My journey begins...
I left my house for Baltimore-Washington Int'l Airport (BWI) at 4:30 a.m (ET)...(yes, you heard me correctly...4:30 a.m.!!!) ...because my flight was schedule to leave at 6:10 a.m. (ET) After I checked my bags and made it through the security screening safely, I boarded the plane headed for Denver, Colorado (my connection to Orange County, California (OC)). The flight was great...mainly because I fell asleep before the thing even took off and woke up after the pilot made the announcement that we had landed. We had an hour lay-over in Denver so I decided to wander the airport aimlessly while I looked for somewhere to get coffee...mmmm, coffee. Denver was nice (what do you expect me to say...all I saw of Denver was the inside of the airport). I re-boarded the plane and fell back asleep watching the in-flight movie. I woke up as we were flying over the Grand Canyon. It was beautiful! I've never seen anything like it in my life. Shortly after we landed at John Wayne Airport (SNA) at 10:00 a.m. (PT). I waited patiently for my luggage at baggage claim. I think it took longer to get my luggage then it did to fly from Maryland to California (just kidding). Finally!!! I had arrived!!! I made it safely to my temporary living quarters which was 1 mile from the airport and 2 miles from UC Irvine, where I'll be working. It's nice...I'm right <smack> in the middle of everything. I'm 8 miles from Disneyland, 5-10 miles from every beach, and 3 miles from the mall. The bus stop is even across the street. I will only be staying here, however, until June 23. Then I will move into my mentor's home while she is away on a business trip. I even get to watch her two cats...that's going to be fun because I love animals...it'll give me someone to talk to. My first day of work was Monday. I arrived on campus Monday morning for a meeting with my mentor, Gloria Mark. Gloria's a sweet lady. She took me on a brief tour of the Information and Computer Science (ICS) portion of campus, showed me the office that I would be working from and gave me a key to the main building and my office. She had classes all afternoon, so I wandered around campus getting a feel for my environment until our next meeting. During this meeting, I met the graduate student that Gloria has been working with on the research project, Victor Gonzalez. Victor is a nice guy. He has been working very hard at collecting all of the data for the project. After my series of meetings Monday I returned home and fell asleep...who knew this daylight savings time thing would have such an great affect on me. On Tuesday I was invited to attend a graduate forum. I walked around and viewed the various graduate research projects at UCI and spoke to some of the students. Later I reviewed the data that Victor had collected and sent to me. I began to do a little research on various software that produced graphical data visualizations. On Wednesday I met with Gloria and Victor to discuss the types of visualizations that I could produce based on the data. On Thursday I began to play around with the data and various software to see the different visualizations. I then decided to take a tour of the University Center and University Plaza. UCI is a big campus. Their University Center is almost the size of UMBC's main campus...wow! A nice change of pace from UMBC. On Friday I met with Gloria and Victor to discuss the progress I had made so far and to do some further brainstorming. Things are coming along well considering that this is my first week. So far...I'm having a great time. On Saturday I took a trip to South Coast Plaza, the local mall, and did a "little" shopping. Then I decided to go to Huntington Beach...why?...because I can... and it's only 5 miles away, so why not? It has been a great first week...=D
Feeling more at home now during my second week...
Some of my friends who are at various University of California campuses performing their own research this summer are planning a trip to Las Vegas. I'm excited!!! Hopefully, my brother will fly out here and join us. On Monday I had a meeting with Gloria and Victor to update them on my progress. Gloria thought it would be beneficial for Victor and I to work together to solidify definitions for the analyzed data. After that I will be able to do some independent verification and finish the analysis that I have completed thus far. On Tuesday I continued coding the data. There are approximately 10,000 entries that I need to walk through on a case-by-case basis in order to perform the analysis, so it's going to take a while. On Wednesday I met with Gloria and Victor to discuss my progress and possible software to use to represent my results. Thursday...still coding...On Friday, two of my friends from UMBC came to the OC to see me. Mark and Ben are traveling across the country this summer...how cool is that?! That evening we went to Laguna Beach to explore the seaside. We walked along the beach, but it was high-tide so our pant legs got a little wet. We were in search of a bar (somewhere we could sit, eat, and drink). We asked some of the locals and they recommended the Laguna Beach Brewing Company. It was nice. We ran up quite a check...but who cares, we were having a great time. On our way back home, we decided that we wanted to go see Dodgeball the movie. By the time we "found" a movie theater in the area, the theater was closed. Everything in California closes early on the weekend (including Fridays)...who knew? Saturday morning we decided to drive the hour and a half to San Diego to go and see my friend Jennifer who is doing research at UC, San Diego. We arrived in San Diego a little early (we had to wait for Jennifer to come home), so we went to the beach, watched the seals, and looked for a bar...are you beginning to see a pattern? We went to Moondoggies. The bartender was really nice and gave us some great tips for our stay in San Diego. He told us to go to the Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego. That evening we went downtown and as soon as we found parking the strangest thing happened (it was probably the highlight of our evening)...400-500 people in red dresses (MEN and women), who from this point forward will be referred to as the "Red People", were running around the blocks of downtown screaming and yelling. Traffic stopped and the pedestrians on the sidewalks parted like the Red Sea so these people could run by. We didn't have a clue what was going on...just then, Mark yells to Ben and I to run with them. So we started running...why not? We asked some of the "Red People" what they were running and yelling for. They said that it was a fundraiser and if they made it from point A to point B, they would get free beer...LOL...(hey, you would be running too...) We left the "Red People" and ran into a bicycle taxi driver. We chatted with him for a while and then asked him where we could find a...what?...that's right, a bar (what do you expect when I'm hanging out with two frat boys?). He recommended the Star Bar--a true dive bar that was on the Maxim Magazine list for top bars in the U.S...it's been called the "greatest secret of downtown San Diego"...shhhh, don't tell anyone. It was an interesting place...but the drinks were really cheap and really strong, so we had a great time. We met this guy who was stationed in San Diego with the Navy. He was from Baltimore. So we ended up talking to this guy all night while he bought ALL OF US drinks. The weekend of partying was officially over and we returned to the OC...I slept the whole way on the ride back...GOOD TIMES...oooh yeaaah!!!
The "Farm Boy Tour"...coming to a city near you!!!
Not a lot happened this week. I met with Gloria and Victor on Monday to discuss what I would be working on for the remainder of the summer. Then Gloria invited me to dinner and showed me around her home. On Wednesday I moved into Gloria's home and got settled. I worked all day Thursday and Friday and finished coding the data. All finished, yay! On Saturday I went to the pool. That about wraps up this week. Till next time...
On Sunday I went to go see Fahrenheit 9/11 at Edwards University Town Center. It was supposed to be a documentary. A "true" documentary is supposed to be unbiased, however this film was not. It was still a good movie though. On Monday, I began the statistical analysis of the code. On Tuesday...still analyzing code. On Wednesday...yup, still analyzing... On Thursday, I met with Victor to update him on my progress and to discuss the statistical analysis of the code. On Friday I continued with the statistical analysis...this will also take a while, which is fine because Victor is currently working on more code as well. On Saturday I thought about going to San Diego to visit my friend Jennifer again for the holiday weekend, but we decided that we should wait until we both had a "whole" weekend off to plan a lot of fun stuff to do. So on Saturday I went to the University Center and visited the rest of the stores that I hadn't seen previously (it's a really big place). I also went to the Irvine Spectrum Center, which is another local mall. I went and saw Spiderman 2, which was awesome, and had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory...mmm.
Happy 4th of July!!!
I went to the beach to watch the fireworks. It was beautiful. On Monday I worked on the statistical analysis of the data. I'm almost at the half-way point, whew! On Tuesday I met with Victor to show him the statistics that I've calculated so far. He told me that he spoke to a manager at one of the companies he collected data for and that I can go sometime next week to see how the data was collected. After work I went swimming, it was a beautiful day. On Wednesday I worked from home while doing laundry and cleaning up (multi-tasking at its best). My brother came to visit, so I picked him up from the airport early Thursday morning (he had the same flight I did...poor thing). We went to Laguna Beach and went swimming. We woke up early Friday morning and drove to Las Vegas for the weekend (I finally have a car...yay!) We stayed at the Excalibur, which is really cool because it looks like a castle and it is right <smack> in the middle of the strip. It was 100 degrees that day, so we explored our hotel hit the casino. The trip was a success...I won $250. Later that evening we walked strip (well, half anyway) and went to the Bellagio to watch the water show. It was really nice and the weather had cooled off, so we weren't dying out there. Saturday morning we checked out and walked the other half of the strip. It was 102 degrees...I thought I was going to melt. We went to the Mandalay Bay and visited the Shark Reef (something my brother wanted to do). We left Las Vegas and headed home, but not before stopping by the outlet malls on the way. After a "little" shopping...hehe...we went home and took a nap that lasted until the next day.
For pictures of my trip to Las Vegas.
On Sunday, my brother and I went to San Diego. We went to the beach and watched the seals. We took a trip to downtown San Diego and went shopping. On Monday, we took a day off from all of the excitement and went to the mall. We saw Anchorman (not my choice), it was O.K., then we went to CPK for dinner since it was my brother last day in California. Tuesday morning...early Tuesday morning, I took my brother to the airport for his flight home. Then I came home and worked for the rest of the day. On Wednesday, I met with Victor so he could show me how he collected the data. He contacted a manager from State Street and on Thursday I went to observe him and collect my own data. It was fun. Friday was my birthday!!! My friend came to visit and we went out to dinner and saw I, Robot. It was really good, but I couldn't help but think what if our everyday electronics had an artificial intelligence. I'm going to be cautious the next time I use something as simple as a coffee pot, wouldn't you be?...just kidding. On Saturday we went to Hollywood. We visited Grauman's Chinese Theater, the Kodak Theater, the Walk of Fame, and Universal Studios. We also saw the Hollywood sign. It was a nice weekend, but I was exhausted by Sunday.
For pictures of my trip to Hollywood.
After a busy weekend, it was back to work as usual. On Monday I completed the statistical analysis of my data and met with Victor to talk about my visit at State Street. Victor gave me more data for coding and analysis and I began the visualizations for the statistics that I just completed. Only 3 weeks left, and there is still a lot of work to be done. On Tuesday and Wednesday I worked on the visualizations and tried to figure out a "clean" way to display all of the data. I also started coding the new data Victor gave me. On Thursday I continued coding the new data and began working on my final report based on the information I've collected thus far. On Friday I met with Victor and showed him the statistics and code that I had completed so far. The more we talked the more analysis we found that could be done. After the meeting I began to do more extensive analysis of the completed code. We are finding some interesting things about the way people in the information technology field work. You'll have to wait for the final report to see what we found. I spent Saturday relaxing...it was nice...
I spent Sunday pulling together my findings for my meeting with Victor on Monday. After looking at the analysis that I had done, we found even more analysis that could be done. I spent the rest of the morning working on the extensive analysis. That same day I met two other dmp participants for lunch ( Padmini Nagaraj and Laura Beck). On Tuesday, Gloria's husband and her two kids came back from Europe. The kids were pretty jet-lagged so we spent most of the week watching movies while they slept on the sofa. Victor sent me the rest of the data on Thursday so I began to code and continue my analysis. On Friday, I met with Victor and another graduate student, Justin. Justin went to UMBC also. He is going to be helping me and Victor with the research. Also, that day Gloria returned from Europe. Saturday was Gloria's birthday. We went to the beach and had dinner. It was really nice. Back to work Monday...I can't believe I only have 2 weeks left!!!
On Sunday I relaxed and prepared myself for a very busy week. On Monday I spent the day coding like a "mad woman". I'm trying to have my project 99% finished by Friday. I also met with Gloria and showed her my progress and discussed what else could be done. We came up with a lot of different analysis we could run. There is really a "gold mine" of information. I also met with Justin to help him understand the project. On Tuesday, I managed to finish 80% of my project. I also met with Gloria, Victor, and Justin to discuss the progress in the research and what other projects can be developed from the data. Justin is going to be reviewing my code and helping me with the analysis. They say "two heads are better than one". As of Wednesday, I am 90% finished...right on schedule!!! Justin and I have been working really well together. Things are coming along nicely. I finished everything that I wanted to get done by Friday. So, so, so happy. We met Friday and talked about visualizing the results. Due to the amount of data we have, the variations on visualizations is endless. On Saturday, since it was my last "true" Saturday, I went to the beach one last time.
I spent Sunday enjoying my last weekend in California. On Monday I met with Gloria, Victor, and Justin to discuss what further analysis could be done. We looked at the analysis that had been done previously and found some very interesting findings. We saw an area that still needed to be coded. Justin and I split up the task so it didn't take us long to complete. We worked diligently until we completed the coding and met Thursday to go over our new findings. I continued to map the data. As of Friday, I have completed everything that I hoped to complete this summer. On Friday, I had my last meeting and was also invited to lunch by the Dean. I met with my co-workers mid-day for a farewell coffee break...LOL...and had dinner with Gloria and her family that night. My last day in California was Saturday, I had to wake up soooooo early because my flight left at 8:20 am. Maryland here I come!!!
Farewell California!!!
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L. Strang
Copyright © 2004, Aimee L. Strang