DREU Andrea Howells

Daily Life

I had another birthday to celebrate this week... mine! Dr. Tapia brought in the yummiest creamcheese frosted cupcakes. My birthday was Thursday, so the Brown Bag crew got to join in and enjoy the cupcakes with us. Latha helped me celebrate as well. We went out for dinner and had some delicious pizza and then stopped into ColdStone for desert of ice cream.

I had mailed the Girl Scout paperwork for my daughter in, and on Monday, I received an e-mail to let us know which programs were still open. What luck! Each of the ones she had expressed interest in were available. We should hear back on Monday or Tuesday.

The weather has changed, but I haven't noticed it much. The monsoon season has started, but the rain seems to always come at night. I've heard thunder a few times, but that's it.

Research

The distance metric parameter was added to the roadmap and there has been some additional progress on the program modifications. Although the program is not yet running correctly, I've resolved a few error messages, however, I am still receiving a particularly challenging one.

I've been working on the final report this week and am becoming more familiar with the commands needed for special characters, features, and images.

Tony and I met on Wednesday and went over the use of Vizmo and the parameters of the Roadmap file that can be changed for evaluation.

On Thursday, we attended a weekly Brown Paper Bag Lunch session regarding the preparation of undergraduate and graduate student papers.

On Friday, we had the good fortune to met Carla Romero, director of Programs for CRA. She gave us a brief overview of the Computing Research Association (CRA) and of programs directed towards undergraduate and graduate students. I'll be having a closer look at the information and programs available on the CRA site.

Next Week

For week 8, I will continue to modify programs needed for the PRMRoadmap_testSerial.map file and to prepare my draft final report. Once the programs are successfully modified, the code will be tested and data will be collected on parameters previously determined to be of interest. On Thursday, we will give our short presentation on the work we have been doing. I will also continue to revise and add to my DREU website and submit a weekly report on the work done at the end of the week.