first two weeks at VT

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

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

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

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

More later!

perspective on photoshopping

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

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

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

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

Something for us to think about.

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

three days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

until may 18...

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

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

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

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

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

back to unpacking these boxes...

!

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


this is incredible.

finals, finally

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somehow this song has been comforting to me lately:

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

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

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

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

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

--brett dennen/ain't no reason

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

quite possibly the worst thing about programming...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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