Journal

- Week One -

Monday, May 16

What a week this has been! Though it wasn't the same sort of overwhelming experience I got from going all the way up to Massachusetts last year, coming to Duke was still a big deal. This year I'm living with my family in Raleigh and traveling into Duke from there. It's a 20-30 minute drive, so it's an easy commute.

I'd been talking a lot at the end of the semester about finally getting a car, but I've gone so long without one that it seemed like a distant dream (I just finished up my Junior year at western and I was still hitching rides with friends). But when I got home, Dad and I did a lot of searching. On Sunday, I had gone on my own to look at a car that Dad recommended since it had such low mileage (it was a 1996 Honda Civic with less than 40,000 miles on it). I am not necessarily a car person, but as soon as I saw this car, I fell in love with it. It was so cute, and it handled so well when I drove it, and it was in practically brand-new condition. I was sad that Dad wasn't with me right then to check out the engine and all that, because I wanted confirmation that this car was good on the inside as well as the outside.

When I was driving home from looking at it, I prayed "Lord, if this car is meant to be mine, can I please have it soon? And if not, let me know soon, because I know You can bring along a better one." On Monday, Dad gave me a ride into Duke and we made plans for me to leave early so he could come look at the car.

I started getting nervous on the way into Duke. I felt like a small fish in a big pond coming from little ol' WCU to imposing, impressive, intimidating Duke. I'd never even seen the campus until we drove into it that day. Dad drove into the circular drive at the entrance of the building where I'd be working (Levine Science Research Center aka LSRC), prayed for me, then sent me on my way.

To get to the CS part of this building, I had to walk though hall ways for cancer research with radioactive symbols posted all over the doors and people in lab coats and big blue gloves working with test tubes. Yeah, that was a little freaky, but I came out alive on the other side. I remembered that Susan Rodger's office was on the second floor. So I went there and asked the first man I saw where her room was and he pointed me down the right hallway. Susan's door was open, so I knocked on it and said "I made it!" She welcomed me in, then after a brief introduction, she led me around as we got my key for my office and my Duke card. While we were passing by the chapel I was so totally impressed that we just had to stop in to see it. Wow, this church really looks like something you'd see in Europe! It was so cool to go inside and see the stained glass windows and look up at the vaulted ceiling. There's all this ornate wood and stone carving everywhere. So cool.

When we got back, Susan gave me some papers and a book and suggested that I start reading them and summarizing what I've learned from each one. She told me it was no problem if I left early to check out the car with Dad.

Dad picked me up and we headed off to see the car. He had all of his tools and equipment with him so he could do his most thorough check. He even brought his car jack to look underneath for rust. What was absolutely exciting was that he looked harder than he had at any other car we checked out before, but he couldn't find anything wrong with it beyond minor scratches on the paint! With all of the previous cars we looked at, he found evidence that the car had been poorly cared for – a dirty filter, sludge in the oil cap, or something like that. He enjoyed test driving it too. I was so excited!

It was a little awkward, though, when Dad gave me the responsibility of finalizing the price. Darren, who I was buying the car from seemed like a decent guy. He said the reason why he was selling the car was that he and his wife were moving to Scotland for three years so he could get his PhD in theology. He had hopes of becoming a professor of theology possibly at Duke. Dad said afterwords that Darren really seemed like he was a real believer, not just a "Duke theology grad who knows more than the Bible." I agreed with Dad.

Anyway, so after an amount of coaxing and explanation from Dad, I came out with my final offer or whatever you call it. Darren was satisfied with the price, so we shook hands on it. Dad and I were going to leave a deposit to reassure Darren that we would come back to buy the car. Thing is, I don't have a checkbook at the moment, and dad forgot his checkbook. So we scrounged through our wallets and came up with $22 in cash for a deposit. It was hilarious how little we had, but Darren said we seemed like trustworthy people, and as long as we came back to buy the car Tuesday or Wednesday, he would take it off the market.

To say the least, I was ecstatic on the way home, "I'm gonna buy a car! I'm gonna buy a car!" I couldn't believe it! Dad said my face was red from excitement.

Tuesday, May 17

On Tuesday, Dad drove me to Duke again, but this time we had plans to buy the car during lunchtime – so I could drive myself home in my own car! I spent the morning calling the insurance company and looking up the DMV and calling Darren to get everything straightened out. At 12:00, Darren was supposed to come pick me up and bring me to the DMV to meet Dad. Before I left, though, I needed to have a proof of insurance printed out. When the insurance guy sent the form via email, though, it came through as a blank Adobe file. So I asked him to send it again to a different email address. But that one came through blank too. So I emailed him again, asking that he fax it instead. The fax worked, but then I saw that he spelled my name "Valari." Ugh, can't ever get it right the first time, huh? So I called the agency again and asked if they could fax the file again with my name spelled "Valerie." The correct version of the form came through right before I needed to meet Darren. It was cut really close, but thankfully it worked out fine. We went to the DMV and there was no line – it was fairly quick and simple to make the sale official. Dad helped me to put the license plate on. Then Darren's wife arrived to drive him back home, we all shook hands, Dad and I hugged, and we all went our separate ways. I was in ecstasy – driving my own car!

So I had to go buy a parking pass for Duke. Then I had a bit of trouble finding my way to the lot where I was allowed to park, but I made it. I was having fun even though I was a bit lost, since I was enjoying my good speakers. The song "Footloose" was on the radio right when I found the parking lot, and I was having too much fun listening to it to just turn off the car and leave, so I sat and listened until the song ended, singing along "Cut loose, footloose, Kick off your Sunday shoes..." Such a fun, laid back song!

Then when I got back to the office I got to work on reading some papers and trying to understand JAWAA, the program that I'll be modifying. I underlined important points to help me summarize it later.

I had a little bit of trouble getting home, but I made it alright.

Wednesday, May 18

Today I was really excited about driving myself into work. Problem is, I was trying to come in a new way. I learned just how unfamiliar I am with the Durham / Chapel Hill side of the Triangle. Man, I kept going in circles. I would pass my exit, then there would be no more exits for a long way, and the next exit forced me to go even further away, so it was nearly impossible to turn around. Oh, it was horrible. It was even worse when I tried to get back home. It literally took me 2 hours to get home when it's supposed to take 30 minutes. I ended up going from Duke to Chapel Hill, to Orange County, all over the place just trying to find my way home. It got so overwhelming, I got close to crying.

I ended up in the middle of nowhere, and I drove down a gravel road looking for somewhere that looked decent enough to stop for directions. I eventually found a restaurant with lots of cars parked outside it.

I parked my car and called out to this older couple walking towards the restaurant, "Hey, can y'all help me please? I'm really lost. Can you tell me the way to Raleigh?" They both looked so sympathetic, and they were really willing to help out. The man had scarred, rough looking farmers hands (like my Papa). He gave me some good directions with landmarks and all that. It was so much better. I got home fairly easily from there.

Thursday, May 19

I first dropped off Carrie and Bonnie at their middle school. We listened to my Dinosaur soundtrack. They were so excited to ride in my car, especially because of the good sound system. I had better directions to get to Duke, so I got there in about 30 minutes. Today I started working on my website, figuring out the look I wanted to have and posting my paper summaries.

It was a cinch driving home this time. I've decided that once the school year ends I'm gonna work from 8-4 instead of 9-5. That way I beat the rush hour. When I got into my neighborhood on the way home, I spotted something walking in the grass on the side of the road. It was a huge turtle! I immediately stopped my car and put on the flashers. I got out and picked up the big ol' thing (his legs flailing as he tried to get me to put him down) and put him on the floor of the passenger side of my car. I figured that a clumsy turtle wouldn't be able to climb over the gear shifter to my side of the car. So I got into my side and started on my way home. But this turtle was much more agile than I thought. Next thing I knew, he was climbing over the gear shifter in the middle and he changed me into neutral. I didn't know how likely he was to bite, so I was kind of freaking out, trying to push him down while avoiding his mouth. I ended up using my sunshade to ward him off the rest of the way back. It's a good thing I was less than a minute from my house.

When I got home, I put the turtle in the kitchen then yelled for my siblings. No one answered. No one came. So I went upstairs and found them watching Anne of Green Gables (wonderful movie). I told them I had a surprise, so come downstairs to see it. Carrie was suspicious of me teasing them by luring them downstairs with something stupid, but they came down after I urged them a bit. All of them yelled out of excitement (and a little fear) when they saw this giant turtle. The poor thing got really scared when they started reaching out to him. I was afraid Jessica would get bitten when she touched his head, but I guess this kind of turtle is much nicer than a snapping turtle (Mom brought one of those home once . . . scary thought indeed. She's a regular Crocodile Hunter). He did hiss threateningly a lot, but never acted violently. We looked up the turtle in our reptile book and found him to be a river cooter. That was cool, because when I was younger we had a tiny river cooter for about a month before we let him go. We named him Scooter and fed him tuna. He would sneak up on the tuna and attack it as if it were a living fish. He was only about an inch long, and the turtle I caught this time was more than a foot long.

That night, I noticed a lump under his shell on his "shoulder" behind his right leg. It didn't look natural, and though I'd never seen a leech, that was the first thought that came to my mind. So I asked Dad if he could assist me in the operation. I went upstairs and fetched my tweezers (the ones I use for plucking my eyebrows). We'd discovered that when the turtle was turned on his back, he would sit still as if he were sedated, so Dad held the turtle upside down while I held his leg out and pulled that leech off with my tweezers (gross job, but someone had to do it). Man, that leech was disgusting. It was reaching out with one of its suckers while I held it with my tweezers. It totally grossed me out, but fascinated me at the same time. So I put it in a jar to show to the rest of my family. Carrie and Bonnie were too freaked out to even look at it, but Mom was as fascinated as I was. She went and looked up "leech" in the encyclopedia and we watched the weird way it moved by using the suckers at either end. After watching it for a while and holding it up to the light to see the blood inside of it (I know, I'm gross), I poured vinegar on it to kill it. I felt kinda sorry for the revolting thing when it curled up and died, but I didn't want it to get attached to anything else.

I assure you that I sterilized my tweezers afterwards by soaking them in rubbing alcohol.

Friday, May 20

Today I continued my work on the website, and I summarized the book I was reading, Software Visualization. The turtle ran away when someone left the garage door open. It was well enough, because I was gonna let him go anyway, but I was sad we couldn't have a grand farewell by bringing him to the lake and watching him swim off.

- Week Two -

Monday, May 23

Today I first finished up my journal from last week. I also read a paper online called "Rethinking the Evaluation of Algorithm Animations as Learning Aids: An Observational Study." This paper was quite interesting because it described the procedure used in this study in quite a bit of detail. You can see the summary that I wrote on the "Papers" page.

Susan and I were joined by many more students at lunch today. They were all quite friendly, though I must say I don't remember all of their names since we introduced ourselves fairly abruptly. But I'll be glad to know a few people around this building so I can feel more at home here.

I was excited to find out that I could actually see the JAWAA animations on Susan's website. I couldn't see them when I was using the computer on the other side of the office, but for some reason this computer lets them work. Cool! With all I've been learning about algorithm animation and software visualization, it's nice to see it in action!

Tuesday, May 24

Dad has been in the car-buying mode lately. Our old Volvo has too many problems that cost too much to repair, so he decided to replace it. Since he's going to get the car today, Emily couldn't use the Volvo to get to school, so I drove her to school this morning. She didn't much appreciate my habit of going at the speed limit (she speeds as badly as my mom), but – miracle of miracles! – she still got to class on time.

When I got back, I had to go to an orthodontist appointment. Oooh I'm so excited, 'cause I'm getting towards the end of my time with braces. The orthodontist kept exclaiming about the great progress we're making. Yay! This is gonna be worth it!

Because of my appointment and all that, I didn't arrive until 11:15. I had lunch with Susan outside today, and we talked more specifically about JAWAA and what she would like for me to do this week. She would like for me to learn more about building GUI's, so she suggested that I find tutorials about Java Swing. So after lunch, I found a tutorial on the Sun website and built a few small programs just for practice. I've worked with Swing a little bit before, but to work with this program I'll need to be quite familiar with it.

Wednesday, May 25

Dad and I carpooled into work today. It was a funny feeling dropping my dad off somewhere, when it was him dropping me off for so much of my life. It's pretty awesome, though. His workplace is on the way to Duke – I pass right by it every time I drive in!

Today I figured out how to get JAWAA and the JAWAA Editor to work on my computer. How exciting! I started building my own animations, and this is probably the most productive I've felt here. As I ran into snags or inconveniences, I took notes on changes I'd like to make. This was getting exciting! The animation I made was of a moose in front of a landscape of trees and mountains. Believe me, it wasn't anything top-of-the-line, but it was cute enough. I was happy.

Thursday, May 26

The world was so beautiful as I was walking into work, I felt like God was giving me that moment as a gift. I wrote a poem as I walked, and I simply had to write it down when I got back:

The best cathedral I have seen,

Was painted shades of gray and green.

Stained-glass windows, hard oak doors,

Vaulted ceilings, carpet floors,

Ancient pillars stretching high,

Built in long lost days gone by.

The choir sings unending praise,

From light of dawn to end of day.

Although not built by human hands,

Majestically this great church stands.

This was designed by God above,

Expressing His unfailing love.

Through beauty, power, and brilliant light

That frees the human soul from night.

He poured Himself into this wood,

Our Lord is marvelously good!

The best cathedral I have seen,

Was painted shades of gray and green.

Today I worked more with the JAWAA Editor to create some animations. I looked at the source code to get an idea for the structure of the program. It's going to be a challenge to work with preexisting code instead of building it from scratch. I haven't done anything like this, where my code needs to fit in with what someone else has done.

Friday, May 27

Yesterday Susan gave me a whole new stack of papers to read in different computer science journals. She wanted to make sure I had plenty to do while she was gone today. So today I worked on summarizing some of the papers she gave me (the ones about JHAVÉ and ANIMAL) , and I looked at the JAWAA code more. I also tried building some JAWAA animations "by hand," actually typing out some script, using the paper I read for reference.

- Week Three -

Monday, May 30

Memorial Day! Yesterday my family went to the pool. Gabbie (my fellow DMP participant) had arrived in NC on Friday, so I invited her to come hang out with us. I picked her up and brought her to join our cookout then go to the pool and play with my siblings. What fun!

Today I went to a cookout that my cousins' church puts on each year. I had lots of fun! Actually I enjoyed myself a great deal due to being able to help serve coleslaw to the hungry masses. I love helping out. It was neat seeing the kinds of people who came to this picnic – so many big families! I don't think I've seen that many big families in one place.

Tuesday, May 31

Today was Gabbie's first day at Duke. I had forgotten my keys (except my car key) this morning, so I was glad I arrived a little late and didn't have to wait long for her while I was locked out of my office. So I brought her downstairs to show her Susan's office. We met up with Susan and we all went through the same process I had gone through to get Gabbie's keys, Duke ID, computer account, and all that. That took up most of the morning, then Gabbie and I walked to Subway so she could buy some lunch. (I got some cookie dough icecream. . .mmmm)

Gabbie had a little trouble settling in today. Her computer has an operating system that isn't quite that user-friendly, and her keyboard is all switched around.

Wednesday, June 1

I got in a little before 8, as I like to, this morning. Today I worked on building JAWAA animations by typing the script instead of using the Editor. I think that somehow I have an older version of JAWAA on my computer, because some things that work on the website don't work on my computer. I even tried copying source code from the site onto my computer to see if I had just typed something wrong. Nope, it still didn't work. Oh well.

Thursday, June 2

Not a good day. Today started out like any other day. I got up at 6:00, headed out of the house a few minutes after 7, then started my daily commute. It was fairly rainy, so I stayed a little slower on the highway than usual, kept my lights on, ran my windshield wipers, tried to stay as alert and careful as possible. I made it down I-540, to Hwy 70, to Alexander Drive, to 147, but then it was time for me to take the exit onto Trent Drive. At this exit there is a ramp getting onto the highway that crosses over the ramp coming off of the highway. So I stopped at the stop sign and waited for several cars to pass by, watching for my turn to go. I saw two pairs of headlights, but they looked far enough away for me to cross. I went for it, but before I knew what had happened -*BAM*- another car slammed into my passenger's side HARD. The side of my poor little car was crushed – all the windows broke and the doors were totally smashed in. It was so horrible. I kept wanting it to be a nightmare so I could wake up and find out it hadn't happened. I was in shock, just sitting there and yelling and shaking. My car kept rolling forward, so I pulled it up onto a median. I put it into park, put on the parking break, turned off the engine, and turned off the lights – I guess the practical part of me was still working in spite of my terror and shock.

I got out of the car, and the police were just arriving. I was really dazed and I felt sick to think that my poor car that I had just gotten, that I had driven always at the speed limit, that I had washed thoroughly every weekend, that I had double-checked to make sure it was locked, that I had joyously shown off to lots of people, in which I had brought my siblings to school, that I was looking forward to driving up to school, that I wanted to use to help other people the way I'd been helped, that my poor, perfect little car was ruined. I know, it's only a piece of metal on wheels, but I'm crying even as I type this. It's humiliating to buy a car then to wreck it only 3 weeks later. And I really thought it was perfect – great gas mileage, comfortable, clean, cute, nice stereo...I didn't even notice the few scratches on the sides – actually I was glad for a couple of scratches so I wouldn't mourn getting more. I wish all it got were some scratches.

There was a lady who had stopped at the wreck to help out. Her name was Sheila, and she was like an angel for me. She let me use her cell phone to call my parents and she let me sit in her car while the police straightened everything out. When the firemen arrived they were so shocked by the condition of my car that they all asked me the same series of questions to make sure I didn't have a head or spinal injury. I couldn't really feel if I had been hurt – I was numb from shock, I think, but I didn't think that I was that bad off. I was blessed not to be hurt, and I'm so glad no one was on the passenger side.

Sheila brought me to the lobby of the place where she works. I sat at the entrance, waiting for Dad, and I couldn't help crying again. This one lady saw me when she was passing by, and she asked me what was wrong, then decided to sit with me. Her name was Barbara and she works for a lung surgeon. I'm glad I had those two ladies to help me out, because I really needed them.

Mom and Dad were amazingly understanding. Though I was beating myself up and feeling so embarrassed and stupid, they kept reminding me that they were glad that I wasn't hurt. I thank God for parents like that.

Needless to say, I did not feel up to going to work today. When I got home, Bonnie and Carrie hugged me hard and told me they were so sorry. They were so sweet and supportive. I went upstairs and laid on my mattress on the floor (I don't have a bed at home) and just tried to rest. Later on, Bonnie asked me to read some of Prince Caspian (from the Chronicles of Narnia series) to her. It felt good to just have a quiet day at home, especially after the trauma of that morning. I kept wishing, though, that I could look out my window and see my car waiting in the driveway. No more.

Friday, June 3

I returned to work today, driving Mom's minivan. I was even more extra careful than I usually am, and I got in quite safely. I made sure to park away from other cars, too, because Mom loves her minivan.

Today I worked more on trying to make my computer work with the examples online, and I added more suggestions to my list.

- Week Four -

Monday, June 6

This morning, Gabbie and I defined test cases so we can test JAWAA more thoroughly and systematically. This was kinda cool to work on, because now we got to apply the stuff we learned in software engineering class (though I think she learned more than I did about testing). Susan called us down for a meeting at 1:00, where she told us about the workshops she'll be hosting this week, and we heard what the JFLAP students are working on, then we told her what we did this morning.

Tuesday, June 7

I took the general properties that we wanted to test and made a list of on more specific test cases. It turned out that we had 170 different cases to write! Eeep! Gabbie worked on an environment in PHP that would allow us to run the test cases and record which ones worked and which ones didn't. This should help us to know what bugs need to be fixed in JAWAA in a more systematic way than randomly playing around with it.

Wednesday, June 8

I started taking the list and writing little JAWAA animations that would fit each of the test cases. This was fairly tedious work, but it was nice to get some concrete results showing what was wrong with JAWAA.

Thursday, June 9

At some point this week, I was excited to discover the reason why my computer kept acting like I had an older version of JAWAA. It turned out that my html files pointed to the wrong version on my computer. I was so glad to see that the examples online worked on my computer too. That definitely made me more confident about testing the code. If I run old code, how can I know if I'm fixing bugs that have already been fixed in a newer version?

Friday, June 10

I finished all of the test cases today and posted them on the site that Gabbie made. Then I ran every test case and recorded whether they worked or not. I was excited to leave work today, because I had this upcoming week off to go camping with my family!

- Week Five -

Monday, June 20

Today Gabbie and I met with Susan to discuss the big project we wanted to do during our time here. Susan talked a lot about the issues surrounding illustration and animation of trees and graphs. JAWAA is supposed to support trees and graphs, but right now they're unfinished. Susan also told Gabbie and I a lot about grad school – application, life of an average grad student, advantages and disadvantages of going into grad school straight out of undergrad and so on... It kinda makes me nervous talking about future plans. Sometimes I really wonder why I don't have enough ambition. It's like – I'm so afraid of getting stuck in a rut that I get stuck in a rut waiting for something new to happen... but, that might not make any sense... Take this for example – all through high school I worked as hard as I could, and I made good grades. But I never had it in mind to go to a "prestigious" school. In fact, the college I'm going to has a kinda lousy reputation. Prestige seems so overrated to me. I didn't work hard to get good grades to have a good GPA to get into a good college. I just wanted to show myself that I was capable of meeting the challenge. But what do I do with all that work?

I guess I'm in CS for the same reason - "Oh, so girls aren't supposed to be able to do Computer Science? I'll go and prove 'em wrong!" Haha, I don't even understand my own motivation. And now that I am in CS, I don't know if this is what I want to do, but I don't know of anything I like so much to devote my life to it. Someone asked me recently, "What excites you?" The thing is, I don't know! I like learning, I like creating, I like solving problems, I like helping other people... I like math, science, English, physics, computers, animals, art... I enjoy too many things to know what to do with myself! I've told lots of people I wish I could major in everything...

Tuesday, June 21

Gabbie and I wrote our project proposals for Susan today. I decided to work on the JAWAA Editor – I'm gonna try to add an "Undo" option. It's quite an undertaking, pretty far beyond what I've done before, but I'm excited about the challenge. :)

Tonight I went to visit one of my high school teachers – Mr. Felder. He'd invited me to come have dinner with his family. It was lots of fun – especially since I got to play with his kids. I don't get to see little kids as much as I used to, now that my younger siblings have gotten older. I kind of miss that. Little kids are great because you can act absolutely insane and they'll just love you all the more for it. We pretended to be animals, danced around to piano music, and jumped on their trampoline. Good times!

After the kids went to bed, Mr. Felder and I chatted for a while. That was awesome – he's a great conversationalist and he really got me to thinking hard about my future.

Wednesday, June 22

Today I got to work on the JAWAA Editor. It was overwhelming to start out with. After looking through the many folders and many different classes, I started by trying to fix a fairly minor bug that had a big impact on the program. And I was able to fix it! YAY! I ended up fixing two bugs in the program today!

Thursday, June 23

I made the error messages for the name change button more specific. Also, I made sure that an exception was thrown when a name started with a digit or was blank.

Friday, June 24

Today I added a feature that displays the name of an object when it's selected.  It just seems to be helpful to see the name of the object displayed, so you know what you're working with.

- Week Six -

Monday, June 27

Susan came up and looked at what I'd done so far.  She seemed pleased with it, and she suggested that I try to add a feature for changing the default text size.

Tuesday, June 28

Today we had lunch with other people working in this department this summer.  One girl, named Jen, is a grad student from Massachussets. It was fun talking to her a bit, though i made the silly mistake of saying Boston was on the western side of the state (see, I had forgotten 2 things: 1: Massachussets is tiny, so to get to Boston from Amherst (which is on the western side) is only about an hour.  Compare that to the 5 hours it takes to get from my school in Western Carolina to Raleigh in Central/Eastern NC...well, Boston seems so close to Amherst.  I also forgot the fact that Boston is on the coast.  Duh, Atlantic Ocean = Eastern side!  Well, I just laughed at my mistake. I'm glad I'm learning to laugh at myself. In middle school, I took myself way to seriously, which resulted in my keeping tally of every dumb thing I said or did (needless to say, the list got pretty long). But I learned it's much better to let those things go – no one else is keeping count anyway!

Wednesday, June 29

Today I added a feature that allows the user to define a default text size for text objects and nodes.  This took a bit of maneuvering, because when you add a text size change button, it automatically adds two other buttons for incrementally changing text size.  I had to change a few things so that the default menu wouldn't get too crowded.

Thursday, June 30

The feature I added today was a scaling ability.  This way users can smoothly scale an object instead of just instantly changing size.  One little problem with this is the fact that although it looks like the scaling feature works, it doesn't actually create the appropriate "scale" command.

Hey, I forgot to mention that I got another car today! Yes! I finally have transportation again. I love this car a lot too, though it took a while for me to warm up to it. It's like when you have a beloved pet that dies and you don't think another one can properly replace it. My second car is a 1990 Honda Accord. It had only 75,000 miles on it when I bought it, but I am quickly putting more on with this 1 hour round trip commute every day. The lady who owned my car before bought it when she was 70 and hardly ever drove it. And she kept it in the garage and had the seats covered, so the whole thing looks almost new. I got a CD player installed too (I got spoiled with the first car, and this car cost only half as much, so the expense for a CD player seemed worth it).

Friday, July1

First thing this morning, a guy came in to help me out by fixing my computer.  I was hoping this would finally stop my problems with Open Office.  When he was done, I built a spreadsheet to record the changes I'd been making this week to the JAWAA Editor.  Then I tried saving it as a web page.  Well, in the process of saving it, the program crashed again and deleted all of my work on the spreadsheet.  Grr.

- Week Seven -

Monday, July 4

Independence Day! I had the day off, and Gabbie and I had been at my aunt Karen's mansion the whole weekend. Today we brought all the lil' kids to the local highschool baseball stadium for fireworks! What fun! Everyone enjoyed them. The crowd did a fair share of “ooos and aahs,” and there was a lot of applause at the end.

Tuesday, July 5

We had the day off today too. We mostly hung around the pool and stuff until 6-ish when Dad needed to leave. We drove back home, had some burritos and chimichangas for dinner, then I brought Gabbie back to her apartment. She told me she'd had a great weekend, and thanked me for inviting her. I was glad she could come along.

Wednesday, July 6

I got the scale feature totally working today! It outputs the right commands and everything! Wow! Yay! Happy day!

Then I started working on arrays. That feature is not quite so easy. I didn't get so far today with that – I only added a couple of classes.

Thursday, July 7

Today I worked on arrays until my brain was about to burst. Adding a new object to the JAWAA Editor is hard enough, but adding an array is a different story, since it requires adding individual cells. Errg. I think I'm going to have to add more features just to support arrays. I started writing in this journal because I didn't know what else to do. It took forever to get the compiling errors out, then I got most of the runtime errors out, now there's a new error which I don't understand. AAAAAAAAAAH!

Friday, July 8

Wow! It really does make a huge difference to leave and “sleep on” things sometimes. I got so frustrated with arrays, and I was fresh out of ideas yesterday. I got to the point where I was just staring at the computer in frustration. So, I decided to call it a day. And guess what? I came in fresh today, and after hardly any time at all, I got arrays to work! My brain just needed a rest, I guess. I was soooo happy today to get things working again.

- Week Eight -

Monday, July 11

Wow, I can't believe I only have two weeks left to work here at Duke! This summer went by so much faster than when I was in Massachusetts. I love being at home with my family. It means a lot of drama and problems sometimes, but it never means being bored. :-D

Today Gabbie and I met with Susan along with two guys who are also working for her. We all talked about our respective work (though I'm not sure if we fully understood each other, and it gets boring to listen to someone nitpick about stuff you only understand superficially). After our little meeting, Susan came upstairs to check out our progress. Gabbie and I were glad to have substantial stuff to show her – I had arrays and scaling, and Gabbie had trees. We talked about where to go next with our work. I want to create a data structure selector that will select an entire data structure when you click on it, not only the individual pieces. That would allow you to change attributes of an entire array.

Tuesday, July 12

I didn't have very long in the office today, since I had an orthodontist appointment at 1:00. I added more classes and stuff to get started on the data structure selector. This is extremely involved, because it requires the program to recognize data structures as a whole and ignore individual objects. I hope I can get this to work!

The orthodontist appointment went great. I found out that I'm gonna get the braces off my top teeth in August! I am soooo excited. That means I'll have some of my braces off before I'm a bridesmaid in Melanie's wedding. Yay!

Wednesday, July 13

Well, looks like the cycle has begun again. Frustration -> Elation -> Frustration -> Elation -> Frustration. I'm at the Frustration part of that cycle right now. I think I'm gonna take a break from programming so I can read some papers and record the changes I've made.

I decided to carefully review all my changes to the program so far to ensure that the records I've made are clear and up to date. I added more comments to the classes I changed and fixed the comments that were wrong or not clear enough.

Thursday, July 14

Continuing annoyances. It looks like adding that data structure selector is waaaaay harder than I thought. I basically have to hunt through most of the code to find little pieces that still need to be changed . . . and it's taking forever. The really annoying thing is that whatever I do doesn't really show up in the program. I change lots of little things in the background, but it still looks the same. Grr.

Friday, July 15

Woohoo! I was really excited today because today is the day I went up to Western. Oh, I love my friends so much. One of my friends from Campus Rock lives in the Raleigh area, so I invited her to ride with me. What fun! We had so much fun on the trip up jammin' to my CD player in my new car. So, anyway, I'm gonna be gone all this coming week.

- Week Nine -

Monday, July 25

:-( It's kinda hard coming back here after being with my Campus Rock friends. Really, I never feel quite as free as I do with them. Sometimes I even feel a little suffocated by my family. Don't get me wrong, I love them to pieces, but my sisters' constant obsession with looks gets really frustrating. It's intimidating sometimes. Think of it – I'm intimidated by 14 and 15 year olds. When I'm at Western, I really don't have to think about impressing anyone. We went on a trip to Asheville (a common occurrence ;-) ) and on the way I was sitting in the back seat of Candace's car, watching the splendid mountains pass by, listening to Candace and April joking and singing to the stereo, and my heart was just so full to be with them in that moment. I don't know really how to express it, but the whole atmosphere up there is so . . . at home. The people I know up there – college students and families at my church – live a slower, less materialistic, somehow more real, down to earth life. There is so much freedom in my church, I wake up excited to go and leave with a full heart. Of course things aren't perfect, but these are the people who have helped me through some of the hardest parts of my life, and who have enjoyed some of the most crazy, fun parts with me too. I can see why graduating Campus Rockers seem hesitant to leave.

So, anyway, when I got back today I had to read through this grant proposal that Susan had written. Then we had a meeting about it, and she asked us what we thought could be improved, and she explained the process of writing a grant.

Tuesday, July 26

Today I tried to work more on that ever-frustrating problem of arrays. In the process of making the data structure selector, I have managed to make arrays no longer appear on the screen. Originally, it looked like arrays were working, but really I had used some shortcuts. So it was more of a facade without the real workings underneath. Now, I have made the workings underneath work, but the appearance is that it's not working at all. Ick.

Wednesday, July 27

Another frustrating day of array work. No exciting breakthroughs yet.

Thursday, July 28

I decided to work on something new since I felt like I was going in circles. So I fixed some problems I had found with the LineTool. It seems that the original writer of this code was a little lazy in this area, and didn't find a way to make lines move properly. Yeah, so I fixed that.

Friday, July 29

More blah blah array stuff. I keep thinking it's just one more thing then it'll look right, but I'm still not getting there. :-/

On a happier note, Gabbie and I visited the Duke Gardens for the first time today. Yay! I'd never seen them before. They're so beautiful! I wanna bring my family up there.

- Week Ten -

Monday, August 1

This is the beginning of the end for me. No, really, this is my last week at Duke, and I must say with the way I've been feeling lately, it will be a relief to wrap it up here.

We met with Susan this afternoon to plan out what to do this week to finish things up. We decided that Gabbie and I are going to submit posters to a conference. That's really cool! We'd get all our travel expenses and everything paid for so we could go to Texas for a few days, stay in a hotel, and learn about what's going on in the CS world. How cool is that?

Tuesday, August 2

Because this is our last week, I worked on writing my final paper today. Guess what? For once, this wasn't torture! Actually, it was kind of fun to write this paper. See, Susan had asked Gabbie and I to make a lot of records as we went along, so all I needed to do was go back and copy all that information over!

I stopped my work at one point to tell Gabbie "It's fun to plagarize myself!" Hee hee :-).

Wednesday, August 3

Well, I've been mostly working on documentation and cleaning up the code lately. I want to make sure ends meet the best they can (even though the code is not fully functional).

Thursday, August 4

Susan keeps sending the paper back with little revisions here and there. I always enjoyed lots of feedback in my English classes. I hate waiting until the last moment to find out what my teacher thinks of my paper. I know other people hate rough drafts, but they keep this chronic procrastinator in line! :-P

Friday, August 5

Susan took us out to lunch again today. Mmm I got a big wrap and a monster-sized roll. Sadly, i was too full to finish both. Though I hate wasting things, I threw away the rest of my wrap. I couldn't save it since I had plans to go with my sister Michelle to my grandparents' farm, and Nonnie was sure to make us some scrumptious dinner :-P

I wrapped everything up today as well as I could. I hope I didn't leave behind too much of a mess for the next person to wade through. I tried to document all the changes I made and everything to make it easier.

I handed in my key, and that was the end of my time at Duke.