Semester Reflection

Katie Fullerton

Semester Reflection:

What I remember from the beginning of the semester are the HTML pages that I created. I enjoyed learning a little bit of the code behind the webpages that I use everyday. Obviously, it was an incredibly simplified version of websites like that the one I am using now but I liked being able to concretely see the changes I was making on the webpage I created.
I’m feel like we did something between HTML and Scratch but I don’t really remember it. As far as Scratch goes, I think that has been my least favorite part of the class so far. That’s not to say that I hated it. I just like writing the code instead of using pre-made building blocks. Scratch also felt very tedious, especially towards the end when we were embedding numerous blocks inside other blocks. However, I do feel like it helped me in the transition from HTML to Jeroo.
Jeroo has been favorite so far. At times, it is frustrating but most of the time it feels like a puzzle or a game and it is incredibly rewarding when I finally finish a lab. And, to be honest, I like the ones with storylines best. The Prince Jeroo rescuing the Princess Jeroo in lab 5C made me really happy. Recently, Christmas spirit has been taking over my life so my Jeroos have had names like Rudolph and Santa. Jeroo is the kind of thing that I could see myself getting addicted to if it was an app on the Iphone.
Overall, I am enjoying this class much more than I thought I would. I like how the labs we do are like puzzles and I like that there aren’t really lectures. Having the freedom to work on our own makes working on the computer much more interesting. After switching into this class desperately in need of a tech credit, I was not expecting to enjoy it at all. Honestly, I was expecting to hate it but I have been impressed. This class is perfect for LASA students. Teach us the basics and set us loose; offer help but don’t stand over our shoulders; let us work through the problems and they will get solved one way or another.

Now for the Weekend...

      This Saturday, my rowing team as Field Day instead of practice (which is especially nice because I'm still sore from yesterday's practice). After Field Day, I'm going out to lunch before coming home to watch the UT game and put of Christmas lights. My mom has Saturday labelled as "Exterior Illumination Day" on her calender and I think it's hilarious.
      Sunday after church, my mom, sister, and I are going to the Sprint store to get Iphones. We've all been saying we're going to get them for almost a year now and it's finally on the calender now. My sister and I are especially excited. My mom, on the other hand, is rather apprehensive. She doesn't think anything is wrong with her old phone but we've convinced her that she'll want to know how to use the Iphone by the time I go to college so we can talk on Facetime and/or Skype. I think she'll adjust well but it might take some time.
     Only one more full week before finals and then WINTER BREAK! : )

Life is Fantastic

     I've been in a ridiculously good mood all week so the Jeroo programming we've been doing has bordered on fun. They're like puzzles: super frustrating until you solve them, at which point they turn out really cool and rewarding. I even feel like I'm making progress. I only have one lab left and then I'm done until the final. Which, by the way, I'm a little concerned about. I think I might get really frustrated and not think straight. I usually get a lot of help from the people around me on the labs so I'm worried that I might not be able to do a really complicated one like the final on my own. I guess we'll see.
      Last week I forgot to do a blog post so here's what I did over Thanksgiving Break. My family and I drove to Dallas to see my dad's family. His is the big side of the family so there were 22 people in one house on Thanksgiving. I ran the Dallas Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning and it was first time I had ever run eight miles. I felt like a cripple old woman afterwards; my knees hurt and my ankles hurt and my toenail hurt. Essentially everything hurt until Friday night. It was fun while I was doing it but, in hindsight, I probably should have walked some of it.
     The highlight of my Break was watching the final UT vs. A&M game on my uncle's enormous TV. My uncle is an Aggie and we always watch the Thanksgiving game together and try and out-cheer each other. It was absolutely wonderful to beat them in College Station and send them off with a great, exciting game and a last-second field goal. My sister and I has some serious breathing problems in the last minute and half of the game, after we got the ball back and has to drive down the field to win. I didn't have much faith at the point, to be honest, which made our comeback even better. Once the Aggies scored that last touchdown, I was pretty sure we were going to lose but my Longhorns came through for me! Needless to say, life is fantastic.

3 Day Weekend

      First off, let me say that I am really liking Jeroo. I was skeptical of writing my own code again (as opposed to dragging little blocks to make commands) but I feel like the Jeroo labs are like simple computer games. Often, I will sit down at the beginning of class and think that an hour and half seems like a long time. An hour and half later, I feel like the time flew by. It is nice to have a class like that at the end of the day.


    I couldn't believe the other day when I realized that we have less than two weeks until Thanksgiving and, to top it off, we have a three-day weekend this week. Tomorrow, my friend and I are getting together to make T-shirts for a paintball game we're playing in December (though neither of us have ever been paintballing before). On Saturday, I plan to go to the Farmers' Market, which I haven't been able to do for a few weeks because of rowing. After the Farmers' Market, I'll be watching copious amounts of football, including the UT game which should (I emphasize, should) be an easy win.

    Sunday morning is the Race for the Cure, which I have done almost every year for about 10 years. I'm organizing a pre-race breakfast for a small group from our neighborhood. We have done the race in a group since one of the mothers on our street was diagnosed with a terminal case of breast cancer. This is the 10th anniversary of our first race as a neighborhood so my sister and I thought a breakfast would be nice. I'm especially excited to walk/run this year because the organizers moved it back downtown.

Here's hoping for an awesome three-day weekend!

Scratch

This week in class, we have worked on Scratch. I have finally caught up to the rest of the class after missing two class periods for my visit to Colorado.

Scratch has been growing on me, surprisingly enough. Apparently, we're going to stop working with Scratch today, though.

Yesterday, we played our Senior/Freshman vs. Sophomore/Junior Powderpuff Football Games. It was awesome and super-intense. We won in overtime after a great showing by both teams and the cheerleaders on both sides (although, I must say I was impressed with the Freshmen guys' cheerleading led by Jes Martinez).

Tonight, I'm going to the Reagan game (first football game of the year for me!) and tomorrow, I am going to the UT vs. Tech game with my dad. I'm desperately hoping that we win, especially considering that Tech beat Oklahoma and Oklahoma beat us (three-way tie all over again?). I've been in football withdrawl for the last two weekends because I've been to busy to watch. It's going to be great to watch a bunch of games this weekend.

Adios until next week!

Catching Up

       This week in class I've just been trying to complete the work I missed last week when I went to Colorado. I'm (kind of) close to being done but I should probably come in during lunch or before school one day to work on it. I just keep hoping I can be super-efficient during class and get it all done. The stuff that we're doing on Scratch is not my favorite. It seems so formulaic. The commands are all already written so it seems like I'm not really involved in the process of telling the computer what to do. This also doesn't seem to have a real-life application, like HTML did. I can't make a webpage with Scratch. I can only make a little cat or a flying hippo draw a square or turn in circles.

     This weekend I competed in a regatta with my rowing team and I raced a four and quad. Both boats have four rowers but, in a quad, each rower has two oars and in a four, each rower has one oar. I won my first medals because we got 2nd place in both of my races. The regatta was on Saturday and it was a perfect rowing day: sunny but not hot with barely any wind. Saturday night, the Longhorns had a blowout game against Kansas, which just topped the day off perfectly.

     Yesterday, we carved pumpkins (mine is a Longhorn, believe it or not) in preparation for Halloween tonight. My friend and I are dressing up as Winnie the Pooh and Piglet and yes, we are going trick-or-treating.

Colorado

     I'm in Colorado Springs this weekend visiting Colorado College. The surrounding area and the campus are absolutely gorgeous but the college wasn't my favorite. The people were not nearly as hospitable as the people at Guilford and the campus was more complicated. Despite that though, my dad and I have had a great time hiking some of the trails around here.

    Today we were planning to hike a trail by the Air Force Academy but, once we got there, we found out that the trail had been closed after Bin Laden was killed (not sure why). So we changed our plans and hiked up to this section of amazing rock formations called the Crags. Afterwards, we found a trail that offered some beautiful views of the city and the mountains. We could also see the Garden of the Gods, an group of rock formations that we visited yesterday.

    We are about to head to dinner at a sports bar where we can watch the Rangers in the World Series. Although, given that the score is 5-0 St. Louis right now, it isn't looking like a very good game.

    I'm hoping that I will be able to catch up on the work that I missed during class this week by working super-efficiently. We'll see how that goes!

Birthday Weekend

Yesterday was my 18th birthday and this weekend is filled birthday fun. : )
     Last night my mom agreed to try a new recipe for Broccoli and Mushroom Risotto. (She hates trying new recipes. It stresses her out.) It was absolutely delicious and I have leftovers for lunch today. Yum! After dinner, my sister and I set out to make a gluten-free chocolate cake. We had a few minor mishaps while cooking it but the major (read: hilarious) disaster came when my sister picked up the cake to put in the oven. The pan's removable bottom came out and batter spilled all over her and the floor. After quickly cleaning up/eating batter off the pan and spoons, we decided we had enough ingredients to make another cake. So we did and while it was baking, I opened presents. I got a new Swatch band because mine was broken and a bike rack for my new road bike. But best of all, my mom found Toobers and Zots. I used to play with the foam toys when I was five or six but they were given away in one of our family's purging efforts. I was sure no one sold them anymore but my mom found them and I had absolutely no idea. My dad got a picture of me opening them and the look on my face is priceless. Soon, the cake was done and by 11 PM, we were eating birthday cake.
       Tonight I am going to see Lion King in 3D with my family and my best friend after we eat at Maudie's, one of my favorite restaurants and tomorrow night I have birthday dinner at my grandparents' house. I can't wait to see them because they have been working at a college in Africa since June. They made sure to be home for my 18th birthday, which means a lot to me. It also doesn't hurt that my grandmother is an outstanding cook. : )
     Sunday afternoon some friends are coming to hang out in honor of my birthday and that night, I am going to see the Avett Brothers, one of my favorite bands. We were supposed to see them at the Old Settler's Music Festival in the Spring but the show was rescheduled to this week. It just so happens to be the weekend after my 18th birthday.
    One last exciting tidbit: by tonight, I will have ALL of my college applications submitted!

Three Day Weekend = Happy Katie

    This week in Computer Programming, we continued improving our HTML pages and got started on CSS. I'm enjoying writing the code more than I thought I would, although I do get frustrated when I can't figure out why the page is not doing what I want it to. Usually, I can figure it out eventually but it sometimes takes me awhile. My Longhorn football website is coming along nicely, if I do say so myself.

    I'm excited for this weekend, mostly because it promises plenty of time to sleep and watch copious amounts of football, cook and eat good food with my family and generally relax. I'm especially excited (and nervous) about the UT-OU game. I'm not really expecting to win but I really don't like the idea of losing either. I'm hoping we can at least put up a fight and possibly come out of the Cotton Bowl with an upset.
    I plan on doing little to no homework because, surprisingly enough, that's about how much homework I have right now. I am going to ride my new road bike that I bought Wednesday night. I have searching for the perfect road bike since June and I am ridiculously excited to finally have one. I've been riding it whenever I've had time since Wednesday but that hasn't been too much so I am looking forward to having an hour or so to ride around my neighborhood.

    Also, exciting football news of the day: TCU is (probably and hopefully) coming to the Big 12! Yay!

OU SUCKS! HOOK EM HORNS!
   
   

HTML is Fun. What?! (Also, free weekend!)

When our teacher told us that would start HTML programming (or not programming because apparently HTML is just a markup language. I'm still a little fuzzy on what that means though) this week, I was sure that I would hate it. But once we got started, I really enjoyed typing the code for the titles and paragraphs, images and links in my webpage about the Longhorn football  program. It was much more enjoyable because we were able to make the page about essentially anything we wanted. If we had simply researched that techniques used to make an HTML page, it would have been an incredibly boring lesson. It would also probably have been way less fun to grade.

I pretty much have a free weekend this weekend because there is a regatta in Oklahoma for our rowing team that I am not going to. This means that I get to spend the weekend at home doing whatever I want. :)
On Friday night, my family and I went to see the Princess Bride at the Violet Crown downtown for a surprise birthday party for a woman at my church. I had no idea the theater was there and it was a fantastic place to see a movie.
This morning, my dad and I went for a bike ride in the Greenbelt in the wonderfully fall-like weather. Then we went to the farmers' market to stock up on okra, cucumbers and other produce. I love the farmers' market but I haven't been able to go since school started because of rowing practice on Saturday morning. Tonight we're going to Cuatro's to watch the UT game.
Tomorrow I will be working on college essays, homework, and making enormous amounts of Pumpkin Pie Spice Chex Mix.

I'm off to work some on my college essays!

TED Talks and Problem Solving Activites

      Last Friday when I had, ahem, ACL-istis, the class watched 4 TED talks. I ended up watching them over the course of this week and I thought the most interesting one was the one about hiring hackers. The speaker suggested that companies and the government should put convicted hackers to work.

     Why should the brilliant minds that were able to break through electronic barriers as if they were walls of Legos be wasted in prison? Couldn't we attempt to reform them and use their genius to protect our data online? The government could hire them to secure confidential documents and protect government computers from creative hackers such as themselves. Companies could hire them to help ensure that their customer's data is kept as safe and confidential as possible. They would have to be incredibly cautious that the convicts might build a loophole into the system that only they could crawl through but it is definitely a creative and innovative idea. 

     I think this concept could revolutionize the protection of electronic data. However, while watching this video, I couldn't help thinking that reforming convicted hackers, removing them from jail, and giving them high-profile jobs is essentially rewarding criminal behavior. Sure, they are brilliant and it would be a shame for them to spend their lives in jail but should we also bail particularly creative burglars out of jail to help us engineer home security systems? People who engage in criminal activity need to be punished regardless of their intellect. If the concept of hiring hackers is going to work, there will need to some system in place to ensure that justice is served as well.

     In class this week, we also completed a series of problem solving activities. I enjoyed these activities once we got to the more complicated one about Donald Trump's buildings because they required thought and we could more clearly see the problem solving system we were studying. My group and I got caught up in the easy problems and thought we had solved the final problem in a few seconds. After re-reading the problem, though, we realized that we had oversimplified the problem and we promptly became obsessed with solving it. We were relieved when our teacher revealed the solution because we knew that, if he didn't, we would have wondered about it all weekend. 

    TGIF!

Katie

ACL!!!!

My dad and I started attending ACL my freshman year and we have gone for the past 4 years now. My sister joined us our third year and came again this year. We all have similar music tastes so we usually stick together for most of the weekend so I have come to associate ACL with family time, which is pretty unusual for a teenager.

Each year when the schedule is released, I buy a few albums by a couple artists I think I'll like and by the time the festival rolls around, I am usually obsessed with at least one of them. This year, the band that I looked forward to the most was Head and the Heart. My sister and I camped out at their stage on Sunday morning and were at the front of the crowd. Normally, we don't like to the fight the masses that much but we both loved Head and the Heart and we knew it would be worth it. The show was incredible, especially because we knew all the words and sang along at the top of our lungs.

More than any specific band though, I just love the environment at ACL. There is music playing everywhere and, even if you don't know any of the bands, you'll find something you like. The food is good and there is a wide variety of options. The park is gorgeous and the grass has actually held up well the past two years, solving the dust and mud problems that came up the first two years we went. There's also a sort of community feel that I love. No matter how hot or muddy or rainy it gets, we're all going to stay and listen to music together because we love it that much.

Oops! Forgot to post last week.

Last weekend I was out of town on a college visit and I forgot to post because I was having such a great time!

I went to look at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina and I absolutely loved it. The campus is beyond gorgeous and everyone I met on campus was incredibly friendly. Everyone from the students to the teachers to the president is known by the their first name on campus, a policy stemming from the Quaker value of equality. The school was founded by Quakers in the late 1800s or so but, while the current administration emphasizes Quaker principles, only 9% of the students are Quaker. Coming from a Christian background, I appreciated the religious presence on campus and, on the flip side, coming from a church where it is often assumed that everyone agrees, I appreciated the open-minded attitude on campus.

Another aspect of the campus that I absolutely loved was the 250 acres of wooded area on campus. There is a 2.5 mile trail in the woods and I went running there after spending a day on campus. It was outstandingly beautiful, reminding me of the woods that my family and I would hike through when visiting my grandparents old house in New Jersey. I have missed that house and the surrounding area ever since they moved to Texas so the woods provided a heavy dose of nostalgia for me.

The town of Greensboro is about one-fourth the size of Austin. Its airport has just one baggage claim section and you could drive through town in a little over half an hour. It felt like the perfect size: just rural enough to make me feel confident and comfortable and just big enough to provide a diverse and exciting setting to attend college.

I made a Pro/Con list for Guilford and entirely filled the Pro column before I could come up with a single Con. As you might be able to guess, I would really love to go there.

First Post!

Hello! We're into the rhythm of school enough to start writing blog posts so here we go:

I'm excited about our three day weekend, during which I plan on watching lots of football, getting caught up on homework and working on my college applications. As I write this, I'm watching the Auburn vs. Utah State game which is surprisingly close. It's so great to have football back after a long, sport-less summer. My mom, sister, and I got tickets to go the UT. Rice game this Saturday night and I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully the Longhorns will be able to pull it together enough to win.

Now, let's talk about the class I'm writing this for. I'm actually enjoying Computer Programming much more than I thought I would. I like that we are covering the basics instead of assuming that everyone in the class understands computer lingo. I'm looking forward to understanding more about how to make a computer do what I want it to, as opposed to my usual approach of just having my dad work with technology for me.

I'll sign off now and watch the end of this football game. Hook 'em Horns!