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Journal - Week 5
::: Day 1 - Monday 07/04/05 ::: Today is 4th of July so there is no school and no work. Matt and I headed to the Franklin Park Zoo in the outskirts of Boston. It was a great of day; the weather was good and we were able to see a lot of awesome aMiNals. There were zebra, giraffes, birds, leopards, and a lion. There was also a butterfly exhibit. At the end of the day I was tired but happy for have seen my friends - the animals. :) ::: Day 2 - Tuesday 07/05/05 ::: This morning I woke up very early. I was to take the 8AM bus back to UMASS. I had already talked to Vinod and he knew was going to come in late (11am). I slept most of the bus ride because it was way to early for me to function. I went to work straight from the bus, skipped lunch and worked straight until 5:30 to make up for some of the time I had missed. I spent most of the time looking over some Java things and trying to fix the connection between the server and the GUI display. I also did some reading and work on threads. I came to the conclusion that if I want my GUI to be fully functional and not freezing I need to have a thread dedicated to servicing the clients. I wrote a new class that was extending the Thread class but I was not able to run the threaded application. I have a feeling that the problem is with Bluetooth and not my code. I will check things tomorrow. ::: Day 3 - Wednesday - 07/06/05 ::: Oh yes, the problems I was having yesterday were with Bluetooth, not my code. I haven't worked any further on that for now because I was busy finishing up the connection of the server and GUI ChoiceScreen. After some difficulties I finally found out what the problem was. Vinod helped me a little by finding a sample implementation of a Global class. It is basically a custom way of using global variables that are static i.e. have only copy only. It worked great because that was exactly what I was needing. After implementing that it took me just half an hour to finish up things and successfully transfer data from one PC to the other and display it properly. I added a random number generator so that every time data was transferred it was different. In addition, I put the method that was sending data in a while loop that would run forever. This was I was able to connect and request data as many times as I wanted. I also went back to all my GUI files and fixed them so they use the data obtained from the server, instead of locally create random integers. ::: Day 4 - Thursday - 07/07/05 ::: Today I finished up the GUI and resolved the Bluetooth issue. Vinod and I had to restart our computers and some test using the Avetana Utility. It really bothers me that I will leave UMASS not knowing why Bluetooth crashes at random times. I re-worked the threads part and this time it worked without any problems. I was proud to see the project so close to completion. I left for lunch at 11:45 to meet with Prof. Gao. She and Natalie's mentor took us to lunch so we could all meet up and talk about grad school and opportunities for women in computer science. It was a great time we had and it got me seriously thinking about my future and whether I want to pursue a PhD degree. I went back to the lab a
little after 2pm and went straight back to work because Prof. Gao
will be coming tomorrow t 9am for a demo. I was mostly fixing small
things and making sure Bluetooth works (which did not at
4:45...frustrating). ::: Day 5 - Friday 07/08/05 ::: I was at work at 8:30am preparing for my mentor's visit. She came at five past 9 and looked over my work. There were some questions but I felt prepared to answer. The biggest change that was suggested was making my client/server program 'push' instead of 'pull'. If this was 5 weeks ago I would have been terrified and uncertain of how to proceed. But that day I was motivated and believed in myself; it took me just 2 hours t re-write a significant part of my code. I was proud of myself that day. In the afternoon I spend some time talking to Vinod about our future plans. On Monday we will be starting work with RFIDs ... whatever THAT is. After work I left for Boston. It was raining the entire bus ride but got Boston almost on time. I sneaked in the station bathroom and changed into a pair of nice pants and white shirt. Matt and I went to a nice Italian restaurant to celebrate his B-day. It was great!!! ::: Day 6 - Saturday 07/09/05 ::: The weekend is here once again. I am getting a lot of sleep, resting, and having great fun with Matty. Just in general, these last weeks I have been feeling so happy; I work hard weekdays and play & rest hard during the week. I have a feeling of accomplishment and balance in my life. Since that lunch on Thursday I have been thinking about grad school. I started writing flash cards with GRE words. I still have a lot to think about but I am becoming more sure of the fact that I want to continue after my bachelors. At night Matt and I went to see 'The Island'. It was a special sneak peak show, and had no previews :) yesss :) It was a good movie.
::: Day 7 - Sunday 07/10/05 ::: As any other Sunday in
Boston, I hung out in the apartment by myself. As I have said
before, I love being in the apartment even if alone because it feels
like home.
::: Week 1 ::: Week 2 ::: Week 3 ::: Week 4 ::: Week 5 ::: ::: Week 6 ::: Week 7 ::: Week 8 ::: Week 9 ::: Week 10 :::
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Maria Kazandjieva - makazand@mtholyoke.edu - last update: 07/10/05 |