fourth and fifth week

I'm pretty sure I need to cover fourth and fifth week in this blog.. again. playing catch up, and again, only in blogging.

Last weekend (the 23rd) was family weekend, and Nana, Leigh and my Dad came up here to visit. Of course, I happened to be really busy that weekend, but we still had a lot of fun. I played three lacrosse games (well, I played two, but the team played three) and then went out for dinner with the family. We ate at Noodles, which was good as usual. Overall we had a very Asian-themed weekend. We ate at Noodles on Friday night (not Saturday), then Saturday after my games, we went downtown and ate Thai food before hanging out at the hotel and going to sleep. Needless to say, I can't wait to go home for Thanksgiving! Seeing Rebecca all dressed up for Halloween really makes me miss being home- though I did get to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters in the dorm.

Let me back-track for a second:

The Sunday of family weekend I got dropped off pretty early back at the dorm and did some homework before heading back downtown for brunch with Graeme's parents and some shopping (though I didn't buy anything, the boys needed boots) The rest of Sunday was essentially homework day, like Sundays are becoming... Then last week was mostly uneventful. It was pretty normal homework-wise (it really doesn't ever let up), but I did get to have an awesome skype date with Emily and Will! We played bananagrams via skype which was insane and awesome. Emily won.. only because she was building on the floor instead of crammed on a desk ;)

but no, she really won legitimately. we should probably have a rematch though.. it was a well-needed study break!

This past weekend was Halloween weekend, and was also rather eventful. My family brought my lego costume from last year up so I could wear it again! I went to a Lacrosse party on Friday night, and then slept in Saturday morning for a change. I saw Arlene at breakfast and she told me that one of my friends from high school and one of her friends from high school had spontaneously decided to make the 6-7 hour trek from Danville, KY up here for the Obama rally. So I spent parts of the afternoon helping then get unlost in the very Southside of Chicago... It's not typically a good idea to be lost on East 73rd street, haha, but they finally made it, and we headed out to the rally with some of the kids in my house. We got there around 330 or 4, and Obama spoke at 7, 715ish, so we got to do a lot of cramped standing around. There was a band playing for a while called Dot Dot Dot (... ?) and Common came on and performed for about 15 minutes. Then we heard from Democratic candidates and current Democratic congressmen and the alderwoman from Hyde Park who got the crowd riled up for Obama's speech. The theme for the rally was really Moving America Forward, and there was a continuous urge to get out and vote. I, of course, realized as I went to put my absentee ballot request in the mailbox that it needs to be in the office a week before the election. Well, I was putting it in the mailbox a week before the election.. whoops. This is what happens when Nov 1 is on a monday! haha =P So I guess I'm not voting... we had lots of fun at the rally anyway, and then grabbed some pizza for dinner and helped get some friends ready for halloween! I stayed in Saturday night, and went to bed early so I could get up early and work out. No pain in my hamstring, so I think I'm good!

Yesterday I went downtown with Graeme for breakfast, and then to the Art Institute where I met Aunt Kit and her friend Michelle. We went through the miniatures, which are so amazing-- MaMa definitely needs to come up here to see them! It was really nice to see Aunt Kit and do some catching up before they headed out to grab some food, and Graeme and I explored the parts of the Art Institute that I didn't get to see last time I was there- Picasso, Miro', Magritte, El Greco... It's amazing to see all of the paintings they have!

I donned my Lego once more yesterday evening because we had trick-or-treaters in the dorm. I grossly underestimated how much candy I would need, and ran out rather early, which was sad. So I wandered the halls because I didnt want to take my Lego off... and had to pose for a few pictures on the way, haha. "Honey, get in a picture with Lego Lady" One mom did call me spongebob too, but then insisted thatI was so yellow that I had startled her, and it was quite clear that I was indeed a Lego, haha.

Today I took my last midterm - Computer Science, and it went really well. Don't worry, I wore my Chrome tshirt for luck. I hadn't worn it yet and figured today was as good as any! Now just to make it through this week.. I'm cooking study break next Wednesday and need to decide what I'm going to make (if the kitchen is clean enough to even function in.... =P ) Now, off to do math homework! proofs, proofs, proofs.. oh, and write letters. letters and proofs. until next time!

over and out,

Lynn

Playing Catch Up

Don't let the title worry you. The only things I'm playing catch-up in are blogging and facebook photo posting. So, Mother, I'm still on top of all my schoolwork, don't worry! I need to run through some things really quickly.. I'm sure I'll leave out something vital.

So, one day last week (I think it might've been last Monday actually) Graeme and I woke up and ran down to the lake to watch the sunrise.

So this picture is actually from another morning when I went down to the lake.. but its prettier than the sunrise picture I took last Monday 0=) It was unfortunately a rather hazy morning, but it wasn't too chilly! Now the weather has taken a turn towards colder, or rather, more customary fall weather. Though on Saturday the weather was really nice for our Lacrosse tournament. I'm going to make a big jump here, though I think I might be skipping over two weekends in the process. =P

This past Saturday we played our first tournament at a park a few miles north of downtown and right on the lake. It was really nice and breezy, though the fields themselves were more dirt than they were grass. Also, a weird thing (at least weird for me). In Chicago, you aren't allowed to line any city property with paint, so all of the lines on the fields were made with flour. Things got a little messy and the lines got more and more fuzzy as the day went on. but, they line the fields with flour?! I guess I'm going to experience the pain of doing that myself- we're playing a home tournament this weekend, and I know we have to get up early Saturday morning to line the fields. But anyway, we won our middle game, which was against Augustana, one of the other teams in our conference. Apparently we lost to them last season by one highly controversial goal, so the upperclassmen really enjoyed beating them. Overall the day went pretty well, I think we started to mesh more and definitely could have one our other games (though we were all pretty exhausted by the third). Playing three games in one day with few subs is physically taxing to say the least =P but we made it! I can't wait for our tournament this weekend. and also to see my family!

I got back late Saturday afternoon and Skyped Emily briefly =). Next time it will be longer, a group call, and a bananagrams date. Oh, speaking of Skype, I had a massive group Skype reunion on Thursday with some of my friends from high school. Needless to say it was rather insane (thanks, John) but really awesome. If you haven't downloaded the new version of Skype, you should! You get 28 free days of group calls with up to 5 people with video. Sooo, I need to be group Skyping constantly in the next 28 days. 0=)

Now, back to Saturday. I went out with some of my housemates Saturday evening for Sushi at this Sushi restaurant whose name escapes me up on 53rd street. It was realllly good. I had some good tofu for a change (the dining halls haven't quite mastered the art of cooking tofu and having it taste like... anything yet, haha) and I crashed really early.

Then yesterday was a homework day! I got up early to do homework, but ended up falling asleep after breakfast, and didn't really start work until after lunch, but had a productive afternoon. And did lots of laundry.

So basically, my college life can be summarized into eating, sleeping, homework, and laundry. With a little lacrosse and fun thrown in there sometimes ;)

Now back to writing my first college paper =0. Now to make it through this and a math midterm on Friday afternoon, and my family will be here! Wish me luck!

over and out,

Lynn

Vegan Diners and Knitting Circles

The one thing that discourages me from blogging is the daunting task of coming up with titles for my blog posts.. I've had a pretty exciting past few days though, so I must blog! On Saturday I went to Ratner and worked out (though I couldn't find my umbrella before I left) and ended up having to walk alllll the way back to South Campus in a downpour.. which would have been worse if my hair hadn't already been wet from my shower.. but I was pretty soaked by the time I got back, even WITH my warrior jacket (which is somewhat waterproof) I searched in vain for my umbrella when I got back up to my room too and ended up borrowing Victoria's! Ahh, my room is too small for me to be losing things... Its gotta be in there somewhere =P

I went to the Northside of Chicago (Belmont) with Mattie and her cousin to go to The Chicago Diner, a totally vegan restaurant, and the food was awesome! I ate a "Reuben".. with fake roast beef i guess.. it was very strange, but still good. I also had Macaroni and Cheeze with a z.

We were trying to make it back for Contra Dancing in Ida Noyes at 730, but it took us about an hour to get to the diner, and we ended up spending too much time enjoying our food (we shared a (vegan) cookie dough milkshake and (vegan) chocolate mousse cake for dessert) for so long that we didn't end up getting back to campus until after 8.

Sunday was a homework day, but I did get quite a bit finished.. now I have to get to work on stuff due next week =P

Monday I went to my first Communknity meeting.. yeah. its a knitting club that knits things for charity, and I'm rather excited about that.. its basically just a knitting circle. We meet for an hour on Monday evenings, sit around, talk, and knit.

Now its Friday, but I'm going to go sit out on the Quad in the sun and write letters =) I'll have to blog about the rest of the week later on. until then!

over and out,

Lynn

So this is college.

I have almost successfully made it through my first week of classes! I have one more Calculus class after lunch before my weekend has officially started. I did successfully add/drop and switch into the math class i wanted, *phew*. It was actually a lot easier than I was expecting it to be.. but anyways.

Tuesday was my big errands day. I went and bought all of my books, got my math class changed - I got the last spot in the class of the professor that I wanted! I really like all of my professors so far. My CS professor is actually friends with Charles and has a somewhat similar sense of humor. My math teacher is just kind of awesome.. and really really helpful. Graeme and I went to his office hours one day this week, and we were in there with 2 or 3 of our classmates, and the professor was super helpful with all of the questions we had.

I also spent one afternoon this week (the same afternoon that I went to office hours.. though i don't remember which afternoon) working up on the 5th floor of the Library. You can actually see downtown if you're sitting on north side! I ended up reading an essay for my Reading Cultures class and then falling asleep in a big comfy chair =)

Last night was a really exciting night, because I went out and played midnight soccer! Though it started at 1015, it was really fun.. and we only lost by one (which is apparently a significant improvement because we're known as the house that always loses, haha). Then I stuck around after the game and played some 3 on 3 with a few guys in my house... I think I remember why i typically choose frisbee over soccer, but I had lots of fun! It was basically like playing fribee in the dark at Google! except it was later, darker, and harder to spot the ball 0=)

Today is a busy day for sure too. I have a math club meeting at 3, followed by dinner, but I don't think I'm going to dinner because there's also an RSO (Registered Student Organization) Fair tonight, and Friday with Faculty back in my dorm, and I need to do laundry, and ah! So much going on all at once. And now its time for me to head out for an early lunch before Calculus, woohoo!

over and out,

Lynn

O-Week

I have successfully made it through my first week of college! again, a month after everyone else has left (and many have already taken exams) and i'm just now registered for classes. I had to register Wednesday, which was really early, and I still haven't decided which math class i'm taking...

In response to Izzy, I had Giordano's this week, and it was delicious.. the pizza we had the night we got here must've just been a fluke! We took a house trip downtown to the bean and Millennium Park, and then we walked to Giordano's before taking the red line home-- my first time on a subway/train/anything like that! other than the light rail in San Jose... I also had some really awesome deep dish pizza at another place right off campus. There are a bunch of shops and restaurants on 57th street (which runs right through campus) so they're really easy to walk to.

Orientation week as a whole was a success! I met a bunch of new people (and can only remember mayyybe half of their names) and as soon as I learned the names of all of the first years in my house, all of the upperclassmen moved in. so. 60 more names to learn... here we go!

Classes start today, and my schedule is (unless I rechange my mind about math again...) as follows:

Honors Intro to Computer Science

Reading Cultures (my Humanities core sequence)

Honors Calculus (proof-based)

though i'm not actually in the calculus class yet.. so that's assuming that there's room for me to drop the math class I have and add that one!

Yesterday I went downtown and had Jamba Juice for the first time, and then went to the observatory deck on the 94th Floor of the John Hancock Building for an "On Top of the World" Reception that was part of O-week. We headed back around dinner time (on a UChicago-provided shuttle, so I didn't get to ride public transportation again) and ate at the Noodles place right off campus that everybody seems to recommend.

And so orientation week drew to a close. I've already been to my first class, but I'll have to tell about that later. Time to head off to class number 2!

over and out,

Lynn

Chicago!

So while I may not be blogging every day, I figure I'll check in at least every now and then. I'm finally (almost) a college student. Almost an entire month after most of my friends left, and I'm finally moving in! ... tomorrow. I'm really excited (naturally) and we had a mostly smooth drive up. We watched the Lion King three times and started it a fourth before Rebecca decided she was ready to watch something else. Hakuna Matata! Let's just say if I didn't already know most of the words to the movie, I can certainly recite them all now ;). We had dinner at a local pizza place and had Chicago deep-dish pizza. It was somewhat bland, but still pretty good. I'm sure i'll be trying pleeeenty of other pizza while i'm here 0=). Tomorrow we have to be up super early for move-in which starts at 8!

I'll be sure to post some pictures and elaborate more in the future =)

over and out,

Lynn

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

Day 5

It's finally Friday! I feel like i've been here for a really long time, but at the same time its hard to believe that our first week is drawing to a close. We only have one class today, then had some time to finish up our diversity posters, and then spent an hour presenting our ideas to Google interns and employees who dropped in to walk through our poster show. The presentations went well, and although some people tried to stump us with questions, I think we pretty successfully answered them. We then went to a different cafe for lunch with some of the Google interns between biking back over to Crittenden for our afternoon sessions.

Our first session of the afternoon was an industry panel. The panel included a tenured CS professor from Stanford who was also a part-time engineer at Google. We also had software engineers from some start-up tech companies in silicon valley. There was a woman who worked in marketing at Intel, a game designer from EA Games, and a software engineer/design lead from NASA. They all talked about the dynamic nature of the industry and gave us some really useful advice. The guy from NASA (whose name coincidentally was Guy) told us about the new rover bot they're building to send to Mars. So the way he's told to describe is is as follows: "a mini-cooper-sized robot with frickin' lasers." He also mentioned how cool it was to walk into mission control just to say "hi."

After a short break, we did an exercise called True Colors, a method of simplified personality typing using colors. We took a short little quiz to determine which of the four colors (blue, green, gold, orange) represented our personalities. My color was green- creative, logical, critical thinker, problem solver-- with gold-- dependable, parental-- as my secondary color. We did an exercise about educating each other about how to communicate with people of different colors also. And after we had revealed our true colors, we got on the shuttle to head back to SJSU before going on to Santana Row.

We ended up eating at the mall across the street before heading back to Santana Row to go into H&M. I did get a $10 pair of jeans.. and a scarf.. because I really need another one of those. But it is zebra print to match my shoes. We walked around outside and enjoyed the weather until it was time to get on the shuttle and come back to campus. I then lost horribly in ERS and then spent the evening with the roomies.

Sorry no picture today, its getting late! We're heading to Great America tomorrow, but we do get to sleep in!

Until then,

~Lynn

Day 4

Overall, today was probably the most normal day we've had so far here in the land of Google. We had morning classes, like usual, and I made the mistake of wearing shorts... it was fine while we were in the classroom, but even in the sun outside at lunch, i was a little on the cold side.

After lunch, we had a guest speaker come in and talk to us about presentation skills -posture, eye contact, inflection, the works. So after listening to elevator pitches on corn soup and pomegranate limeade, he knew what we were really interested in. I also tried a shot of wheatgrass. I think i was the only one who was okay with drinking it.. although the smell was certainly interesting!

We also worked on group projects because our poster show is tomorrow. Computer science is the WORLD: look around you. that's basically out pitch.. the show in general is all about computer science and diversity and how to make is more accessible to everyone.

I also tried Boba today! Or bubble tea as I know its called back home.. apparently boba is what its called on the west coast. Mixed in a kiwi smoothie it was definitely interesting.. I think the next time I try it I'll have to try it with something less fruity.

Tomorrow should be a fun day- we finish with classes early and head off to Santana Row for the evening!

Until then,

Lynn

Day 3 - phones?!

So today the day began relatively uneventfully. We did get to catch the shuttle 15 minutes later than usual, and we arrived in class and Charles was no where to be found... so while we waited and played Facebook Scrabble Jessica gets up in front of the class with a box and proceeds to tell us that they have a surprise for us. Since Charles wasn't going to be in until 11:00 AM, she figured giving us the surprise then was probably a better idea, since we were bound to waste at least 30 minutes of class time playing with it if they gave it to us later. she wanted us to guess as she was pulling it out of the box, and i don't even know what I was thinking.. somebody shouted out "books!" and there was a general murmur throughout the class, until she pulled out a phone. a Google Nexus One phone. For us to keep! i'm still kind of in awe of the fact that someone handed me a brand new phone today for me to keep... although it doesn't work with Verizon service, i should be able to get my GoogleTalk up and working so I can at least text and talk while on wiFi.

We had a different guy come in to talk to us in our after lunch sessions. He works in the part of Google that does Streetview, so he told us all about what he does, and we talked about how the different algorithms work for finding faces in the images to be blurred out and how to resolve problems between the known maps and the GPS maths of the Streetview vehicles- which include cars, vans, trikes, and snowmobiles.

We also started working on a concept for a diversity poster show that we're having on friday, although we'll spend more time working in our three- or four-person groups tomorrow on that.

Food today was mostly uneventful.. or as uneventful as Google food can possibly be. There was more corn soup at dinner, and I had to endure two of the Google employees talking about how disgusting it looks. If only they were brave enough to take a leap of faith and try some... we had real corn for dinner tonight too.. which of course was also very good. I tried some organic pomegranate blueberry juice today that was delicious. It may have just surpassed the odwalla pomegranate limeade as my favorite drink i've tried here. Although i still haven't tried that pomegranate Fizzy Lizzy...

One quick picture before I head out. I would upload more, but my files are so big that it takes a really long time.. the internet here isn't the fastest. This is Stan, the flamingo herder.. he's a cast of a real T-Rex skull and he's typically covered in the flamingos he's herded. It looks like a few of the flamingos have wandered away.. and a few have wandered into his stomach!

~Lynn

Day 2- more corn soup!

Another awesome day of weather. It was a little cold by Louisville standards, but biking from main campus to the building where our classes are was beautiful.

Programming-wise, we explored more mercurial stuff. Merging heads and branches and even though it gets a little crazy with all of the updates, it still would have made SpecTops more manageable =P. I've also been fighting the urge to stick semi-colons at the end of every line of code I write.. and resisting the urge to surround my functions in ridiculous amounts of parenthesis. We finished working on our factorial programs(and learned for loops and while loops, yay!) and wrote a program that lets you play rock, paper, scissors.

We also got to meet the CAPE students, rising ninth-graders from the bay area who are finishing up their three weeks at Google. I guess it was a lot like my MathPath days.. at least demographic and maturity level-wise, but we had to design kitchen devices that didn't already exist, and then pitch the idea in 60 seconds to convince the buyer to buy. So, the GPS-esque kitchen helper definitely wasn't the winner, but hey.. we tried. we also got to play in the ball pit before the CAPErs arrived.. and by play in the ball pit i really mean lounge in the ball pit. If i worked here, i think i would spend the majority of my time in the ball pit while on my laptop working. I could sleep in that thing, easily.

The food again today was really good. more corn soup for dinner! we've been trying to decide if the corn soup is a hit with the general Google populous or just with our small group. We'll have to ask around with our mentors and stuff i guess..

We got back to SJSU and headed out to Walgreens, so I could buy my hairbrush. (Yes, mother, i've got things under control) and ended up heading into Ross for a little while too. It's basically like TJ Maxx, but better? Walking through downtown San Jose was really nice though.. there are a bunch of cool little restaurants with lights and live music. plus, the weather is so gorgeous albeit a little chilly once it gets dark.

I did bring my camera to campus today, so I got some somewhat decent pictures:

here's a picture of the Google sign. If it didn't take so long to upload pictures i'd put on much more. I'll have to hook the computer up to the ethernet cord tomorrow so I can (hopefully) add a few more pictures!

~Lynn

Day 1

So today was our first day on Google's campus (yeah, like a college), and campus is somewhat like a college, but with more fun things to do. we took a tour and saw all the awesome things they can do. we got up early (i was surprisingly less jet-lagged this morning than i was last night) and caught the shuttle to Google. We got to eat breakfast in the cafe and take a tour. Google is definitely not your typical office building.. it still has the typical office building carpet, but there are random large circles of bold colored carpet thrown in and brightly painted walls to match. we started off programming in python, and using mercurial. If I'd known about version control software last year my spectops project would have been infinitely more manageable. Thanks, Mr. O'Bryan. But I guess its still nice to know now too =P.

We had an ice cream social where we got to meet our mentors and build large stand-alone structures out of paper. Let's just say some of us were more successful than others, haha, but my mentor was really nice, and we have some things in common. We're having lunch next Tuesday!

One of the most awesome things about Google though is the food! Not only was everything we ate in the cafes/restaurants good, but there are food/snack stations all over the buildings. So we can walk outside our classroom and there's a little glass fridge, like the ones in the grocery store, filled with Odwalla drinks- the Pomegranate Limeade is awesome. There are so many different vegetarian things to eat for all meals, so I have plenty of options. I had a bunch of different "salads" for lunch, all of which were delicious, and some lemon verbena iced tea that Leigh would have loved! Plus, there was delicious Pure Corn Soup for dinner. Liquid corn on the cob, but better. yummm. I'm definitely not going to go hungry while I'm here.

On Google's campus there are bikes that you can just get on and ride around. I'm definitely going to bring my camera to campus tomorrow, although we aren't allowed to take pictures inside. They have little bikes that are Google colors, and normal bikes too.. and we got to ride them after the ice cream social back to the building where our classroom is. It was definitely one of the most exciting bike rides I've taken.. we were quite a sight biking through Google's campus.

There are fun things all around Google to do.. who knows how anyone gets any real work done. There's a croquet set right outside our classroom, and they offer so many different exercise and dance classes for employees. There are whiteboards everywhere covered in doodles, signatures, and digits of pi, and Google-colored balloons and lollipops for all of the new employees starting today. There's also a scrolling live-search projection in the main lobby of current searches going on all around the world. yeah, the wikipedia article doesn't lie. I think I could stand and just watch the searches scroll all day. We also saw a globe app that one of the software engineers designed that shoes where the searches are coming from and what the volume of searches is for each region.

The weather here is awesome. Its actually pretty cold if I'm comparing it to Louisville's 95-degree weather with 70% heat index? Yeah, the weather is amazing. It makes me want to move here.. if only it weren't so far away from home! I wore jeans and a jacket, and I was still a little cold in the shade. Beautiful =).

My roommates are awesome, and the suites we're living in are far nicer than what I'll have next year. I definitely can't get used to this, haha =P

Until next time,

Lynn