Final Blog Post!

When I signed up for Computer Programming last year, I was not excited about it. I was fully prepared to hate every second of the class in exchange for the Technology credit that I needed to graduate. I had been postponing taking the necessary class for three years and it was finally time to face the dreariness and boredom in a room full of computers. I was happily surprised, to say the least. While I can’t say that Programming has been my favorite class this year, I have enjoyed it considerably more than I thought I would.
My first shock came when I found that I enjoyed the short HTML unit we completed at the beginning of the year. I was impressed that I could so easily manipulate what appeared on a web browser, adding images and labels, paragraphs and colored backgrounds. I made a website about Longhorn football, similar to the Android app I am creating for the final, and I had fun with it. Who could have guessed?
I seem to remember doing something between HTML and Jeroo but Jeroo is the next thing that I can actually visualize. Although it was frustrating at times, Jeroo was definitely my favorite unit of the year. The frustration that I felt with Jeroo was similar to the irritation that I feel when trying to complete a puzzle. I separate the corners and the side pieces out from the the middle pieces and go to work. I complete the easy parts quickly and then oscillate between wanting to give up and wanting to keep working until there are just a few pieces left on the table and I can see the picture forming. I often threaten to give up numerous times, just like I did with Jeroo, but when I see the completed image before me, formed from seemingly innumerable tiny snapshots, it feels immensely rewarding. This is the same way that I felt whenever I finally completed a Jeroo lab. Seeing the little triangle, which I had become attached to over the course of the lab (naming them and watching them die so many times can get depressing), complete its mission safely made me so proud that I often forgot I was supposed to be hating this class.
After Jeroo, we moved on to Python. As I have said in some of my blog posts, I haven’t enjoyed Python as much as Jeroo. Although it has a similar puzzle-like quality, I miss the images associated with Jeroo. It is still rewarding to see a page full of working code not followed by a red error message at the bottom but not quite as rewarding as seeing my little triangle friend save the Princess with his net-destroying flowers.
Recently, we have been completing labs on App Inventor, which I honestly haven’t gotten very much out of. I have a feeling that this is more due to my intense senioritis, which is in full-force by the time I get to last period Programming, than a fault of the program. That said, I still think that creating usable apps for Android phones is a really cool idea and I have become somewhat invested in my final project quiz app about Longhorn football. I am looking forward to finishing it during the final period and being done with high school (did you hear that? Done with high school. Wow.)
One of the most surprising elements of this class has been the writing and reflection. I was not expecting to be writing blog posts for my Technology credit or doing reading reflections on current technology-centric topics and I have thoroughly appreciated this unconventional approach. Writing weekly blog posts has been my favorite part of the class because informal writing is one of my favorite pastimes. I also appreciate how the writing assignments balance out the ease of the class for us Liberal Artsy types. The computer lab parts of the class may not be so easy for us but at least the writing parts are a cinch.
Overall, I have enjoyed this class significantly more than I expected to. The writing assignments and the puzzle-like qualities of the labs roused my interests and I made it through the rest. Thanks Mr. Stephens!

Second to Last Blog Post

I have one more full day of high school. WHOA.

I have been alternating between a strange serenity and an increasingly familiar feeling of panic about leaving home. I am a home-body, incredibly nostalgic and resistant to change. I am not excited about moving "out of the house" or "away from my family." Those two repercussions are going to be the absolute worst part of going to college for me. I hate the idea of leaving my parents and sister and dog behind in the house that I have grown up in while I explore some foreign land without them. But, at the same time, I feel that this is the right decision. I have always known I wanted to go out-of-state for college and I have always dreaded it. The adjustment will be difficult and depressing but I still feel that it is the best choice. I can't really put my reasoning into words but something my mom said this weekend really resonated with and comforted me. 

She remembered when I heard a presentation in 5th grade about Kealing and I came home excited about the idea of going there. My mom was completely prepared for me to go to O. Henry. She knew which teachers I would want, which parents would be on PTA with her, which classes are the best. And she had never heard of Kealing. Once I had decided I wanted to go to Kealing, I never looked back and, as my mom put it, "I loved the adventure." I think going to Guilford will be different in some ways. I am sure I will doubt my choice for awhile. I will probably be tempted to catch the first flight home a few times but I think the outcome will be the same. I will trust my intuition and survive my freshman year. I will gain an independence I couldn't have from Texas and I'm sure I'll benefit in ways I can't imagine now. I will love the adventure.

I just need to work up the courage to take off.

It's Thursday!

Well, really it's Tuesday but being a Senior has certain benefits, one being that I get half days on Thursday and Friday. These quickly became off days once I found out that I wouldn't have Calculus, which, let's be honest, is the main reason I come to school now.

This weekend, I have a regatta and it is going to consume all of Saturday and Sunday. I have to be at the race course at 6 AM on Saturday and I am racing at 7:07 AM. Unless I make finals in that race (which is highly unlikely), I will have absolutely nothing else to do for the rest of the day but I have to stay until 5:30 or so. Sunday should be slightly better because I don't have to show up until 8 AM and I am racing at 9:30. Then I have to wait until 5 or 6 to row boats down to TRC. The fact that my weekend will be eaten by a regatta definitely influenced my decision to be sick on Thursday and Friday.

On a completely different note, we finished the Litmag this morning! It's been almost done for a week now but we've been editing and editing and then editing some more to try and prevent finding errors once it's printed. I'm still scared that we will have missed a comma or a colon, or used the wrong "too"/"to"/"two" somewhere but it does have to go to the printer eventually.

Yay for three-day weeks!

Forgot My Blog Post For Last Week

Last weekend was fairly busy. I performed at Coffeehouse on Friday night. I think my guitar sounded off, not loud enough and/or not perfectly in tune, but I've been told it sounded good and I'm not too worried about it. Saturday was a long day. I woke up early (for a Saturday) and went to the Farmers' Markets before practice because my mom, who normally shops for us, was at a baby shower. Then I went to a lovely rowing practice. The weather is so fantastic right now, perfectly sunny and wind-less and rain-less. I don't want the triple-digit days to come. After practice my mom, sister, and I went to the Old Settler's Music Festival to hear some good old bluegrass music, along with two of our favorite artists: Sarah Jarosz and Bob Schneider. The concerts were great, although we got too cold and tired to stay for Iron & Wine's concert at the end of the day.

On Sunday, I had lifeguard training at Lifetime Fitness, where I am hoping to work this summer. I worked there last summer and I have an official interview tomorrow. I'm pretty nervous because if I don't get this job, I have no idea what I am going to do for money this summer and next year at college. The aquatics supervisor introduced me as "Katie, who will be lifeguarding with us this summer" on Sunday so I am mainly just trying not to get overconfident.

As for classwork, I'm enjoying the labs well-enough. They're kind of like logic puzzles, which I like to a certain extent but usually frustrate me too much before I finish them. The labs work much better when I work with the people around me. Between the three of us, we can usually avoid most of the common error.

I'm beginning to get excited for graduation, still astronomically nervous about leaving home but excited to be done with waking up at 6AM and spending 7 hours in the same building. 

Good day

      All week I have been waking up feeling horrible. Not sick or anything like that. It was more like I just wanted to climb back into bed and never get up. That feeling kept lasting longer and longer into the day and it was starting to worry me. Then yesterday I woke up in a wonderful mood for no apparent reason. Ironically, I was going to see the doctor that day to discuss the issue, among others. I was in a great mood until I got to the doctor's office and she said I should get my blood drawn, which bumped it down to an average mood. The nurse who took my blood was either completely incompetent or my veins were incredibly hard to find, and her bedside manner also left something to be desired.
    Anyways, I left the doctor with absolutely no answers. I know doctors aren't omniscient and, on the whole, I am glad that they don't act like they are. But yesterday, I really just wanted her to take one look at me and say something like "Wow, your 'insert hormone here' levels are severely low! I happen to have some supplement right here. Why don't I give you some and see how you feel in 10 minutes?" It didn't quite happen like that.
    I woke up this morning in an awful mood again. I was worried that my blood results would come back normal. If they did, I would be back at square one and I wasn't entirely sure I could handle that. But they didn't! My mom texted me during first period and said my thyroid levels has come back low. I am already on thyroid supplement so I just have to increase my dosage and hopefully things will get better. So that's kind of defined my week and put me a very good mood today.

   As for computer programming, I just finished Lab 8. Yay! It's so nice to see all the blue results, uninterrupted by red error messages. I was getting a little frustrated with the lab towards the end. Lists within lists make my head hurt like Inception. But it worked so I feel accomplished.

Second Weekend of Spring Break and Hunger Games

       Last weekend was the end of Spring Break and on Thursday and Friday, my family and I went to Auditorium Shores to see The Shins and Counting Crows, respectively. We also saw one of our favorite bands, Hey Marseilles, on Thursday afternoon and twice on Saturday. They were all great concerts and Saturday night around 8 PM we arrived home content with our SXSW. And my mom checked our message machine. Our neighbor had called to inform us that she had two free tickets to see Mumford & Sons play at the LBJ lawn on UT campus. The concert would follow a documentary about their Railroad Revival concert series. The documentary had started at 8 so my sister and I urgently begged our dad to let us use the tickets instead of him (our reasoning being that whichever sister got to go would be murdered by the other one) and rushed around the house getting ready to leave again. My mom drove us to the lawn and we hurried by the long line of people without tickets waiting to get in and exchanged our tickets for entry. We sat on the lawn until the movie ended and we listened respectfully as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros played and when Mumford & Sons came out we were beside ourselves with excitement. The concert was fantastic and I'm still kind of in awe of the fact that we got to go. The band is from London and they have come to Austin twice since I first heard them but I had never been able to get or afford tickets. Getting the opportunity to see them for free was outstandingly amazing.

Speaking of outstandingly amazing: HUNGER GAMES.
My friends and I went to the midnight premiere last night and it was great. We got to the theater two hours before the movie started and the theater we were supposed to be in was pretty much completely full so we took initiative and switched theaters. The movie was a wonderful representation of the book, which I am now re-reading so that I can go re-watch the movie with the book fresh on my mind. I got the most sleep out of all my friends last night and I am still ridiculously tired. I keep forgetting things or making absolutely no sense when I talk. My attempt to do Calculus homework at lunch today was a complete flop because I couldn't keep my thoughts straight. But, of course, it was completely worth it.

Blog Post #.....?

I really like what we've been doing in class lately. I forgot if it has a specific name but it's cool to be able to see how what we're learning could be used to do something useful.

Last week was Spring Break but it feels like way more than a week ago. The first weekend, my family and I have to leave Friday morning for Dallas to see my cousin who was in the hospital. She had double pneumonia, which is apparently normal pneumonia but really really really bad. On Wednesday night, she went into respiratory arrest and has a really close call. Everyone there (her mom, dad and three sisters) were pretty emotionally drained when we got there around noon on Friday. My cousin, Alaina, was completely sedated and on a ventilator. On Saturday, the doctors started weening her off the sedation and she woke up enough to smile when we sang her "Soft Kitty" (Big Bang Theory reference #1). We stayed until Sunday morning, when she woke up enough for us to have a one-way conversation with her. She had about a million tubes coming out of her still but she could smile and nod in response to our comments. We were able to explain to her what had happened and she seemed calm enough. Although, her heart rate when way up when we started playing Jonas Brothers for her because she got too excited (she's 20 but they're still one of her favorite bands).

We talked to her over Skype on Sunday and she was recovering well at home. They got a puppy last week and named it Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang Theory #2). It was so nice to see her talking and in normal clothes instead of a hospital gown.

Sleepless Weekend Ahead

In class we have been working with the Finch robots. I like working with them because it reminds me of Jeroo in that we can see the effects of our code in a tangible way. However, it was frustrating today when we were trying to get it travel in a circle because it is not as precise as Jeroo. It would turn a different amount each time, even though the code was the same and it kept running into things. But after we realized that we didn't really need to do that, it got better and we read a very interesting article about Target predicting pregnancies. I had read the full article in the New York Times earlier this week and I enjoyed writing a reading reflection about it.

I am looking forward to a weekend of no sleep. Tonight I will be going to row boats down from the dock to the race course for our regatta this weekend. Then we have a team dinner for rowing, for which I spent an hour and half making Portuguese rice last night.
Tomorrow morning I will be at the race course at 6:30 AM where I will weigh-in and then promptly lay down in my sleeping bag again. I am racing a double at 9:55 and a single at 10:50, which is the order I was hoping for. It is apparently supposed to be very windy tomorrow morning which is horrible for rowing so I want to be done after my single race. Honestly, I will be happy as long as I don't flip my single. I am pretty much expecting to come in last in both races and then I will be pleasantly surprised if I do better.
As soon as I am done racing, I will be driving out a church retreat in Llano. I'll spend the night there (aka barely get any sleep) and then come home, where I will probably go for a hike or something before falling onto the couch to watch a movie or Big Bang Theory or Seinfeld. It should be a fun weekend although I can't imagine how I will stay awake for all of my classes on Monday.

4 day weekend.... last weekend

       Last weekend was our four day weekend and it was fantastic. All of last week I looked forward to Friday and it was perfect, as expected. I slept in and when I woke up, I rolled back over and fell asleep again. After repeating this until I started feeling antsy, I got up and went for a walk before eating breakfast/lunch and watching Big Bang Theory for a few hours. Then, I went to get a much-needed haircut before going for a lovely row in the rain. We're not supposed to be on the water when it is thundering or lightening-ing but it was just sprinkling while I was out. I love rowing in the rain because no one else is on the water and you can see the raindrops making tiny splashes in the water all around you. It was especially nice because we didn't technically have practice so I could go at my own pace.
       Then my family and I went to dinner at my Grandparents' house and my Grandmother and I researched cruises. We decided to postpone our trip to the summer after my freshmen year of college so that I could spend this summer at home and we chose which cruise we'll be going on. It starts in Venice, where we will stay for a day or two, and goes to 5 other cities before docking in Rome, where we will also spend a few days. After staying in Rome, we will take a train to Naples and, from there, we will go to Pompeii. This is what sold me on the cruise. Seeing Rome and Venice and the cities in between sounded amazing but getting to see Pompeii sounds especially exciting to me. I have watched documentaries about Pompeii and seeing the remains of the people who died while being covered in lava sounds interesting and profound. I can't wait. Too bad we postponed the cruise until next summer.

Finished Project 2!

        I just emailed the finished project 2 to your specific email and it feels great to have it done. To be completely honest, I am also getting a disproportionate amount of satisfaction out of finishing before the freshmen guys who act like computer programming is their greatest passion.

       Mr. Davis made my day today by putting me in our BC Calculus quiz. I was baking pies at a certain rate and David was eating them at a different rate and I have gotten a lot of comments today about how many pies I made and what type they were. According to David, they were all pecan because that is apparently the best pie (I think some were blueberry and apple though). I am thinking I will make Mr. Davis a pie at the end of the year to commemorate him actually teaching me calculus (and hopefully getting me a 5 on the AP). I think he likes cherry pie but I have never eaten nor made cherry pie so I'll have to learn online.

      This weekend my rowing team has a scrimmage against our rival team and a team that has flown in from Boston. It is a sort of informal regatta. The score don't really matter but it will be some good low-pressure practice racing for us. I am racing a double (two people, each with two oars) and a quad (four people, each with two oars). I have been in practicing a single a lot lately though because I will be racing one for the first time next weekend. It feels like the practice has been helping. I've felt a lot more comfortable in a single than I have in the past. Hopefully racing goes well this weekend!

I am sick and I am going to complain about it.

I have been dragging myself through school all day today because I woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose. Since I was on the border of being too sick to go school, I decided to show up since it was a late start and I had a fair amount to do today. However, around 6th period I started feeling worse so I have been trying to will the clock to move faster since then. Of course, I am signed up to volunteer after school today and there are only a few people going so I feel obligated to go to that too. I am sure it will seem like much longer than the four hours it will actually be. I think I will be greeting people and serving them food so hopefully don't get whatever I have.

As far as this class goes, I am thoroughly stuck on python lab 5 even though I did the prelab. I am hoping it is because I don't feel great but I am fairly certain I will be just as lost next time I open the program. Translation: I need help Mr. Stephens!

Weekend on Its Way

As far as classwork goes, I am still not enjoying Python very much. It is getting better as I practice and I can see that is would have more practical applications than Jeroo but I still liked Jeroo better. I get resentful when something in my program runs wrong and I have to hunt through my code for a minuscule error. It also feels less rewarding when I finally finish a program because I don't get to watch it happen. Long story short: I miss Jeroo.

I am not too busy this weekend. Saturday morning at rowing practice we will be doing a "Quadathalon." This will be my first one but apparently the whole team dreads it year-round. First, we'll erg two kilometers. Everyone hates erging so this is definitely the hardest part. We normally erg 2ks but we don't usually follow them up with the rest of the "Quadathalon." If we meet the goal time that our coach sets for us in our 2k, then we move on to the 3.5 mile run. However, if we don't meet the time, we have to do a certain number of box-jumps for each second we go over before setting out on our run. After we finish the run, we do 40 pull-ups and then collapse and get water.


After I get through that part of my weekend, the rest will be a blast. Saturday night, my family and I are going to a concert at One World Theater. Three or four of our favorite artists will be performing but I have actually forgotten who they are. Oops.

On Sunday I will be going football-less. : (
I'll just have to fill my time with something else.

iPhone Time!

In class, we have switched to Python from Jeroo and I am finding myself missing Jeroo. I liked the images that Jeroo generated that showed my progress. It felt like I was playing a game or working through puzzles, whereas Python seems more mechanical. I imagine that Python is closer to what the men who sit in cubicles and work on computers all day are typing. There isn't really that interesting puzzle-like component.


I recently got an iPhone 4s and I am completely addicted to it. I listen to music on the bus and check my email and Facebook and read the New York Times. I play Temple Run and Nertz when I have free time and I can easily check the weather in the morning in the couple of minutes I have to get dressed. I love not having to remember to bring my phone and my iPod everywhere with me and I love that my phone and Ipod are both charged overnight in my iHome. I never need to worry about them dying while I am at school.
My mom, sister, and I all got iPhones at the same time and the guy that sold them to us recommended the Otterbox cases. We all got different colors and I got yellow. It helps me keep track of my phone and prevents the screen from cracking every time I drop it.

My mom is convinced that she has "created monsters" because we use our iPhones so much but I choose to think of it as improving our ability to connect with the world, rather than deteriorating it.