Day 17... the last

And our final day had finally arrived... It definitely wasn't real that it was our last day at Google. Even after our presentations when we turned in our badges and could no longer access the minikitchens... it was still very strange. So Friday morning we got to class like usual and spent the entire morning signing certificate sleeves, writing thank you notes to Charles, and working out any remaining bugs in our programs. We were having trouble getting our program to show its functionality because it kept track of calories per day, and in order to demonstrate some of our features, we needed multiple days built into our database. Well, manually populating the database just caused problems. We tried doing it several different ways and ended up with so many frustrating little bugs, and when we finally thought that it was working, it wasn't. So we went to lunch anyway, figuring we'd have another 90 minutes or so to perfect the program before we presented, and finally realized that, after tricking the database into thinking we had multiple day entries, it was sorting the dates in the wrong order. That required several minor changes which led to tedious debugging, and finally we were finished. With only 5 minutes to spare before the presentations began. But our presentation as a whole went well, even though we may've had to use dummy data in our chart feature.. we of course figured out how to fix that about 5 minutes before we were supposed to present.. since i wasn't willing to deal with any more bugs, we left it as it and presented it. Everyone's project was really interesting. It was so neat to see the different talents within computer science that everyone had, and to see how cool their ideas were.

After presentations, we had to turn in our laptops and badges, and we picked up our resumes with Jessica's comments, and then came the real treat of the day. We went out into the lobby of the building in which we gave presentations and Charles sang to us! He sang one of the pieces he sings as the pirate king in the show he's in right now.. and it was pretttty awesome. Then he had us all join in and sing the chorus line along with him. It was worth the wait.

Then we began our walk to the Computer Science History Museum where we had our final party. We presented the certificate to our assigned person and read something nice about them, and Google had one more surprise for us. Jessica announced that we were each receiving $1,000 scholarships to help pay for books, tuition, or whatever school-related item we needed it for. Wmhile everyone was still in awe, we turned on the music, watched the slideshow of pictures and danced. Naturally there was more breakdancing.. i think i successfully learned a few moves, haha.. but very few moves. After taking one last group picture, we got on one last shuttle back to SJSU for one last night. We got back around 1030, and changed, packed a little, and met up in the lounge to go out to play ultimate frisbee. We played two really intense games, like usual, and afterwards headed over to 7/11 to get something to eat for the night and the flights the next day. We played some pool in the lounge, and after showers, we ended up hanging out in someone's room with a bunch of people. As it got later, more and more people started falling asleep and going to bed, and Kofi dragged his mattress into the common area. We talked and laughed, and watched people sleep, and by 5:30 AM, everyone was pretty ready to go to sleep. We returned to our respective rooms and slept for a couple of hours, and got up to finish packing and have our exit interviews. We turned in the last of our things and said some really hard goodbyes.. or rather.. until next times. We're all invited back to FUSE, a weekend conference next summer, so most of us will be going back to that. It was a long ride to the San Francisco airport, but I had a really nice neighbor on my flight from San Francisco to Chicago. He told me about his job in operations research and systems engineering after I solved my rubik's cube to pass the time. We ended up talking when I wasn't sleeping.. which ended up being longer than expected since our landing was delayed when we got near Chicago due to weather. After the original takeoff delayed by almost 30 minutes, and being delayed up in the air for 45, we finally landed, rather roughly, in Chicago.

I turned on my phone to a voicemail from United saying that my flight from Chicago back to Louisville have been cancelled, and I'd been rebooked to fly out at 8:11 the next morning, and to report to the desk for my boarding pass. So I got off the plane, walked from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2 (not a short walk), waited in line at the desk, got my boarding pass, walked alllll the way back to Terminal 3 to find the cots. I ended up sleeping on a cot that was set up in the middle of one of the Terminals. There was a big open space down in Terminal 3 where they set up about 100, 150 cots. I slept a little, mostly because I was so tired, but they started clearing the cots at 4 AM, so I was up again and walking to find my gate. I grabbed some breakfast and ended up falling asleep in multiple uncomfortable positions, realized my gate had changed sometime between 4 AM and 7:30, changed gates, and finally boarded my flight home =)

It was a short, easy flight, and I came home to find my dad and two sisters waiting for me!

Its really strange to be back in my own room finishing up this blog post. I miss all of my friends a whole lot already, but I must admit.. it is nice to be home.

over and out,

Lynn

Days 16

This day was another filled with lots of group work. we progressed on our calorie counter -CalCount (I guess I can divulge this information now that we've presented it) and worked through some tricky bugs. Everything was coming together nicely, and by the end of hte day we had a fully functioning program, but there were a few extra features we wanted to work on adding. We even biked over for main campus for lunch, so we could all make our last stop in the Google Store to pick up souveniers for our remaining family members.

We got to leave Google early because it was the night of the Intern Boat Cruise! Jessica brought in some hats, eyepatches, mustaches and tattoos, and we all stocked up on pirate garb before heading over to main campus (yay riding Google bikes!) to get on the really nice coach bus with all of the BOLDers and other interns to head to San Francisco. Jess, Kat, and Carolyn kept telling us how cold it was going to be, and I ended up wearing three layers and a scarf when we were waiting outside to get on the boat, but as soon as we got inside, everyone quickly removed layers so that we could dance and hang out. The boat passed really close to Alcatraz (yes, i just caught myself typing Azkaban 0=) ) and it was really really neat to see the island up close. It was really cold and windy out on the balconies of the boat, but the view of Alcatraz was definitely worth it. It seemed a lot smaller up close, but there were buildings that I was dying to get into to take pictures. We also did a lot of dancing, and it wasn't just the CSSI kids dancing. Charles and Jessica joined in and we actually got them both to do the worm with us! It was kind of awesome watching our teacher and camp director dance with us. And of course Enrique did his break dancing which everyone loved.

We headed back to SJSU around 10 or 1030 and ended up playing two games of ultimate frisbee before showering and hanging out in the common area staying up far too late for our own good.. but what else is new? ;)

over and out,

Lynn

Day 15

Today was another day of lots of free time to work on our group projects.

We got most of the morning and all of the afternoon to ourselves and our project is at least functioning, although we still have some tweaks to make. We worked for a while, then got up and took a break and came back and worked some more.. it was a lot different from working on coding projects at school because instead of maybe 1.5 hours of work on one project, we had almost 6 hours to work on the same thing.. which can get a little nerve racking when you're staring at the code willing the bug to jump out at you. but we made it. more working tomorrow, and then the intern boat cruise in the afternoon and evening!

We came back to the dorms and played some pool before heading out for a night of ultimate frisbee! Its always really fun and intense, and I'm definitely tirrrrred. yet I'll still probably be up late tonight- gotta make the most of my last few days!

After taking a job around campus and showering, now its time to do a little more coding and upload some pictures.

over and out,

Lynn

Day 14

Happy Monday.

Today was our first day of real group project work. We had two classes this morning, the first of which was taught be a Canadian couple. Kelly and Bartholomew taught us about Data Structures, and we talked briefly about big O times. The class basically covered all of the data structs from AP CompSci AB in 90 minutes.. intense. Charles was back for our second morning class, and we went over some final tips for mercurial and pushing and pulling our projects from Google AppEngine.

We had actual group project working time in the afternoon, and we had another speaker come in and talk to us about Emotional Intelligence. We did breathing exercises to relieve stress and talked about being sensitive and empathetic towards others. Carolyn also gave us a talk about being smart and successful in college. We got together in small groups and listed things we were nervous about college and things we wanted to accomplish. We went around the room sharing common fears and goals and learned some good tips for staying on top of things in college.

We ate dinner and then stood around waiting for the bus to come and pick us up and take us back to SJSU. There are people starting to move into the building, so we had to relocate tonight to work on our projects, play music, and catch up on everyone's blogs. Tomorrow we have to get some work done because we have the intern boat cruise Wednesday!

over and out,

Lynn

Day 13

What an awesome start to the weekend. We headed into San Francisco this morning at 11. All of this after Emily and I went out to run errands, only to find that the Walgreen's pharmacy isn't open on the weekends.. we spent a long time in the FedEx place too and ended up with 9 minutes in our room to get dressed and get down to the bus. We somehow managed, although it involved some serious scrambling, and we were slightly out of breath by the time we boarded the bus to SanFran.

First, we walked for a couple of blocks and ended up eating at Fog City Diner - the most upscale diner i've ever seen. I had a sandwich with a fried green tomato and mozzarella cheese on it. It was interesting and good. After lunch, we climbed up hundreds of stairs (literally) on our ascent to Coit Tower. We stood in line and finally rode the Inception-esque elevator up to the top, only to find more stairs to climb! let's just say we definitely got in our exercise for today.

After taking a bunch of pictures of San Francisco and the bay, we caught the bus to head to the Golden Gate Bridge. We ended up transferring buses twice on our way there and realized the unreliable nature of the San Francisco public transit system. We took waaay too many pictures while waiting for our buses, and enjoyed singing Disney songs, Backstreet Boys, and singing Will a happy birthday on one of our several bus rides. We'd like to think we got the bus pumped up, just like at Great America, but only a few people chose to sing along to Hakuna Matata or I Want It That Way.

We finally got to the Golden Gate Bridge, which was on the other side of town, and again, like the true tourists we are, took a ridiculous number of pictures. We took almost 400 pictures on my camera alone today. It was surprisingly colder when we got out on the bridge, and the top had already disappeared into the fog. The wind was startling and it was muchhh colder than it was in downtown San Francisco. I was very thankful for my wind breaker, and i suppose it was good practice for battling the wind whipping down the Midway this coming winter!

We finally managed to get on a bus that would take us in the general direction that we wanted to go, and thanks to Kasra's Nexus One, we made it back to our bus by 9:00 to head back to SJSU. Tomorrow is another day for laundry, programming, and cleaning up the mess that Emily and I made in our 9 minutes of preparation this morning!

Over and out,

Lynn

Day 12

Happy Friday!

Today was a short day of classes, and we got to leave early for movie night! We had two classes this morning where we more or less finished off our class sessions, and Jessica revealed our groups for our projects. We're working in teams of three or four to design a web app. and now the brainstorming begins...

We got to listen to presentations from students who went to the LEAD program, an engineering program and Berkeley, and they showed us some programs they had written in python in their computer science class. They were only rising juniors and seniors and high school, but some of them looked older than all of we did, haha. We also had another panel, but this time with Google employees. They basically summarized the different positions that Google is hiring right now: what each person does, what skills are needed, what degrees, etc. They described a pretty free-flowing workplace, but with designated tasks and deadlines. It sounds like your office hours are extremely flexible as long as you get done what needs to get done by the deadline.

After our panel, we walked by the giant food and ice cream to pause for pictures.

Here is a picture of Emily and me in front of the giant cupcake! yumm.

And tonight I can finally say that i've seen inception.. people can stop holding their tongue around me (although i already knew some things that were going to happen...) It certainly left me thinking... i can say that for sure! We got back to the dorm later than usual, but still had time to hang out in the lounge and make a 7-11 run. Tomorrow morning we head into San Francisco!

Over and out,

Lynn

Day 11

Today was another day filled with python and web apps. I even made a Twitter account so I could update my status with a program we wrote. It was pretty cool, but I don't think i'll ever be using that account.. although we did discover that Emma Watson has cut all of her hair off.

Our guest speaker today was a young guy named Michael who told us about time management skills: how to keep ourselves organized, how to prioritize to-do lists, and how to use Google calendar. It was definitely helpful.. i'm usually pretty organized when it comes to school-related things.. maybe managing my time better will help me keep my room organized too..

We had some exciting breaks though. We went back to visit the slide again! and this time there was a camera at the bottom so we could see the others when they landed. Its actually a really cool slide. You can go really fast if you curl your legs up, and there's a big dip in the middle. Google is somewhat like a large playground. It really would be awesome to work there. They definitely offer plenty of distractions if you need a break from whatever hard problem you may be working on.

We played another really intense game of frisbee tonight. I think i was on the losing end both times, but we had a whole lot of fun, and then walked up to the 7-11 to get some Gatorade before heading back to the dorms for the night.

The weather was really nice today. Hopefully tomorrow we'll figure out what we're going to do in San Fransisco on Saturday.. the zoo?

over and out,

Lynn

Day 10

Today was a good day (although I suppose it was yesterday now...). We had our four classes like usual, and Jessica, one of the program directors, ended up being our guest speaker -- how to write your resume and prepare for technical interviews. I think going through the slide my resume did just about everything it wasn't supposed to and very little that it was.. ohh well. I also went on one of our breaks over to the slide in the building next to us! Its like a twisty tube slide that goes from the fourth floor to the third floor. Definitely fun, but as good as the ball pit? that's arguable..

I also met my mentor for lunch at the vegan cafe on campus, Slice. I had some sort of beans and polenta and watermelon/cucumber/herb salad. It was really good (naturally), and it was nice to talk to my mentor more about working at Google and deciding where you want to go with your career in general.

We came back to SJSU and ended up having some sort of a dance party in the lounge... which really turned into Izzy and Enrique dancing really well and the rest of us watching.. or trying to do the worm, which is just about the only breakdance move we even attempted..

I also went to the Google store the other day and bought some things for the family. Mama and Papa, check your mailbox in a few days!

Over and out,

Lynn

Day 9

Happy Tuesday!

Today was a mostly uneventful day a Google.. it was a little colder, but we entered new territory in class. We ate breakfast at Big Table, the cafe with Legos on the tables (quite the distraction) and had lots of classes. We did some stuff with Google's web engine app and Charles explained some of the basic concepts concerning servers and clients and requests and responses. So all that code I typed in my program last year finally makes sense to me.... I think. I'm hoping to be able to open my project, although I don't have Scheme on my computer.. so I guess i'm going to have to give in and download Racket =P

I was supposed to have lunch with my mentor today, but she was out sick, so we're meeting tomorrow at Slice - the vegan cafe on main campus. I also went to the Google store during one of my breaks.. I definitely need to go back! I did get Rebecca a really cute Google t-shirt, and one for Mother too. I'm so excited about it I almost want to send them home!

We got to end our day today with Geek Trivia! It was almost like being at work again.. except more computer-science- and geek-related, haha 0=)

After returning to SJSU we played two really intense games of ultimate frisbee, the second with a light-up frisbee that a random guy in the lounge decided to let us borrow. Thanks random guy!

Over and out,

Lynn

Day 8

This morning I felt like I was waking up for school. It didn't help that the shower here only likes to get warm half of the time... this morning it deceived me by warming up quickly, but then proceeded to get progressively colder. let's just say it was one of the faster showers I've taken in a while... =P

Today was our first day having class at main campus. As opposed to being seated in long lines of tables, we're seated around circular ones which makes for a different environment.. i'm not sure how much we like it, but at least we still have the comfy chairs to sit in!

We went over some more exciting things in Python like classes and inheritance and modified some of the programs we've written to make them look nicer.

Our guest speaker today was Dan, who had awesome sideburns and introduced me to something else that would have made my life easier last year in SpecTops. Dan told us about Google app engine, an engine that lets you create web applications using Java or Python. It even has GQL (Google's version of SQL) built in! No dealing with tricky documentation concerning postgres and Scheme and html and yeah. It would have made my life easier.. Other than showing us an awesome tool, Dan was a pretty awesome guy in general. He played in Stanford's marching band that doesn't march when he was in college. He quickly explained to us how they got banned from Notre Dame and the state of Oregon. He also gave us the following tip:

"Have you ever wondered what happens if you get everyone in an airplane to get up and move to the left and then move to the right?"

"Well, it'll get you banned from Delta."

He also taught us a whole new game to play with our bananagrams tiles: Anagrabble. It's somewhat like Scrabble with anagrams, hence the name. You flip tiles over one by one and when you can spell a word, you take it and put it in front of you. Then as you keep flipping letters in the middle, the other plays can steal your words and make them into new words.. as long as the old word doesn't appear in the same form in the new word. It's fairly difficult to explain (see above, haha) but once you get going, you catch on to what's going on. So instead of heading over to the Google store in the extra 30 minutes we had before lunch we played anagrabble. it was totally worth it.. although I do still love my bananagrams.

We had dinner and headed back to campus. Who knows what tonight has in store, but it will probably include anagrabble, banangrams, and pool.

over and out,

Lynn

Day 7

The first week of camp drew to a close.. and if I'd written this blog post before now I would have told you it was a very uneventful day. Emily and I got up and went to grab breakfast at House of Bagels, this awesome little bagel shop just a few blocks from campus. We came home, did laundry, wrote our hangman games, ate Easy Mac, and finally decided to emerge from Emily's room to see what was going on in the lounge.

I ended up spending the rest of the evening (apart from the hour-long pizza study break) in the lounge or elsewhere playing bananagrams, pool, foosball, and laughing. Kasra decided to wear his "I just want to ride bikes with you" shirt again... it seems like that will be the phrase if the week if you will.

Overall it was a pretty relaxed Sunday, we had python parties in the lounge and ended up staying up late laughing about things that are only funny when you're waaay too tired.

Over and out,

Lynn

Day 6

I got up this morning and met up with a few people to go in search of food for breakfast. As it turns out the Dining Hall on campus is closed on weekends and the little Village Market right across the courtyard is closed for the summer, so we ended up walking a couple of blocks down the street to House of Bagels. It was really good. I also got to Skype home this morning and talked to everyone, including Teddy.

So today the big event involved heading to Great America, the big theme park near San Jose. First of all, it was far cleaner than Kentucky Kingdom... and I opted not to get on the Hellavator-esque ride. We started out on the swings, then proceeded on to the typical log ride. It was warmer than I thought it was going to be, and it was nice to get slightly wet on the log ride. We then went on a big roller coaster called the Demon. It was awesome... definitely one of the coolest roller coasters I've been on (not that I've been on very many..) and we rode two more roller coasters - the Grizzly and Invertigo, which were also really cool. I can't forget to mention perhaps the two best parts of the day-- Kasra's "I just want to ride bikes with you" shirt and screaming Enrique's name to get the crowd energized. We rode the swings one last time before heading back to the light rail to head back to campus. I'm somewhat getting the hang of public transportation.. although i think the system in Chicago is slightly more complicated =P

We grabbed dinner at Johnny Rockets after heading back to the dorms to shower, rest, and play some Bananagrams. I also tried froyo after dinner. Apparently this place is full of new things for me! But this was nothing like the frozen yogurt we have at home which comes in three varieties - chocolate, vanilla, and swirl. This was more yogurty I guess, and you get to pick whichever toppings you want on top, so I got raspberry tart froyo with kiwi. It was really good with the kiwi, but I thought the froyo by itself was a little different. It almost tasted more like yogurt in ice cream consistency form. It was rather good, I must say.

Tomorrow will consist of laundry and writing code for hangman.

Until next time,

Lynn