winding down

Set my alarm to wake me 15 minutes earlier than normal today. It backfired, because I just hit the snooze for 30.

Anyway, last Friday at the CIS. Bob K.'s been leaving me time to work on my presentation and stuff, which is good. Pretty much done with my presentation, except for the title, which right now is just "Smith at the CIS." I'm going to talk not just about my research but also about my experience with the internship in general, so I thought a general title would be good, but I guess it wouldn't kill me to come up with something a little more interesting.

Will probably spend most of the day thumbing through the Fiske guide since I've been somewhat neglecting my college search as of late. Wouldn't kill me to knock out a supplement or two either.

(forgive any grammar mistakes or awkwardly-phrased sentences, I don't usually update my blog at 9AM when I'm still half asleep)

the one thing about this lab

is the single window looking out into the hallway. It's irresistible to people walking by. Always looking in to see what's going on inside. What is even the purpose of a window in the middle of a building? Security? There's no window on the other side of the lab...

Look what I found!

I could store a whole Power Point presentation on this bad boy.

Edit:  I got pretty excited over this. Haven't seen one since I was five. I got so excited that I went on Newegg and ordered myself a box of fifty. Not a clue what I'll do with them, but there's an ancient box sitting in my dad's basement somewhere that's begging to have the floppy drive taken out of it.

August 15

Worked on presentation and a Sudoku algorithm I thought of.

August 12

REU presentations were today. Saw a few, including, of course, Matt's. They were good. Matt's going back to Notre Dame now, and he's the only other guy working in my lab about 90% of the time, so I guess I now have the place to myself . A little quiet around here now, but I get his chair.

August 10 - August 11

Wednesday: There was a cookout near one of the science buildings today. Free food is always good. Beside that, worked on presentation, college essays, and a cool algorithm I thought of to solve Sudoku puzzles with.

Thursday: Field trip to Melles Griot. They're a bit like RPO in that they produce lenses, but they're more specialized. And there was free food after.

Really, if I had to talk to any prospective intern about the perks of this job, I'd be remiss in not mentioning the fact that there's almost always opportunities for free food. I'm typing this on Monday, and right now the lunch box I brought in last Monday is still sitting in a fridge on the second floor.

Day ?? (August 9)

I no longer feel like keeping track of days.

Today, went to use the wind tunnel in a building I can't recall the name of to test some sensors Matt worked on for a fire-tracking device (he'll be doing a presentation on this on Friday at 4:15, which, if you're reading this post, is today). Wherever we were, it was cool. After we were done with using the wind tunnel, we explored a bit and people we had never met were excited to let us into their labs and show us what they were working on. Cool day.