The Simulator

Jenny and I started the summer by attempting to modify our robot reconfiguration simulator to handle obstacles in the environment. While this may sound like a harmless enough activity, in actuality, it was painful. When you have two people with scant knowledge of Java-GUIs hacking away at messy, uncommented code, things get frustrating pretty quickly. So frustrating, in fact, that after a few weeks of trying desperately to get the simulator working, Jenny and I decided that we really didn't need obstacle simulation results in our conference paper that badly. Besides, we had other important stuff to do. Like doing running time analysis...

The Math-y Stuff

Since we were trying to produce a journal version of our 2002 ICRA paper, we needed to include a running time analysis of our graph traversal algorithm, as well as a proof and some evaluations of how our fast path-finding strategy performed in terms of number of rounds. Enter Math-y Stuff. We wrote proofs. We derived equations for expecting running times. We calculated number of moves. We also made graphs and tables, to illustrate our data (oh the pain!). I felt like a real theorist.

#$^! Admissibility Definitions

Somewhere along the line, we realized that the admissibility definitions for surfaces and obstacles that we had initially come up with weren't sufficient. So, it was back to the drawing board, and for a week or so we probably went through a new set of admissibility definitions each day. It was rough. I spent many long hours on the road between Austin and College Station, thinking about obstacle surfaces and cursing those silly little pockets that modules can get stuck in.

DnD

Lest you think my time was all work and no play, rest assured that, after a bit of searching, I manged to hook up with some members of the TAMU gaming club and run two Planescape-flavoured DnD games for them. The first was a modified version of a campaign I had run at Swarthmore; the second was an experimental murder mystery game that involved clay, candles and what my players affectionately referred to as "#$%#ed up DnD Candy Land." I loved my players: They were a great group and happily went along with my madness...even when I had them blindfolded.

Presentations

In her effort to make me a good Computer Scientist, Nancy had me give several presentations over the summer to the students participating in the Texas A&M Undergraduate Summer Research Program. So, I happily made Powerpoint slides and stood up in overly-airconditioned rooms to talk to a bunch of Aggies about Autobots and Decepticons. Really, I did. Check out my presentations for yourself.

Group Meetings

The PARASOL group had meetings every week or so to review papers and discuss work. Being an unofficial member of the lab, I participated in these meetings and even lead discussion about a paper that related to my research. Afterwards, Nancy even let me write up the paper review. Very exciting... There are always snacks at our group meetings, and when it was my week to bring food, I made a tomato-olive bruscetta recipe I had learned during my loyal watching of the Food Network. I highly recommend it. Any recipe where you get to smash olives and squish tomatoes has to be good.

Other Fun Stuff

Of course there was all sorts of other fun stuff I did: I house-sat for my friend Lydia and her wonderful pets. I painted miniatures like mad. I learned to sew. I went to meetings of Amnesty Houston. I ate massive amounts of burritos. I also took pictures. Lots of them. Here are some of my labmates. There are more here.

Since I last was researching here at TAMU, a new phenomenom called PARASOL Movie Night was instituted in my lab. Here's me, with the group, at our summer showing of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.	I'm an unofficial member of AWICS (Aggie Women in CS) here. One day, we all went out to lunch at a local hole-in-the-wall Thai place as a mini welcome-home party for Lydia, a friend of mine who is a Masters student at TAMU.