continued to take refuge in the car, except my middle sister, Victoria. She told us that the trip would at least be memorable, and proceeded to dance in the rain in the parking lot. (This is the way Victoria consistently lives. She has had the most difficult struggle in school of anyone I know, yet she never loses hope and has continued to live with generosity, compassion, hope, and joy.)

The boat ride turned out to be great fun, despite being slapped in the face by the rain and the waves. However, one of the priceless snapshots in my mind, is looking back at my youngest sister, Briana, who we affectionately nickname Squidward for her occasional indifferent-to-negative outlook on life (although she has so many excellent qualities, which I will later write about!). When I looked back at her, she had the perfect Squidward expression on her face and was evidently not enjoying herself at all. I believe that we captured that moment on film and often laugh about it as a family.

Things this summer have definitely not gone as I planned them in most every aspect of life. There have been a lot of days of pouring rain (both literally and figuratively!) that have made it more difficult than it had to be. Some days I know I've been a Squidward and have been turned skeptical and calloused by the circumstances, but in the past few weeks I've been thinking more and more about Victoria dancing in the rain in the parking lot, making it memorable. If it can't be good, it might as well be memorable, so that is what I will aim for. I want to have enough courage, hope, and sense to step back from the immediate circumstance and see how I can at least make this a good story in the end, becoming a strong character, growing richly, choosing the path of adventure and not wavering when it comes to the things I know are most important.

Thanks, Victoria, for your example. I admire you so much more than you can imagine!

favorite routines in Boston

2011-06-20T00:25:00.000-04:00

Obviously, the day-by-day approach is not working out for me. Honestly I think it's mostly because when I sit down to write about what happened on any given day I realize that the only interesting things that happened are probably only interesting to me and not a wider audience, and are therefore not worth writing about, really. So I'm going to take a different approach and just write about loosely categorized things that I think might moderately interesting to people who care about me.

I am the type of person who likes structure and routine. To me, there's something comforting about knowing what to expect each day and being able to separate things out into little sections of time for various tasks. So here are the routines I've fell into since I've moved to Boston.

I have a skylight directly above my bed, and I've always been one to rise with the sunlight, so for my first two weeks here I woke up at promptly 5:06AM each morning, struggled to get back to sleep for a long time, and then finally got out of bed at 6 or so. That got old real quick, so last Monday I walked over to the Family Dollar, bought a roll of aluminum foil, and taped sheets of it over my windowshade. I've been sleeping until 7 or so since then, and taking some awesome naps in the middle of the day as well.

I get up and eat breakfast (breakfast of choice lately has been bagels, although I bought some frosted mini wheats this week that I'm pretty excited about), put in my contacts, and brush my teeth. I put on gym clothes and pack work clothes in a bag. Then I pack lunch. I bring my lunch every day because it's a whole lot cheaper than going out anywhere. CRA caters in lunch for meetings a lot, so usually once a week or more I get a break.

When it's nice out, I walk to the bus stop at a local park, walking through residential areas and passing by a community garden, an elementary school, and a really neat park composed of all this netting where kids can go climbing up and down it. When it's not nice out, I have to make one of the scariest street crossings ever and get to the subway station, which then takes me to another subway station where I catch the bus to work.

I work out first thing in the morning, usually only for a half-hour or so because I wasted too much time laying around in bed in the morning, haha. The gym at work has a few treadmills and an elliptical. When the weather is nice sometimes I run around Fresh Pond, which is very pretty and has nice, paved, shaded trails and some water fountains along the way.

After showering and getting dressed, I usually get to work around 9, and then I work until 5:30.

Every day we meet up in the kitchen for lunch. My lunch always looks much tastier than whatever everyone else buys at the grocery store :) Usually after lunch I make a cup of coffee using the Flavia machine. I have figured out the technique for the perfect cup of coffee: cover the bottom of the cup in a thin layer of sugar, pour in two half and half cups, then brew a cup of French Roast over top of it. Mmm. So far I only like the French and Espresso roasts...all the other blends I've tried have been too weak.

After work there really is no routine. Some days I go straight home and make dinner. On nice days I tend to go walking and wander around my neighborhood finding out what's nearby. The evenings and weekends are the times I tend to get most homesick because there's little structure to them. In the evenings I'm kind of afraid to go wandering out alone and I haven't made good enough friends to go hang out with them. On the weekends it's just hard to find enough things to fill up the time. But, I've got a couple little weekly traditions I look forward to.

My favorite thing to do on the weekends is go to the Haymarket. People buy up the produce that the groceries store don't buy and then sell it for really cheap on Friday and Saturday. Here is what I got this week:

That is: a pound of snow peas, the biggest yellow pepper you've ever seen, a bag of spinach, a box of blackberries, a bunch of asparagus, about 3 lbs of green beans, a little over a pound of grapes, and a pound of some interesting fruit (front middle of the table) that I wish I could remember the name of. I paid a total of $9 for all that. Last week I think I got a pound of green beans, seven oranges, ten apricots, three bell peppers, and two pounds of grapes for $8. At those rates I think I'm eating cheaper here than I typically do at Clemson!

The Haymarket area also has a shop that sells Arabic food, and sells goat meat. I want to visit there someday soon because I bet I could find some really interesting things there. Maybe I'll venture there next weekend.

My other weekly routine that I look forward to is swing dancing on Wednesday nights. MIT puts on a free lesson and dance every week. I've been two weeks so far and have had a great time both nights! The crowd is friendly, and the gender ratio is about even so I rarely have to sit out a dance...unless they're dancing something I don't know. There's a lot of "blues" dancing at this dance, and most people are Lindy Hoppers, which I can kind of adapt to, but not very well! Everyone's been really nice, though, and some people have even been patient enough to teach me a few things. The first time I went swing dancing I ended up meeting a guy who had lived in Clemson for several years! What a small world! We danced together and reminisced about Super Taco for a long time.

I'm trying to find other ways to fill my time. I read Icy Sparks last week to take up a couple evenings, which I would recommend as a decent read. I'm trying to decide how to get involved in a church group, although honestly I'm having a hard time getting into the work routine and it's near impossible for me to get anywhere by 6 or 7 at night when I've worked until 5:30 and have to figure out dinner and public transit. We'll see if I can work it in sometime this week.

Next post: writing about some fun things I've done in the city so far!

boston day three: first day at work

2011-06-14T20:23:00.000-04:00

My first day at work went well! Here are some things that are particularly nice about working at CRA:

- this is the first workplace I've ever had that is consistently a comfortable temperature!
- they have a free Flavia machine (makes any kind of coffee/tea/frothy drink you'd like)
- there's a kitchen with hot water for dishwashing
- there are free snacks! poptarts, snickers, granola bars, chips, etc. (I think they're trying to fatten me up)
- they have every kind of office supply you could ever want
- there's a free gym for employees downstairs in the building
- everyone's nice so far

I did orientation in the morning and then met with Peter, one of my coworkers who is the PI of our project. We went out to lunch at Summer Shack, which was delicious. After that we talked a bit about our project and then he sent me to go figure out the math for the physics-based modeling of tissue that we want to do. I spent about four hours in the afternoon trying to get through the math. Unfortunately it is far beyond my expertise, so I spent a lot of time looking up terms and trying to figure out what the equations mean.

I don't remember what I did that evening. Probably mostly went to sleep. There is a skylight directly over my bed and it gets light at 5AM so I wake up with the sun in the mornings, making early bedtimes necessary!

favorite moment: the flounder I had at lunch was one of the tastiest things I've ever had. The plate was first covered in creamed peas, and then a mound of mashed parsnips. on top of that was a broiled fillet of flounder with duxelle on top. awesome.

least favorite moment: probably being overwhelmed by the math

boston day two: fire and water

2011-06-14T20:00:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day had the potential to be a really terrible day. I was disoriented and knew barely anyone. My roommates weren't in so the apartment was empty. However, thanks to good friends, it ended up being awesome.

In the morning, I met a roommate's boyfriend to get into my apartment. My room is on the third floor of a house that's split into two apartments (we have the top two floors). There are these really narrow, twisted staircases that are easy to trip over going up and down the stairs. My room is kind of bare but I have everything I need!

After unpacking I ventured out on the bus route to Target to buy some things I needed. I was proud of myself for not getting lost.

Alex and Emily invited me over for an afternoon cookout, where I met several of my coworkers: Brad, Joseph, and James. James is on the same project as I am. Joseph is his brother, and is an intern as well. Both of them are from Easley so they're practically next door neighbors to me! Bethany invited me over for an evening cookout, where I met several of her labmates and housemates, who were all very nice. Most of them are studying in the medical field but I did talk to one guy who had interest in medical applications in virtual reality, so that was neat.

I met some of my roommates when I got in that night, but pretty much went straight to bed so I could be ready for my first day at work. I was delighted to find out that we had central air conditioning (a luxury around here) considering it was in the high 80s and my bedroom is on the 3rd floor!

Favorite moment(s) of the day: fire and water. At Alex's cookout, he was grilling on a tabletop grill set up on a table on the lawn when the automated sprinklers turned on! Friends helped him move the grill and table out of the stream of water. At Bethany's cookout, the chicken breasts had skin on them so the grease drippings caught on fire, leading to massive flames and charred chicken being scooped off the grill with a shovel!

Least favorite moment of the day: being nervous before meeting my coworkers at Alex's cookout. It all turned out okay though!

boston day one: (thankfully temporary) homelessness

2011-06-05T22:44:00.000-04:00

So I had wanted to do a picture a day or something for every day of my stay in the Boston area this summer, but mostly I've been too busy actually doing things to sit down and write about them. I'm going to attempt to catch up and then start writing a bit about each day. Knowing me, this will probably last about two weeks and then I'll give up. Oh well. I'll give it a shot anyhow.

It was weird waking up on Sunday morning and not going to church. Patrick and I had stayed up super late watching this movie, The Illusionist, not to be confused with The Illusionist, which is what we thought we were getting from the redbox, and would have probably been a much cheerier movie. Anyhow. I spent the morning packing. We all had spaghetti for lunch and then I left for my flight. I was nervous and crying.

Patrick helped me get my luggage in the airport. My bag was overweight. Turns out that's an additional $95--a total of $120 for the one bag to be checked! I only paid $180 for the entire trip! We shuffled between the two bags to make them both in the acceptable weight range and in a moment of panic checked the second, carry on sized bag as well, costing a total of $60. Still, half the price I would have paid for the one bag. Strange pricing.

Anyhow, we said our teary goodbyes and I went through security. My flight got delayed by about an hour. On the plane a kid behind me kicked my seat and loudly smacked his gum the entire time. Instead of doing anything useful, I sipped ginger ale and played Angry Birds.

Now, on Saturday, I got an e-mail from my subletee (is that a real word?) copied to a couple of my roommates asking them to put the key outside the apartment for me on Monday. Trouble is, I was arriving Sunday. I e-mailed the whole group asking them to please have it ready on Sunday, but there was no reply on Saturday. There was still no reply when I landed in the Boston airport.

I called my subletee and she said she'd text me the number of another roommate, but it turns out she didn't have that roommate's number. I decided to stay with Bethany (my college roommate from Winthrop) for the night--she had met me at the airport to help me with my bags and we just decided that will be easier. Several hours later, no phone call and no key still, and I am panicking. Finally, after much searching and worrying, I got in touch with one of my roommates, and her boyfriend was in town and had a key so I made arrangements to meet him Monday morning.

Other than that chaos, it was quite a pleasant evening. Bethany's house is nice. We ate frozen pizza and sorbet outside. It was almost like old times in college.

Favorite moment of the day: eating lemon sorbet outside
Least favorite moment of the day: saying goodbye to my family

oven sopapilla

2011-04-26T19:01:00.000-04:00

Have you ever had a sopapilla at a Mexican restaurant? They're little fried tortilla-like triangles of goodness, usually served with ice cream, honey, and chocolate syrup. Yeah, probably not authentic, but still delicious. I figured out how to make them without the deep frying but equally delicious. I looked online thinking, surely someone has done this before, but it appears not.

I think that oven sopapillas are probably the best contribution to society I will ever make in my life. I am eating one right now. Maybe its deliciousness is overblown in my head because it's the last week of classes and this is good comfort food.

you will need:
a flour tortilla (I use whole wheat)
sugar
cinnamon
butter

I highly recommend honey as well. If you want, you can do whipped cream, ice cream, and/or chocolate syrup. I'm not giving strict measurements because it's really up to you. You can decide how healthy/unhealthy you want to make this dish.

Melt some butter in a cup (I use about a teaspoon). Use a brush to brush it on both sides of your tortilla. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on both sides of the tortilla and rub until it's kind of coated (I probably use about a tablespoon sugar and a teaspoon cinnamon). Put on a pan. Place under broiler until the tortilla starts looking bubbly. Flip and let cook until edges are crunchy. Drizzle with your choice of toppings.

Depending on how you make it, it's not bad for you. I estimate that my sopapilla was about 230 calories. Not bad for a dessert. And I fit in whole grains, and honey and cinnamon are good for you too.

Enjoy.

2011-03-08T23:43:00.000-05:00

The past couple years I have not given up anything for Lent. I have a complicated relationship with food in general and giving up any form of junk food leads to me to think more about being skinnier than pursuing Christ, and not eating any type of normal food hampers my athletic training. There's no habits I have that are particularly troublesome or that take away time from spending with God, it's just a lack of discipline in general that gets in the way. Still, I think about it every year.

This morning I was sitting in statistics class with Toni. I had overslept and was still tired and was holding a cup of coffee when I realized that the coffee was something that I depended on instead of Christ. I am not coffee obsessed or caffeine addicted but when I am tired, I think, "A cup of coffee will fix this." And I look forward to my coffee every day. I think about what kind I will brew and when I will drink it. I enjoy how it tastes and smells and its warmth. I am a grad student. This is my fuel.

I think more about coffee during my work day than I do Christ.

How tragic.

And that is why I will not be drinking it during Lent this year. I cannot tell you how much I do not want to give it up. I really want my cup of coffee tomorrow afternoon. If I would have realized that this is what I was going to do, I would have been drinking three cups of coffee a day for the past week, but it just occurred to me this morning. If it were not near midnight I would brew a cup of coffee now and drink it. I will miss it. (Disclaimer: when I go home for spring break, it is tradition for Dad, Victoria, and me to enjoy coffee together, and I will do that because that is not as much of a dependency thing as a family tradition.)

Every time I think about coffee, the most trivial of things, during this Lenten season I will seek to set my mind on Christ, the most significant of things, in my moments of boredom, tiredness, and weakness. May he be honored and adored by this small sacrifice, and may I find joy, satisfaction, and focus as I turn towards him to meet all of my needs.

2010-03-01T21:39:00.000-05:00

I got a new cookbook called More with Less, which is a Mennonite cookbook about how to eat simply and considerately of other people. I liked this poem at the beginning of it:

You have heard it said
   that because of hunger in Third World countries
   we should not overeat.
But I say unto you
   that the abuse of your body, mind, and soul
   is never justified.

You have heard it said
   conserve for the sake of the crisis
   because of limited amounts available to us.
But I say unto you
   the only wise use
   is that which brings glory to God.

Let not your hearts be troubled by this kingdom
   but let your bodies and energies be dedicated
   in service to God and man.
Surely you will find
   the future kingdom
   already being fulfilled in your life.

--Martin Penner, Recife, Brazil

Compared to common culture, I think I eat well. I cook most nights and 90% of what I eat is from produce or meat that I've bought instead of from processed foods, and I try to buy in-season, and local, when available. But still, I think that I can live more considerately by eating more considerately. I can use simpler ingredients, save money, and give it away to others. I can reduce the amount of things I eat that are bad for the environment or for people. I'm really looking forward to reading this book, learning from it, and trying out its strategies. I'll let you all know how it goes.

2010-01-30T23:31:00.000-05:00

dear upstairs neighbors,

I appreciate you not holding band practice tonight. However, I do not appreciate you throwing a party tonight with loud music and bass that is now nearly shaking my furniture.

I never see you early in the mornings. May I suggest that you shift all of your daily activities forward by approximately two hours? Then, we would never have problems.

love,
lauren

2010-01-30T00:03:00.000-05:00

dear upstairs neighbors,

I am also a musician and I understand and support your endeavors to start a band and become musicians. You're not too terribly bad, especially since your lead singer got drastically better over break, or you replaced him with one who could actually sing, or you just stopped trying to sing Kings of Leon, whichever actually happened. At any rate, I admire your persistent, every night practicing, and I can hear your improvement. What I want to know is why I have to hear your improvement at midnight and after. Your neighbors would like to be able to turn on and off the music that they hear, especially when they are trying to sleep...

love,
lauren

2010-01-10T18:58:00.000-05:00

sometime over Christmas break or maybe a little before I remembered that music existed. I mean, I had been listening to music and all, but something, and I don't even remember what, made me remember that music comes from real people and isn't magically generated out of a computer like iTunes makes it out to be.

So, I have decided to remember how to play piano. I didn't practice any over break due to busyness and to not particularly wanting to be heard. But I've been here for a week and have practiced five days. It's been good. I remember more than I thought I would.

I like practicing here. The practice rooms are warm. The upright pianos let me play more comfortably and expressively than the baby grands did at Winthrop (yeah, I'm weird). And so far I haven't heard anyone else practicing who was exquisitely good at piano like I did in the practice rooms at Winthrop. That makes it a whole lot less intimidating to sit down and play as I want to, mistakes and all. And it's more enjoyable since when I sit down at the piano I don't have to panic about having to play this for anyone else if I don't want to. There's no teacher looking for my mistakes, no jury at the end of the semester asking me to play the one scale that I can't remember, and no expectation that I have my pieces perfected and memorized in 15 weeks. I'm on my own schedule and I'm my own worst critic.

I'm working on getting Chopin's Nocturne in C# minor back to well-polished (and I'm pretty close). I really would like to finish the rest of Mozart's Twelve Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star--I play probably five or six of the twelve variations well and I'd like to learn the two I skipped and get the remaining variations to the point where I play them well. I have no interest into returning to the two Bach inventions I learned, haha. After I get those two pieces down I'll probably polish up the Granados Danza Espanola No. 2.

I'd like to start a new piece or two as well. Probably one at a time for now. I'd really like to eventually attempt Granados' Valses Poeticos but I think it's a bit beyond my skill level right now, as is his Danza Espanola No. 8, which no one in the world seems to have recorded except perhaps Ms. de Larrocha, and I can't find a link for her (excellent in my opinion) rendition anywhere. So we'll skip the Granados for now. I'm thinking about finally learning the rest of Mozart's Sonata K545 that I've known the first bit of for forever. I've got a book of Clementi sonatinas that might be another potential option, or I might just pick something out of my big book of classics. I'd like to play Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 but all those triplets over eighths might kill me. We'll see. I just need to find something the right difficulty level--challenging enough to increase my skill but easy enough that I won't get frustrated with it.

I'm going to try to be disciplined and practice at least three times a week. I can spare a half-hour three times a week and that'll work wonders. Hopefully my academic schedule won't be chaotic enough to stop me.

mk that's all for now.

about the fellowship

2009-11-12T20:13:00.000-05:00

I get angry sometimes when I talk to people about my fellowship. I'm really thankful for it and most days I think it's too good to be true. But when talking about it, people say things like, "Oh, you got lucky!", to which I think, it's not like NSF rolled dice and happened to come up with my number. But that's not so bad because we toss around luck to mean a lot of things. The ones that really get me are the true statements. "Oh, well, because you applied to Clemson and that's a smaller school in the south and they're worried about geographic distribution you had a better chance," and "Because you're a woman your proposal was considered for two funding options!"

Both true. But can't I have also just flat out earned it? Is it inconceivable that my proposal was actually good and that NSF thought that I had the intellecual merit and the broader impacts that all the other fellowship recipients did, male or female, undergraduate or graduate, from MIT or from some tiny school in the south?

I am thankful that NSF tries to make things fair and I think that's good. And I know that people saying this to me mean nothing by what they're saying, but it feels like they're trying to explain away any of my effort and attribute the award to qualifications I really had no control over. It's just irritating to have worked really hard for something and to have that work totally discounted.

The end.

2009-09-21T23:44:00.000-04:00

I think this is wonderful.

http://www.blogher.com/2009-swimsuit-brigade-honest-photos-0

I'm even considering participating. I believe so strongly that every person should have the right to feel comfortable in his or her own body.

Dealing with body image is such a terrible game to play. The solution is not to buy better clothes, get a makeover, pamper yourself, or even to lose weight. I'm fifty pounds lighter than five years ago, and honestly, I think I'm more self-conscious now than I was then. I've resolved to not speak badly about my body and to not encourage or allow that kind of conversation around my friends. And overall, I really am okay with how I look and how healthy I am. But somewhere in my mind there is still this image that I measure myself against, and I end up scolding myself for eating cookies, skipping the workout when I'm sick, or drinking a soda. Recently I have realized that this is stupid, and that the image I'm comparing myself to it's an impossible image for the way my body is built.

One of the things I enjoy the most about going to the gym is seeing the variety of people who are there. When I'm working out I watch people. Not in a creepy stalker way, just in a this is what real people look like kind of way. There are old people and young people, people smaller than me, people bigger than me, muscular people, frail-looking people, stick-thin people and people with curves. And I don't think any less or any more of any of them for their appearance. This is the best kind of therapy for the impossibility that exists in my mind--seeing other people and telling myself that these are real people, not the sickly, atrophied preteen-esque people living in the media and in my head, and that I don't view them any differently for their appearances, so other people probably don't view me differently either.

bedtime. on a related note, this was also heartwarming (warning, the model is covered but only wearing her underwear).

resolutions

2009-08-14T20:01:00.001-04:00

In my week of doing pretty much nothing, there are some things I've decided I want to accomplish this fall.

1) Be better to the environment. Stop using ziploc bags when tupperware will work. Reuse things if posssible. Pay attention and choose the items with less packaging. Recycle more. Take public transit if possible. Conserve energy and water.

2) Read while in school. Surely I can handle a couple books alongside schoolwork.

3) Memorize more scripture. I'd like to finish memorizing Colossians and make good progress into Romans 8.

4) Volunteer somewhere, if school doesn't kill me.

5) Be involved on campus in something non-computer science related, possibly a campus ministry or an intramural sport.

6) Go to bed early and get up early so that I can use my time more effectively.

7) Read scripture better and deeper, not as a half-hearted bedtime story.

I think that's it for now...

first day in the lab

2009-08-12T17:25:00.002-04:00

Pretty uneventful. I met a few new people. Toni, Amy, Yvon(ne?) and I ate lunch together. I set up my desk, which I think is cute, but I forgot to put pictures up of it. Got my parking permit, turned in my final transcript, helped take apart a couple tables, filled out more paperwork, worked a bit on my personal website.

I think the most eventful thing that happened, though, was early this morning. I was leaving for campus right at 9 this morning with my hands full of stuff to go to the lab. It was raining a little and I had just got to my car outside my apartment when I saw this woman walking across the parking lot, barefoot, carrying her shoes, in soaking wet clothes, and crying. She asked me if I was headed to the university, and I said yes. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said no, hesitated, and then sobbing, told me to go to school and finish my degree because life on drugs wasn't good.

I asked her if I could do anything for her, she said no. I asked if I could pray with her and she said she'd let me, so I did. Then she left, seemed in a hurry to get somewhere. But I just felt so much compassion towards her.

I've been thinking about the nature of addiction, bondage, and sin lately. Last night I had decided to start working on memorizing all of Romans 8. I had been working on the first three verses this morning:

"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do." Romans 8:1-3a, ESV

Sin's nature is interesting and counterintuitive. Paul explained it in Romans 7, talking about how he's constantly doing what he doesn't want to do because of the sinful nature that's living within him. He knows what the law is. He knows what choices he should make, yet he fails to do them. It's a predicament, but his triumphant statement ending that chapter makes it clear that Jesus delivers us from that slavery. Those three verses then follow, assuring us of God's grace towards us and reminding us of our purchased freedom that allows us to serve Christ instead of our sinful nature. Is that grace and freedom a license to sin more? No (cf Romans 6). But it is an assurance that in the end, our sins are fully covered by the blood of a perfect Savior, and no one stands to condemn us.

Sin is a terrible thing. It is a lie, convincing people to choose things that will never satisfy in place of the infinitely good. It breaks relationship between people. It breaks relationship with God. It enslaves and leaves people barefoot in parking lots crying their eyes out, or confessing things to their loved ones that break hearts, or with a hopeless medical diagnosis, and ultimately, in a torturous eternity separate from their Creator.

It is absolutely incredible that God shows us grace and offers to rescue us from our own devastating tendencies. I am very thankful because I know that not a whole lot separates me from the woman I was talking to this morning. I want to get better at understanding sin and reacting properly to it, not with indifference or pride, but with compassion, anger, and mercy in proper proportions.

at Clemson

2009-08-11T18:43:00.003-04:00

Well, I'm in the town that I'll spend most of the next five or so years in (assuming nothing crazy happens). I'm all moved in to my apartment. I'm happy with my apartment, I like my roommates (the two I've met!), and I like the area so far. There's not too much to do but I kind of like it that way. Less distraction. More time for creative activities with people (and for studying eventually). I think I will be happy here :)

I had to arrive on Friday to do paperwork for getting paid. After that, Dr. Hodges and I went out to lunch and talked about some possible projects for this fall. They all sound interesting, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm currently getting other things in line--parking pass, student ID, textbooks, course schedule. I have a desk in the lab (by the window!) that I have cute things for. My things are unpacked and I'm putting finishing touches on my room. I visited a church with the Hodges, Lizzie (a labmate), and Brandon (a friend from UNCC) last Sunday. Lizzie and I have spent a good bit of time together over the past few days. Chad (friend from Winthrop, entering Ph.D. program here) was up for TA training today and we had lunch at Super Taco, which was very tasty. Patrick came up on Saturday for the wedding of two of my friends. I've found the workout room here, laid out by the pool, read the first Harry Potter book, "repaired" my computer (did you know that swapping the keyboard and mouse plugs will cause it to not start up at all?). So far there's not too much to do and I'm a bit bored, but I know things will begin full-speed on Monday so I'm trying to savor the last few days of nothingness.

I think that the wedding I went to on Saturday was my favorite wedding that I've ever been to. Other weddings have been good, but this wedding was different from all of them, and, I think, closer to the way I would like my wedding to be. Instead of a love song solo, there was a congregational hymn about love. There was a sermon-type-thing about the kind of love the Bible calls us to. The whole church took communion, which the bride and groom helped to serve. All in attendance were asked to confirm their support of the marriage. I don't remember what the vows were, but they were different than is typical and I remember liking them a lot (and up until now I've always much preferred the traditional).

The reception had a lot of excellent food, and instead of typical dancing they had a band and a person who was teaching contra dancing, which I really liked, because I can't dance for real and because I hate sketchy dancing at a wedding. Their first dance was a dance with everyone. We had to leave at the cake cutting but it looked like everyone was having fun.

I think the reason I liked this wedding so much is because it wasn't as closely focused on the couple as the other weddings I have been to. Of course, a wedding is primarily about two people committing their lives to each other, but it's not like you live in a bubble with your spouse after you're married to them. There are still other people--your friends, your church family, your community. As a couple you are called to love and serve them together, and they are called to support your marriage and encourage you. I remember at Lea's wedding that the pastor charged the wedding party to do everything within their power to support their marriage, and I liked that a lot too. When I have a wedding, I really would like it to be more church-centered like that. I've never liked sappy love songs and I'd rather us all sing a hymn. I'd like to put more focus on God's love than our love, and I'd like to make the ceremony include the audience as much as this one did. I think the ceremony reflected the order that priorities in a marriage should take: God first, your spouse second, your surrounding community third, and all else following.

The contra dancing (whether this was intended or not) was, to me, an extension of including the entire audience in the wedding. Because I lack dancing skills (even to the point of hating stupid dances like the electric slide) I had always thought that there wouldn't be dancing at my wedding, but I would love for there to be something all-inclusive and fun like this. I always feel awkward at weddings where there's dancing, and I'd rather people not stand around awkwardly at my wedding reception.

A wedding is no time soon for me, but this one really made an impression on me and I wanted to write about it before I forgot.

My other random observation from my time is how luxiuriously I live...we all live. Today I was thinking about how nice it was to have a dishwasher, icemaker, thermostat, and full-sized oven. Then I realized that a lot of the world doesn't have electricity at all, or a computer, or Internet. I don't think I necessarily have to go without these things, but I do want to work more on appreciating "little" things like that. I never want to have the mentality that these things are my rights to have. I want to appreciate them for the blessings that they are.

Okay, that's it for now! Orientation tomorrow, classes begin in a week!

irony

2009-07-16T23:19:00.000-04:00

The ad after my previous post: "#1 abs program in America! The truth about abs, click here!"

another quote

2009-07-16T22:00:00.002-04:00

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a dieter, but (like any woman) I have my share of body image issues. But lately I've been thinking about it and wondering--why do I want any of these changes anyhow? What's so desirable about the smaller jeans size, the flat tummy, and the smoothing of other 'imperfections'?

I realized that I really have no idea why I want these things. I don't consider myself unhealthy; I'm in fair shape and I eat right. I look okay in clothes. I have the love and approval of family, friends, and boyfriend (and I always have, even when I was many pounds heavier). The best I can guess, even though I don't really watch TV or read magazines, it's just some implicit cultural standard. Instead of addressing culture, though, I'm ready to step up and address my attitude about it, because that's the only part I can really change.

I read an article today from Jezebel, which occasionally has interesting and good stuff, though you have to sift through it. Here's an excerpt:

Really quitting dieting may mean not just letting that Weight Watchers subscription lapse, but also giving up thinness as a goal. It's still incredibly difficult, because people like Willett (and every women's magazine ever) continue to insist that it must be everyone's goal. But psychologist and eating disorder specialist Deb Burgard says, "the pursuit of thinness as a dream is a place holder. It gets in the way of asking, ‘What is it I am dreaming of?' "
This may be true not just for individual dieters, but for our diet-obsessed society in general. Also in the Times, Roger Cohen writes about the recent study that shows that calorie-restricted monkeys live longer. The child of a primate expert, he examines a now-famous photo of two monkeys, Owen and Canto — and thinks Owen, the well-fed one, is probably happier. He writes,
It's the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, "Ripeness is all." You don't get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.
"When life extension supplants life quality as a goal," he continues, "you get the desolation of Canto the monkey." Long life and even health have become goals in themselves, and we seemed forgotten that a long healthy life is for something — enjoyment. When we take health, longevity, or thinness for that matter, as ends rather than means, we get our priorities screwed up. We think it's acceptable to tell people to starve themselves so that they can fit Willett's definition of what's healthy — or Vogue's definition of what's attractive. We'd be better off remembering that health is about being able to do things with your life — including eat — and that thinness is about, well what is in thinness about exactly? If you look at a women's magazine, it's about health, yes, but also attractiveness, happiness, and personal empowerment — all of which can be achieved at any size.

-- from http://jezebel.com/5315977/times-discovers-women-who-dont-diet

What is it I really want? What are the dreams that the pursuit of a perfect appearance is getting in the way of? I don't know. But I certainly aim to find out.

I'm not going to start gorging myself on chocolate ice cream every day, and I'm not giving up working out at the Y. In fact, from outer appearances, very little will probably change. I'm happy with my current lifestyle, for the most part. However, I have resolved to start being kinder to myself, and not hate every cookie I consume or resent every tenth of a pound that changes on the scale. I'm not going to call myself a slacker for not going to the Y when I'm not feeling well. I'm going to stop staring at the mirror to point out imperfections, stop comparing my body to others, stop envisioning what it would look like to be different and start celebrating who I am and what I look like now. I'm going to remember that "charm is deceptive and beauty will not last" (proverbs 31:30) and that spiritual growth is my highest priority.

Something I really want to do as a practical outworking of this is to not talk disparagingly about my body in front of other women, which will hopefully discourage them from doing so as well. Somehow it's the socially acceptable thing to do to criticize some aspect of yourself when someone starts criticizing themselves, but I'm going to stop doing that too.

Okay. Enough for tonight. One more day of chasing VBS kids coming up!

2009-07-14T22:47:00.000-04:00

I was watching the Sotomayor hearings and thinking about this concept of "disparate impact", which I had never heard of before. The way I understand it, this is a way of saying that a situation can have discriminating consequences against a subset of people, even if there was no "disparate intent".

It really fits the problem for women in science, that we usually feel the effects of disparate impact before we have any evidence of disparate intent. And sometimes there isn't any intent to discriminate at all, it's just a matter of context- if you're the only woman in your research group, for example, you're going to feel the effects of being a minority sometimes, even if all the guys are super-supportive and really respect you a lot. Even in those situations, every once in a while, something will come up that makes you feel uncomfortable and left out. That's disparate impact. Whether it's a big impact or not. And then we come to the "death by a thousand pinpricks" metaphor for being a woman in science. That's a lot of little disparate prickings.'

--from http://youngfemalescientist.blogspot.com/

2009-06-27T19:51:00.003-04:00

sometimes I feel like we get stuck in this.

There in the dark, her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.
She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty...

--Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye

(btw, why won't Blogger let you underline? It's a book.)

2009-06-25T14:49:00.002-04:00

I think that the world is slightly unfair to people who don't get married immediately after college (or during college).

I signed the lease on my new apartment yesterday and I'll be beginning to move in in mid-July. This one has no furniture in it so I just kind of realized that I need to be working on picking out things now because if I don't I'll end up there at the beginning of August sleeping on a bed with no sheets, in a shower with no curtain, and with my desktop computer on the floor beside me. Now, my kitchen's pretty well set because I enjoy cooking and have had my own kitchen where I've lived for the past few years, but I need almost everything else new. It's amazing how what you pick out when you're 18 and going to college looks really juvenile when you're 22 (and how much four years of college use ruins things in general).

It seems that the kinds of things I'm buying are the things that girls getting married put on their gift registry: serving spoons, a new comforter, some nice towels, new drinking glasses because most of mine are broken, some wall art, bath mats, a shower curtain. Not that I want to be getting married right now, but I'm just saying, other people could be buying this for me, haha. When I do get married, I don't even know what I'll ask for. Wedding china, I suppose. I'm sure I'll find other things to ask for by then.

I'm pretty happy with where I'll be living. I'm very happy to at least have it settled and not have to think about it any more. We leave for Alaska on Monday, return the following Tuesday, and then a week later I can begin moving in if I want. Things are going to be fairly busy between now and the beginning of August, even though it seems like forever away.

Enough for now. Might write more later.

2009-06-14T14:04:00.003-04:00

There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God's Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation--the Kingship of God over all the works of his own hands--the Throne of God and his right to sit upon that Throne.

C.H. Spurgeon in his sermon on Matthew 20:15 (via my church bulletin this morning)

2009-06-12T19:44:00.002-04:00

Over a month into summer and I haven't accomplished much, but that's okay. It's not like there are impending deadlines right now, which is nice, for the first time in four years or so.

Mostly I just sit around and do nothing at home. I go to the Y almost every day and work out. I've been playing some in Second Life, learning Linden Script and how it works in general, since I'll have to figure all that out in the fall anyhow. I was kind of ambitious and downloaded about 10 scientific papers that I was going to read and make notes on, hoping to prepare for the fall too, but so far I've gotten halfway through one, hit the term "emotional octopus", and not started reading again. Typically over the summer I devour books, but this summer a stack sits at my bed and I mostly just stare at them apathetically, occasionally flipping through a few pages and then deciding shortly after that it's probably not worth the effort.

I just feel apathetic. It's not really that I don't care about things, but that it seems like there's not a point in caring. This summer feels like waiting for something to happen while completely lacking the power to actually make anything happen. Waiting for an apartment to work out for next semester, waiting to figure out all the things I need to buy to live there, waiting for school to begin so that they'll pay me the money that I need to buy these things. Waiting until my family vacations to Alaska. Waiting to see if distance is going to work out between Patrick and me. Waiting for friends to call back, or for opportunity to do anything, really. Most of the time I would tell myself to get over it and do something about all this myself, but I think this past academic year kind of wore me out and I don't feel like making the effort for anything at the moment.

At least I have the Y. Though I'm a little lazy and it's a battle to get there some days, I do enjoy what I do there because I can measure myself making progress--reps and sets complete, calories burned, weight lifted, miles run. It's nice to see numerical progress. Maybe I can trick myself into doing something progressive by counting pages read, books completed, or lines of code written. I don't know; we'll see. I'm just saying, I can't sit here and do nothing from now until August.

Besides the apathy, though, things are good. I am enjoying the time off and am glad that I can spend my time catching up with friends and family and overall just taking care of myself. Lots of heavy decisions and transitions are coming, but for now it's mostly smooth sailing.

All right, enough writing. Maybe I'll straighten up my room and finally delve into one of these books for real.

finals week

2009-05-01T17:45:00.002-04:00

I've always felt like finals week is a terrible idea. There's just way too much going on at once. You're constantly stressed out because you're studying for all those final exams, and then on top of that, you're trying to pack all your things into boxes to go home, to say goodbyes to the people that you're not going to see for a while, and to enjoy the beautiful weather outside and the little bit of free time that a spaced-out exam schedule brings. Everyone's throwing parties and playing outside.

This year, I have gained a new hatred for finals week. I am admittedly apathetic about my finals--well, except for piano juries, because it's just embarrassing to play poorly in front of people--but there's plenty enough to keep me busy. I'm graduating, and that means saying forever goodbyes to a lot of people, and long-time goodbyes to more people, and it's just difficult. There's all this work to be done and all these boxes to be packed but instead I end up spending time with people. I don't think it's a choice I'll regret, but it's stressful.

Today was my last seminar at UNCC, and although I plan on coming up to say goodbye before I leave for Clemson in the fall, I already miss this place. I've worked here for two years, lived here for two summers, and have felt more at home here than at Winthrop many times. My lab coworkers were like family to me. I was convinced I was going to grad school here for nearly two years, and I had dreams and plans about living in this place, the things I would do, and the people I would spend time with. I miss how things used to be. I have so many memories here, and I miss the people that belong with them, because this entire year has been a slow drifting away from each of them for various reasons (too busy with schoolwork to spend much time here, no research mentor or project, people moving away, general group dynamics changing). I mean, very good things have happened, and I've made new friends, but I deeply miss how things were.

I know I will miss Winthrop. I will miss my professors, who have worked so hard to give me every opportunity they could to flourish during these four years. I will miss my friends; there are so many people here who I am very close to. I'm going to miss my roommate, Bethany--I couldn't ask for a better friend. I will miss Jason and Andrew (Chad's going to grad school with me), who have been in most of my undergrad classes. I'll miss all the people that I randomly run into on the sidewalk after not seeing them for a really long time, and the people I've kept up with for all four years, and the people I grew up with that I'll soon say goodbye to. And of course, I'll miss Patrick. I don't know how distance will affect our relationship.

I miss home. I want to go home and to let things be simple again. I'm afraid of moving away and being alone because I need people to take care of me and just be there to listen sometimes. Moving to a new place means starting over again, which is fun in many ways, but also tiring. There's no one there who automatically cares about me like my family does; I have to earn it. There's no one who knows my stories and looks out for my best interests like they do. I know it's not that far away and it's not that different than living on campus at Winthrop, but still, I feel very alone.

I wonder, is life always like this, a constant state of missing things? Is it always a looking back and remembering, wishing for things to stay the same, while being forced through quickly-moving time into whatever's next? I hope not. I don't think it will be. I think that transitions are difficult, and that this next year will not be fun, but that eventually I will get settled and be okay with things. I'll find a place to live and people to live with, I'll get some research established, I'll find a new church family, things will be okay. There's just a lot of questions right now and not a lot of easy answers. I'm still working on seeing this as an exciting opportunity and not only as something completely terrifying.

Whatever comes, it is a comfort to know that God will always take care of me, no matter what. He always has and he always will. If I didn't have strong theology and tested faith I don't know how I would get through all this. I am so thankful for God's sovereignty and for his proven faithfulness.

All right, enough of that. Now, to dinner with my Bible study group!

a spontaneous haiku

2009-04-15T18:26:00.002-04:00

leftover Chinese
now finger food--no clean forks.
this is college life.

sunday morning thought

2009-03-22T07:45:00.001-04:00

from http://trevinwax.com/2009/03/21/how-scholarship-shields-us-from-the-bible/

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.

“Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.

“Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.

“Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

- Soren Kierkegaard

recent reading

2009-03-06T23:51:00.002-05:00

I used to just read the blogs of my friends to keep up with their lives--and I still do. However, lately, I've been enjoying reading blogs that are teaching me things, or that are written by people who are like me or that I want to grow up to be like. Here's a list of the ones I particularly enjoy lately:

twenty two words by Abraham Piper

http://www.twentytwowords.com

All posts are 22 words or fewer. Topics vary, but include: language, parenting, Christianity, random observations.

Sociological Images

http://contexts.org/socimages/

Images for use in sociology courses or discussions. They're interesting and show trends about the way we perceive or portray groups of people.

Geeky Mom

http://geekymom.blogspot.com/

teacher, wife, and mother.

See Jane Compute

http://scienceblogs.com/seejanecompute/

professor working towards tenure, wife, and mom

Yay for kind of connecting with some role models.

I was making tea at one of the coffee breaks today when I overheard a couple of professors talking to each other. One was saying how excited he was that his wife just got tenure, and how he taught at one school, she taught at another, and they were living somewhere about equidistant from the two. The other then said something like, "That's like me and my husband." And that made me smile. I'm forever worried about achieving work-life balance and trying to figure out what it looks like for me to be a professor somewhere and my husband to be working somewhere else and for there to be kids involved in there somewhere. But apparently, lots of people are doing it and are being fairly successful at it. I don't have a clear model of it to work from but at least I know that what I want has to be possible.

All right. Good night. Last day of the conference tomorrow.

appropriate for a conference attendance blog post

2009-03-06T19:13:00.001-05:00

i am for serious going to use this template one day.

2009-03-02T00:46:00.002-05:00

I got rejected from the IBM summer internship I applied for today. It was a quick rejection (I submitted earlier this week), at least they didn't prolong things. Oh well, I mostly wanted to stay home and do nothing all summer anyhow :)

In other news, my family is going to Alaska this summer for a bit over a week to celebrate my parents' 25th anniversary. I'm sure it'll be beautiful and all, and I look forward to the time spent with them...but we're going to be traveling in an RV while we're there and I don't know how I feel about being in such close quarters with them. I guess I'll have to get over it because that's what it looks like we're doing. And I'm not going to whine about it because I know how important it is to my parents for us to do this together and to enjoy it.

Today's a snow day. When I came out of my software engineering meeting, there were already a couple inches of snow on my car. Jason, Andrew, and I had a short snowball fight, then I went back to the apartment. Patrick & I went out and walked in it, then Bethany, Patrick, & I made apple cider and watched an episode of House together. We found out class was cancelled. I called home to let Mom know, and was getting sad because both my sisters were home and I wasn't. Well, Dad came out and brought me home. So now I'm here, and happy to be here.

I'm having such a hard time with homesickness lately. I know it makes no sense; I'm 20 minutes away most of the time. But I'm just thinking about how much things change next year. I've signed my academic year and summer away for a graduate assistantship, and I'm realizing that this is for real. I don't really want to move forward and be as independent as I'll have to be. I like it here, and in a whole lot of ways I think I'd like it even better if I could just go back home and be 17 again or something. As hard as I try to see opportunities and be excited, I am more terrified than anything. But I'm working through it and I'm trusting that I'll be ready for things when they come.

All right, it's bedtime.

and...for Kristen.

2009-02-17T00:10:00.002-05:00

Hm. Haven't for real posted since the new year. Well, a whole bunch is happened since then and I know I can't cover it all. So here's a list.

- celebrated New Year's day with Patrick's family/family friends, when I tried oysters for the first time
- went to Rhode Island with Jason, Chad, and Andrew to visit Brown University. We stayed at Dr. DeNoia's house and heard good fishing stories from her husband and ate their tasty food. (Thanks, Mr. & Dr. DeNoia!)
- came back to school, still dreading the semester and all the changes it would bring
- a dear friend's dad died, was heartbroken for him (still am). The snow day came the day after I found out. After he called me I couldn't do work that evening, just called my family and cried. The snow was wonderful, like a reprieve, gave me a little time to refocus and get some work done.
- played in the snow with Patrick, we built a snowman
- dealt with some crazy drama going on with my friends, I don't even want to talk about it
- made chili for my UNCC friends one Friday
- had the Bible study group down and made spaghetti for them one Sunday
- Patrick surprised me and took me to see Rent, where we met Samantha & Evan, some other friends, that was really sweet
- made sushi for the super bowl with the Bible study friends
- hosted ACM speaker last week, he was pretty cool
- did a whole bunch of schoolwork
- failed at making petits four for Valentine's day
- succeeded at making gluten-free cake (from a mix)
- went home to spend time with my family a couple times, I'm more homesick every time I go home
- submitted a paper to INTERACT with VT people
- got a paper accepted into ACMSE with UNCC people
- had a lovely first non-single Valentine's day
- got my assistantship and fellowship letters from Clemson
- bought my cap and gown
- Bubbles, my fish, got sick twice, but he's all better now

...uhh, there's probably more. I can't remember it all. It's detailed in other journals, I'm sure. Overall it's just been really busy and really intense. All this thinking towards the coming transition wears me out. Generally I'm a pretty even-keel kind of girl. I don't get upset that often, I cry only rarely, I ignore things instead of turning them into huge issues. This is just not so this semester. I'm a mess. I'll cry at the drop of a hat. I run miles to get out all the tension. I hide under the covers and in video games and behind computer monitors to delay dealing with the inevitable. I've recently realized that this is most likely a selfish and ineffective way of dealing with things, and it probably isn't good for me or for the people I care about. I'm working on it, I promise. Just too much transition at once and too many unknowns. I'm breaking it into little pieces and taking them as I can. I'm trying to do better.

So there's a brief summary. I'd like to be a bit more reflective but there is no time for that. I'm looking forward to this weekend, not because I get a break, but because it presents two solid, uninterrupted work days that I desperately need. Despite my greatest efforts, I am terribly behind in most everything. So, in lieu of a blog post during the next two or so weeks of my life, here's a list of what I will be doing:

- making a poster to present at SIGCSE
- presenting that poster at SIGCSE
- visiting Kevin, Emily, & Chloe in Knoxville
- submitting camera-ready version of my paper for ACMSE
- building a website for myself
- submitting an internship application to IBM
- practicing piano lots
- filling out bunches of SLC event reports
- assigning tasks to my SLC team and being their Junior Achievement contact
- planning and hosting ACM meetings
- planning & helping to host a Women in STEM lunch
- writing a paper for my religion class
- finishing implementation of my project for software engineering
- dealing with whatever other chaos that ensues; I'm sure there will be plenty of it

so there.
more later. probably much later.

from 22 words (twentytwowords.com)

2009-02-15T23:18:00.002-05:00

A Valentine reminder for those in unlikely love.

February 14, 2009 at 7:23 am · Filed under Love, Quotes

Charity:

But marry you! How could we get married…?

Sid:

The question is not how we’d manage, it’s do you want to.

(Crossing to Safety, 82)

yeah, I know, nothing but reposts lately. I can't get through all my schoolwork long enough to sit and write.

speaking of schoolwork, I should be working on a study guide right now.

hahahaha.

2009-02-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

from thisisindexed.com

I have important things to write about, but no time to do that. Maybe tomorrow?

i enjoyed this.

2009-01-23T09:12:00.001-05:00

http://www.lifebeyondcode.com/2009/01/22/insights-from-steve-jobs/

a weightier blog post coming later this weekend; I have a whole lot to write about.

happy(?) new year

2008-12-31T22:17:00.005-05:00

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

2008-12-27T23:07:00.002-05:00

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!

2008-12-25T20:29:00.003-05:00

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 :)

2008-12-24T01:29:00.003-05:00

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)

2008-12-19T23:30:00.002-05:00

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 :)

2008-12-10T23:26:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-12-06T12:39:00.003-05:00

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)

2008-11-25T17:56:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-24T17:16:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-24T17:09:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-19T18:05:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-11-18T20:17:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-11-13T17:52:00.003-05:00

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?

2008-11-06T16:53:00.000-05:00

is blogger broken for everyone or just me?

i need to use my blog more.

2008-10-28T14:20:00.002-04:00

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

2008-10-15T21:32:00.004-04:00

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?

2008-10-11T15:15:00.002-04:00

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?

2008-10-02T00:20:00.002-04:00

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?

2008-09-23T23:21:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-13T00:11:00.004-04:00

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

2008-08-31T17:27:00.002-04:00

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,

2008-08-23T00:31:00.002-04:00

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.

2008-08-22T15:13:00.003-04:00

visiting Clemson

2008-08-19T14:20:00.002-04:00

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

2008-08-16T22:20:00.002-04:00

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

2008-08-10T22:51:00.002-04:00

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

2008-08-06T11:28:00.003-04:00

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

2008-07-26T12:57:00.004-04:00

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

2008-07-23T23:35:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-20T18:11:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-17T18:44:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-13T22:48:00.002-04:00

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:

2008-07-12T14:59:00.002-04:00

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.

2008-07-10T23:54:00.001-04:00

i hate hate hate goodbyes.

unforgettable

2008-07-06T09:37:00.004-04:00

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

2008-07-04T00:23:00.001-04:00

that i am living in a dream come true.

taming the infinite loop

2008-06-30T12:36:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-30T10:48:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-28T12:20:00.004-04:00

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

2008-06-20T10:33:00.002-04:00

...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

2008-06-19T22:10:00.002-04:00

"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

2008-06-19T00:03:00.002-04:00

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.

2008-06-11T22:29:00.001-04:00

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

2008-06-08T00:32:00.003-04:00

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

2008-05-31T00:00:00.002-04:00

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

2008-05-29T23:12:00.002-04:00

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

2008-05-17T14:24:00.002-04:00

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

2008-05-15T17:44:00.001-04:00

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...

2008-05-07T14:46:00.002-04:00

...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...

!

2008-05-05T10:51:00.001-04:00

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

2008-05-03T20:03:00.003-04:00

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...

2008-04-16T09:19:00.003-04:00

...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...

42

2008-04-15T23:58:00.002-04:00

Apparently it's the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Of course, we find this absurd, and don't even know what question it's really answering. We know that whatever question it is answering, however, can't mean much, because life is far more complex than any number could solve.

And yet we still find ourselves defined by numbers.

Resolution: to no longer let my complexities be reduced down to an amalgam of digits. I'm more than 65, 3.78, 135, 1400, 4.0, 20, 10000, 6, and 1434 on some strange scales.

four weeks? seriously?

2008-04-03T23:25:00.006-04:00

Four weeks left in school and I have way more than four weeks of stuff to learn and do this semester...

So it's looking like I will be at Virginia Tech doing research this summer in storyboarding type stuff with Dr. Scott McCrickard. I'm looking forward to it. It's completely different than anything I've ever done, and it's fun to get a complete social restart somewhere. You can be anyone you want to when no one knows you. Not that I plan on changing much, it's just nice to have no history preceding you.

I was also accepted into a REU at Ithaca College. It was longer, farther away, and similar to my previous work, so (with the advice of my mentor, Dr. Hodges) I decided against it. My opportunity was then given to Toni, a computer science student here and one of my very good friends. She hasn't decided whether to accept or reject it yet.

It's a really happy time. All my friends are getting to do research where they want to--CIA, UNC-Charlotte, Department of Defense, Harvey Mudd College, Naval Research Lab, Harvard...we'll come back in the fall with all kinds of experiences and knowledge to share.

Things have been crazy stressful lately because so much has been due, but overall good. I've had good and bad days. Lack of sleep and high pressure situations make me an unhappy person, but I think the worst of it is over now and things should be returning to an approximation of normal.

Okay, so, for the interesting part that you might actually care about.

I was debugging in the lab the other day with some younger CS students. One of them had a problem with their code that took us a half hour to track down. His code looked like this:

string temp; //\
temp = array[i]; // \
array[i] = array[j];// swap
array[j] = temp; // /
temp = ""; ///

Logically it's correct. I spent a very long time putting in cout statements figuring out what was going on. Turns out nothing was ever being assigned to temp and things were going wrong from there. Why? This guy:

//\

Even though it is commented out, the \ character is a newline symbol in C++ (thanks, Amy, for helping me figure this out!), so the comment carries over to the next line, nothing gets into temp, and things die from there.

Other recent accomplishments include:
-- learning to use pthreads in Linux, vaguely
-- realizing that PHP is a lot more powerful than I initially thought
-- finishing a paper and a presentation on computer vision
-- reading some of I, Robot
-- working through a Bach piece for juries
-- making my roommate procrastinate from doing work

I wrote a quick analysis program for Avari, my research project. After leaving her out in the hall for people to speak to for three days, she's held 80 conversations that were over 10 seconds long. We'll do more detailed analysis soon. It should be interesting to see how this turns out.

Okay, enough of this for tonight. More coming later.

spring break

2008-03-21T18:27:00.003-04:00

It's been nice. I feel better. I needed time to reset, and now I'm back to sleeping normal hours, eating real food, and feeling a lot better about life. For the most part, I've ignored schoolwork. I might regret that here in a little bit since I have three tests, homework, and a program due next week, but for the moment it feels great. I'll probably take a chunk of time tomorrow to get some of that figured out.

Well, it's officially out now. Dr. Hodges is moving to Clemson this summer. That means I'll most likely be going to grad school there. I'm excited about it, I think. I'm a little hesitant to wholeheartedly commit because I'm not sure I want to begin grad school with such an established reputation. In some ways I want a completely new start. I think that being away this summer will help me settle what exactly I want to do.

Speaking of summer, still haven't heard back from anywhere. I applied to Microsoft, Virginia Tech, and Ithaca for research/internships. I'm thinking about applying to Google. And if none of that works out, I'll be living in West Virginia doing missions work. I'm not sure what I want to do yet if all of it works out.

In other news, Mom broke her ankle last week. I've tried to help her out this week, being home and all. I have a lot more respect for people who are caretakers of the sick/disabled now. I haven't had to do too much for Mom, but still, even simple things like going to the store become complicated when she can't drive or walk. Through a strange combination of factors, family stuff is weird right now. I hope it settles to some kind of normalcy soon.

Interesting stuff later, I promise.

quite ambitious.

2008-03-14T22:19:00.002-04:00

Last night I was watching Lost and Bethany was in the room when a commercial came on. I was trying to do physics homework during the break when I heard, "As a woman, it's important to know what you want in life, and to go after it. And I know what I want."

At this point, I looked up at the television, and saw a well-dressed woman in a nicely decorated room. I was ready to hear her life's ambition when she looked straight at me and said, "I want my foundation to blend perfectly with my skin. And I've found that in..." as she held up a foundation bottle.

At that point, Bethany and I started laughing. Actually, it looked like some pretty cool foundation. But seriously, can you imagine, what you want in life being foundation that matches your skin tone?!?

Later on last night at cookies and milk time (we had to finish it before we left for break today) we were talking about the commercial and its superficiality. And then I realized...a lot of times I wish that my life's goal were something as simple as finding a matching foundation shade, because that'd be a lot easier than what I aim to do currently.

What do I want in life, really? I don't know specifics, but I know that it's full of complexity and uncertainty. I want to honor God, to love and be loved, and to be a good steward of everything I'm given.

Stewardship wouldn't be so difficult if I didn't have so much. I have worked hard for a lot of it, but honestly, I did nothing to deserve all that I have. These things are gifts, or talents. Those words imply that they are something given, not earned; they are something that is more entrusted to me than owned by me. Sometimes I don't want them and I wonder why I have what I do and wish that someone else could do this stuff.

Jesus once said that a lot will be required of people who are given a lot. That statement echoes in my head when I want to make Cs in all my classes, give up on finding a church, push other people away because they are not easy to get along with, or not follow through on all of my commitments. When passion fades and apathy sets in, that statement pushes me to finish what I've started and give my best.

I've been entrusted with much, and whether I want it or not, it's my responsibility to use all my time, energy, talent, and opportunity in ways that honor God and love others. It's a difficult task and I'll spend the rest of my life figuring out what that looks like, but I am confident that it will be worthwhile.

And it's spring break so I have a week to conquer the current burnout :)
yay.

conspiracy theory

2008-03-10T17:29:00.003-04:00

I think the coffee companies and the toothpaste companies are in it together.

Starbucks on every corner => coffee addiction
coffee addiction => stained teeth
stained teeth + Americans' obsession with appearance => need for whitening products.

I say this because it's been a coffee-dependent week. Usually I'm not a caffeine junkie, but for some reason for the past week all I've wanted to do is sleep, and there has been so much to accomplish.

Normal coffee consumption = 2 bags a semester, maybe
This week's coffee consumption = 1/2 bag since Wednesday.

And the worst part is that my teeth cannot be whitened. They are composite veneers, not my real teeth on the surface. I can't even use whitening toothpaste. Except ALL the toothpaste says "whitening" on it, because of our demand for white teeth. So I just go for the non-scratchy stuff. This month's flavor for me: "Kiss Me Mint." It's pink. And the name makes me laugh.

In other news, life's good.

Today I had piano repertoire class. I was very nervous about it, because Professor Austin wanted me to play. I said I would, and then there wasn't enough time for everyone to play, so I had an easy way out. I did not take it, though. I practiced hard last week and I need to get over my insecurity and learn to play for people. So I volunteered and I played. And I did well. It was not a perfect performance but it was good enough. Everyone was surprised; I could tell. Not that they were expecting me to do poorly, just that they had no idea who I was, what I was doing there, and how well I played. The professor even complimented me.

So...yay for earning the respect of my peers. And for gaining some confidence for myself. And for proving to myself that I can be disciplined enough to practice consistently and make progress on things. Piano is unlike all other things that I have tried in recent years. In math or computer science or anything else, you do something once and you're finished. Piano is different. It requires consistency, practice, maintenance, discipline--things I pretty much suck at most of the time. Piano lessons has shown me this weakness. I think it's getting better though. I'm working at it.

I got to see Emily this weekend. I forgot how much I miss her. I miss people like her and PJ and Kaci who see right through me and understand me completely most of the time. Oh, instability.

I also miss having a church family. I thought I had found the church to commit to for the rest of college, and then the pastor disappeared randomly. No explanation from anyone. He's teaching through Ezekiel for three months, and then all of the sudden he's nowhere to be found for the past month and no one has explained why. I have no idea what's going on, but that's not a good sign.

Enough of this. There's work to be done.

the other lauren elizabeths

2008-03-06T20:39:00.006-05:00

Apparently my name is quite a popular one. I was trying to sign up for this as "laurenelizabeth" but that was taken. "lauren-elizabeth" was as well. That's why I ended up with two hyphens.

Because I am curious, here is a bit about the people who took my names of choice:

laurenelizabeth from september 2004:
well mi mom pickd me up frum amberz house @ lyk 10:15ish thiz morning b/c she had her parti last nite and wuz an absolute BLAST brandon and joey rosi were absolutely HILARIOUS!!! we had so much funn....then wen they left @ bout 12:00-12:15ish me amber and alexis all got on tha internet....

lauren-elizabeth from july 2004:
Howdy everybody! Its been a loooong day! but a fun day too! cuz i got to hang out with KATY! lol she spent the nite... then we woke up, watched 50 first dates, then went to the pool [and my face got buuurrrnnntt] lol! i saw alexa, alex, amy, christine, & maddi there! we also saw jacob pederson

So, if we were to make generalizations about Lauren Elizabeths, I guess we could say that they are probably high school/middle school age girls who have a few problems with grammar and spelling. They also write about two blog entries and forget about their blogs for at least four years at a time, write lists of who they have seen the previous day, and get spammy comments.

I guess I aim to break that trend. I am a college kid, and I will do my very best to write with correct grammar and spelling. If you're lucky, I'll post consistently and about things that other people might actually care about occasionally.

I keep a detailed written research journal but I plan on linking this one to my research webpage so that people can read about stuff here as well. We'll see where it goes though.