Okay that would be awesome.

Anyway,

This week has been a busy week for everyone, for some reason or another. It seems several people I know or relatives of people I know are ill or injured, and so I would like to take this beginning-of-post opportunity to wish all of those folks well.

Also, there has been insane levels of work (at least on my end, and I know with other folks) being put into school. Around this time you get the whole ‘when is this term over’ feeling, and I once complained (unnecessarily loudly, I’ll admit) about how glad I was that the break was coming up (at that time) in three weeks. And he argued (correctly, I feel) that I would feel that way regardless of whether it had been the seventh week of a ten week term or the twelfth week of a fifteen week term. But still, the end looms in sight.

And that marks the end of serious time.

In other news, I have recently been speaking with one of my professors to try and develop my Senior Honors Thesis, which (I hope) will end up being a game. I wasn’t sure if that would end up being acceptable, but I took a brief look at the kinds of theses we have in our library (we house them all for mildly clueless people like myself). And there was a masters thesis (I wasn’t paying attention to what kinds of theses I was looking at) that was simply the user interface to a computer game, so I figure if I step down the level of seriousness -Senior Honors Thesis instead of masters thesis- and step up the level of complexity (I assume, of course, since I did not fully read and therefore cannot fully appreciate the student’s thesis) -by making a complete, or relatively complete, game instead of just the interface to one- we should be good. This is all hope and speculation of course. Nothing has yet been submitted. When everything is set up, though, I would like to describe some of my ideas.

On….. um… Wednesday? Some friends and I watched the lunar eclipse, which was really cool. Of course, it was also extremely cold – so much so that my camera would continually say that my brand new batteries were dead. But we had a lot of fun, and for you, I have a picture!
So take that.

Though a note for any of you stargazing folks out there. I don’t know what possessed me to listen to the news people when they said the time of the eclipse, because, as an astronomical event, it took like 45 minutes to get any really nifty shots.

And finally, this Saturday was the Cardinals on Wheels Chicago Symphony Orchestra trip. We had fewer people go than we had planned, and that was mildly disappointing, but that was due to about a hundred thousand things going slightly awry. But we had a small, devoted group, that was really excited to go and that had a lot of fun.
As for the performance, it was amazing. Really amazing. There was this featured solo pianist who was essentially the epitome of incredible. She was a very small older woman who would play the piano incredibly smoothly in some places, and in others slammed on the keys such that her hair would bounce. She was intense.
And a picture from before we left.

Hi folks,

So a quick post, but action packed!
This past week was quite challenging, as a couple of projects were due that involved some nifty but complicated data structures (one of which was a quad tree – think binary tree with four kids per node). On Friday the 8^th Cardinals on Wheels had our Winter Party, during which we had folks eat food and make No-Sew blankets to a donate to an organization called Project Linus. Project Linus, for those of you who don’t know, is non-for-profit organization that donates blankets to children with serious illnesses or who have recently lost a parent. So we had a ton of people put together these blankets, and I was able to drop them off to the Project Linus folks this last Saturday.
Next weekend looks to be really exciting for COW as well, because we are going to travel to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And though we originally budgeted for the cheapest (and therefore most distant) seats possible, they ended up upgrading us to the main floor, which means we skipped another level of distance in-between. So exciting.

And also, this Friday I received a letter from the Office of International Programs, and I was accepted into the China / Japan study abroad program. I am really happy I was accepted, and so more updates on that as they progress.

And for now, that’s all.

I would like to announce that I’m bad at the ’subject line,’ let alone the ‘title.’
I suppose, writing creatively, I’m not terrible at creating titles, but there’s a process involved therein. When I write an email, nine times out of ten, I write it, look up at the subject line, and stare blankly for another five minutes. I guess I’m just really bad at them. And so it goes with blog titles! At least for now.

Finals are drawing ridiculously near at a speed that (you’d think) would need a lot of funky exponents to express. And while I am concerned, of course, I think that everything will turn out all right. Well, that’s the hope. But enough about the future!

A couple of significant things have happened since my last post (well, to me anyway). The first of which was Trick or Treat for the Homeless (see below post for an explanation on the event) which was last Wednesday night. It went really well, I thought, and I know a lot of people had fun. We got a lot of food to donate, and when I went to drop everything off (the first trip) the folks at Loaves and Fishes were really happy. Coincidentally, Loaves and Fishes is where I and my CREW went for North Central’s Into the Streets program during Welcome Week, so it was doubly nice to see some friendly faces again.

The other major thing (non-academic) that was weighing on my mind was the meeting of Finance Committee, where student organizations present their next term budgets to the FC (in the hopes of being funded). COW presented our budget, and while some things were cut (Finance Committee can’t give everyone everything) we kept our cooler events, including Laser Tag and a trip to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Taking folks to the CSO (keeping up with the acronyms? They get brutal) is a new idea this year, so I’m hoping it goes over well.

Also, as I did mention I have an interest in photography, I figured a weekly picture would be a neat element. You know, so that no one calls me a thief, or liar, or demands that I spend an eternity on this ship (catch all the references there?).

So, weekly picture 1.