• The Companies: I knew there would be several hundred professional representatives at the conference, but I wasn’t expecting that there would be loads of professionals interesting in networking with me! I collected at least half a dozen business cards from people I’d love to work for, who actually invited me to contact them later. I also gave copies of my resume to at least four companies doing the kind of web development I want to get into when I graduate.

• The Panels: The panels, as expected, were awesome as well, though some were more awesome than others. The main problem I encountered was that the interesting panels were all at the same time, leaving me with less interesting choices at later times. A couple times, the presentations didn’t live up to the titles, either: I was very excited for the cloud computing panel, but the presenters weren’t excited at all. I ended up leaving that panel before it ended. However, the panels in which the presenter was really excited about her work were a thrill to attend. My favorites were, “Engineering Self-Organizing Systems” and “Bits and Bytes: Explaining Communications Security (and Insecurity) in Washington.”

• The Networking: While I think the Connect Project was a success overall, it could still use some improvement. The idea behind the project was to include a barcode on every conference badge, and then if you wanted to share your contact information with someone you met, you could flag down a “hopper” (conference volunteers) who would scan your badges and “connect” you. I did this several times, and I’m excited for my connections to be emailed to me so I can send notes to the people I connected with. The only problem was that it was sometimes difficult to find a hopper, and sometimes the hoppers weren’t sure how to use the scanners. I think more training is in order for next year.

• The Swag: When my professor told me to leave extra room in my bag for the swag, I don’t think I took her seriously enough. More than one girl from my school had to check a bag on the way home because they gave us so much stuff! My favorite handouts include a four-way USB splitter, a hand-cranked flashlight, shirts from Google and Microsoft, and the shoulder bag that came with the registration (which I intend to use all the time – it has a pocket for everything!).

• The Hotel: The conference itself was only one great part of this trip. The hotel that hosted the conference, the JW Marriott Starr Pass, was amazing. The landscape was breathtaking (and filled with cacti) and the food was incredible. They served us breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two days, and I couldn’t believe how delicious everything was. I guess that’s what we get for getting a spa resort.

• The Price: While registration normally cost around $500, plus hotel and travel, I was able to attend at no cost to me thanks to a combination of scholarships from the National Science Foundation and a grant from Winnifred Asprey through the Computer Science Dept. at Vassar College. Thanks so much!

This year’s Grace Hopper was a blast, and I can’t wait to go again next year when it comes to Atlanta, Georgia. In the meantime, I picked up a bunch of ideas for blog posts, so expect to see plenty of GHC-related posts in the coming days.

Duracell claims its batteries are better than competitors’ batteries because important people like EMT’s and rock stars use them because, “It just has to work.” I can’t be the only person who thinks this claim is greatly exaggerated. Duracell batteries don’t have any special properties that make them less likely to die than other batteries; on the contrary, they expect the batteries to die, or else there would be no market for fresh replacements. These commercials are misleading because they make the consumer feel that Duracell batteries are somehow safer than other batteries, when there is really no guarantee that when your power goes out and you need a light, that a Duracell-powered flashlight is any more likely to work than any other. If the batteries had some kind of alarm that sounded when they were about to die, I would feel much safer about the batteries that power my defibrillator.

Of course, if you ask me, they would be better off advertising with the Duracell Bunny.

This new semester marks my third year studying Japanese, and I don’t think I could have done it without jisho.org and its Kanji by Radicals index (jisho means dictionary in Japanese.  In my Advanced Japanese class, we primarily review grammar and learn new Kanji, but the hardest part for me is that the instructions in our homework are in Japanese for the first time. Jisho.org has saved my life, or at least my homework, on more than one occasion this year, and for this I thank it.

Update (9/19/09): I recently discovered that Jisho.org also has a mobile version for iPhone/iPod Touch that works better than most dedicated Japanese translation apps. I highly recommend it!

7:56AM, waiting in SFO to board

I have completed the first leg of my trip: making it to the airport I’m departing from. I accomplished this via BART, which I’m a big fan of. One of the best parts about living near a BART station is easy, driving-free airport access. I’m flying Virgin America today, and if it hadn’t been in the international terminal, I could have taken the airtrain to the right one, but the SFO BART station is conveniently right inside the airport, next to the international terminal.

Checking my bag took all of about one minute, since I pre-printed my boarding pass. The security checkpoint took a little longer. Even though there were very few people there (for a security checkpoint, anyway), the line was backed up because they were using (one of those new machines that does a full-body scan). They said no papers in the scanner, so I left my boarding pass in my bag, but then they wanted to see it when I got through the scanner. I’m not sure how they expected that to work, but they sent me to my bag to get it. It was then I found that they’d taken my bag, the new Timbuk2 bag with my computer in it, to be scanned again because I didn’t remove the computer from my bag. I was not pleased about this, because as I’ve blogged previously, one of the main selling points of this bag is that it’s TSA compliant. I will be calling Timbuk2 about this. That said, the TSA dudes were in a patient mood today, and didn’t seem to be particularly bothered that I didn’t have my boarding pass or that they couldn’t see my computer; they just asked very nicely for me to fix it, and I did.

The last thing I did before sitting down to write this is buy a loaf of sourdough bread to last me the trip. I expect to be traveling until at least 10pm tonight, so the bread should last me the day with no time to stop for meals.

My flight boards in 25 minutes. Here’s hoping it goes smoothly.

11:28 PM: safely on the ground

The flight did go safely, if not smoothly. There were a few summer storms to go through and around, so there was some turbulence. We arrived in JFK only 45 minutes late, though. I count that as not bad. I was fortunate enough to encounter a friend at the baggage carousel, and since she was planning to take a cab into the city anyway, we shared a taxi and I had an easier trip to Grand Central Station. From there, I hopped on a train back to school, and I am now settled in my dorm room, safe and sound.

Alas, for the past two years, my laptop has been missing out on the action. I have a separate laptop bag I’ve toted it around in, but when I need to bring both books and my computer somewhere, I either have to stuff both into one bag (not safe for the laptop) or carry both the laptop tote and a bag of books (not fun for me).

The great news is that Timbuk2 introduced the Commute 2.0 (a redesign of their original Commute bag) last June, and ever since I saw the announcement, my laptop has begging for it. I held off for a while until they came up with a few new colors, but yesterday I went to their flagship store in San Francisco and bought it in black with the intention of decorating it somehow (probably with silver sharpies or pins). Now I will be able to carry both my computer and my textbooks to class without endangering the computer.

The big selling point of this bag is that it is TSA compliant, meaning that I do not have to remove my laptop from the bag at the TSA checkpoint when I carry my computer on a plane. Here’s how it works: the computer goes into a self-contained compartment on the back of the bag. When you get to the security checkpoint, you unzip the compartment and lay the bag flat open like a book, so that there is no metal above or below the computer (the image makes it a lot clearer). I will have the opportunity to test this ability when I fly to New York on Friday, and I’m excited not to have to dig in my overstuffed backpack to pull the laptop out, and then spend 10 minutes trying to stuff it back in afterward.

Other perks include:

• More pockets than I ever could have expected (I count 17 individual compartments)
• Exterior water bottle pocket (though I think I’ll use it for my phone)
• Included grab handle on the top and comfort pad on the strap
• Reflector tabs for visibility at night
• Promoting SF-made products

I’m very excited to have bought this bag before going back to school; we’ll see how it holds up in an actual educational environment. I’d love to hear any ideas on how I should decorate it; expect pictures on how that turns out!

For me, upgrading to Snow Leopard would be considerably more costly. I bought my Macbook Pro in July 2007 when they shipped with v10.4 Tiger (I sadly did not realize that new MacBooks would start shipping with Leopard as soon as October of that year). When v10.5 Leopard did come out a few months later, I didn’t bother to switch, because the upgrade from 5-year-old PC to brand-spanking-new MacBook was enough of a boost to keep me excited without a new OS. Now that the computer is a couple years old, I’m thinking about whether it needs a pick-me-up of OS proportions to keep it running as though it were new.

Snow Leopard has a lot going for it. For me, upgrading would mean access to Time Machine, Spaces, Boot Camp, and other features I have done without. If the specifications on Apple’s website are to be believed, I would also get a speed boost from Snow Leopard – between the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit computing and the new Grand Central Dispatch feature which automatically allows programs written for one processor to be handled by two, Snow Leopard should be exceedingly zippy. Another exciting feature is being able to enter Chinese characters by drawing them on the touchpad instead of having to enter them phonetically and hoping the computer realizes which one the user intends. Writing kanji through the touchpad would be a great timesaver for my upcoming Advanced Japanese class.

Despite all the cool stuff Snow Leopard has to offer, I am going to have to pass on it for now for a few reasons:

Cost: For those of us who didn’t join the v10.5 Leopard club, v10.6 Snow Leopard is priced a bit higher than $29. Apple recommends that users like us purchase the Mac Box Set, which includes not only the new operating system but also iWork 09 and iLife 09, and costs $169. The set is tempting, because ever since OpenOffice 3.0 started crashing all the time on me, I’ve been wanting a stable office suite. However, if you don’t need the productivity software, Leopard can be purchased for $96 on amazon.com, and from there you can use the $29 upgrade price for Snow Leopard. So if I want Snow Leopard, it would put me back at least $125, and that’s a lot of money for me right now. I could almost book a flight home for that much. I’ve also spent a lot of money with Apple already this past year, buying a new iPod Touch and paying for out-of-warrantee repairs to my logic board.

Don’t Actually Need It: I’ve gotten along fine without an upgrade so far; why should I upgrade now? I haven’t noticed any decline in performance with my current MacBook (not counting the afore-mentioned repair). Sure, it could be a might zippier, but not by much. For the most part it still feels as practical, elegant, and useful as it did when I bought it.

Alternative Software and Hardware: I listed the main reasons Snow Leopard appeals to me above, but that doesn’t mean upgrading is the only way to attain these features. Instead of using Time Machine, I have been regularly copying the contents of my filetree to my external hard drive. It’s not as slick as Time Machine, and I wouldn’t be able to instantly revive the computer if it died, but at least my files would be accessible and restorable. There are also plenty of other programs that do the same thing Time Machine does that I could use instead, like SuperDuper. Speed boosts are not exclusive to Snow Leopard, either; a cheaper and easier way to give my MacBook a lift would be to install some extra RAM. I believe it presently only holds 2 GB of RAM, and its capacity is 6 GB. Still lots of room to grow there.

Compatibility Issues: When Leopard was first released, it took my college four months to release new drivers for its printer network that functioned with the new OS. Upgrading too soon could mean having to go without software I need for school and work, especially open-source software.

It’s not as though keeping an older operating system is unusual. On the Windows side of the world, people still use Windows XP even through it is almost eight years old and Vista was released more than two years ago. According to Market Share by Net Applications, Windows XP is still run on 73% of computers that use the internet. Granted, a Windows upgrade is more expensive than a Mac upgrade, and Windows Vista has never been popular, but my point is that plenty of people agree with me that you don’t always need to upgrade just because the upgrade is available.

That said, it looks like I am going to have to hold off on this one. Maybe if I wait a few years, the price will come down enough to make it more affordable. In the mean time, I’m going to stick to upgrading my RAM to give my two year old computer a lift.

As of yesterday, I have completed my summer job. I worked at computer game design camp as a lead instructor, and it was definitely an eye-opening experience. While I didn’t get an IT internship this summer as I’d previously hoped, I still think I spent the summer well in terms of employment.

I thought I knew a lot about working with kids, but I found there was plenty left to figure out the hard way. When I applied for the job, I didn’t expect to be in charge of a whole group of kids on my own, but the camp director decided that I had enough experience to warrant being a lead instructor for the camp. Being a lead instructor meant that I would be in charge of a class of twenty campers for a week, with another instructor assisting me. I worked at three different locations over the summer; sometimes there were other classes from our camp at the site, and sometimes it would just be me, the other instructor, and the campers at our location. My point is that I was suddenly in charge and had to act with authority, even when I didn’t know what I was doing. Turns out that being a figure of authority is quite difficult if you’re not used to it. The two hardest parts were talking to parents and mediating disputes between kids. Parents want to be reassured that they are dropping off their kids in a safe environment where they will have fun, and moreover that their kids are getting their tuition’s worth. They don’t want to see a lead instructor who doesn’t know what she’s doing who will leave the kids bored all day. Mediating kids’ disputes was even harder, I think. You want to be fair to the kids, but if you didn’t see what happened, it’s generally one’s word against the other’s and they probably are both at fault. I learned that the best thing to do is just to seperate them, and by the end of the day they will (hopefully) have forgotten whatever it was they were arguing about.

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun working at camp. Working with kids is rewarding for me partly because of all the funny things kids do. One day was particularly notorious in this sense. I had just brought the kids back from their afternoon recess and a couple had received injuries in the day’s dodgeball game. I had ice packs on hand, so I gave each kid an ice pack. Our ice packs consisted of a plastic bag of ammonium nitrate pellets and a smaller bag of water inside. When you break the smaller bag of water, the water reacts with the ammonium nitrate and an endothermic reaction occurs, making the whole bag ice cold. The problem with these packages is that the smaller bag of water is sometimes difficult to break. The best way is to squeeze the bag as though to pierce it, but this idea did not occur to the kids I gave ice packs to. Instead, they thought it would be more helpful to throw the ice packs on the floor. The other kids thought this was wildly hilarious, so even after the packs were cold, the kids kept throwing them on the floor. Sure enough, one of the thrown packs violently exploded and poured cold slush all over the floor. As if that wasn’t enough, another kid running toward me slid in the slush and kept sliding until he stopped right in front of me, smiling that, “Oops, I messed up but it was hilarious!” smile. It was just the perfect storm of hilarity, and I had to turn around very quickly so the kids didn’t see me laughing. The problem at that point was that the kids were out of their seats, laughing at the kid who fell, and making a mess with the spilled ice pack, and I had to get them back under control somehow. My solution was to turn around suddenly and yell, “All right! Everybody sit down!” in my best angry-camp-counselor voice, and then to chuckle to indicate that I still found the situation funny. It worked; the kids sat their butts down as soon as they thought I was really mad, but relaxed when I laughed. The only casualty of the day turned out to be the outfit of the kid who slid, which I’m afraid may have bleached under the influence of the chemicals.

Overall, I think being a camp counselor was a good experience for me. It was an enjoyable way to make money to last me this coming school year. Over the course of teaching kids how to make computer games, I also discovered that it is something I might want to do for a living someday. I don’t think I’d want to be a camp counselor all the time, but I think I would enjoy working in an elementary school teaching computer classes some day. Not only would I get to work with both computers and kids, but I would hopefully be able to improve kids’ chances of getting into programming, which is something I strongly believe should be taught in school much sooner than it is now.

Today I found out that a couple of the books I need for classes this semester are available as Kindle downloads. I don’t own a Kindle, but I have the Amazon.com app for my iPod Touch that would let me read Kindle downloads. However, I decided not to go with the Kindle downloads. Here’s how my options stack up for Kindle download vs. actual books:

Flexibility: I would normally appreciate a digital textbook for the flexibility of reading it on more than one device. As far as I can tell with the Kindle, its downloads are only readable on the Kindle or iPod Touch. The iPod is great for reading between classes and on the go, but to just sit and read, I would want to use my computer, for sure. The book wins this battle.

Searchability: The download wins this round. I’ll buy way more books when they figure out how to add control and F keys to them.

Price: For this semester, I looked at two books available as digital downloads. One was a paperback book with a $16 list price, $11 Amazon price, and a $9.99 Kindle price. Not much savings there. The difference in prices on the larger textbook was greater, but not particularly significant: Amazon shows a $153 list price, a $120 Amazon price, and a $99 Kindle price. The download sounds like a good deal there, but these prices are only for new copies. Used copies sold in the Amazon marketplace for this book started at $65. For the books I need, at least, Kindle downloads offered no significant price savings.

Portability: Considering one of the books I looked at was a substantial text book, I will give the win to the download, but only by a bit. I look forward to the day when I will only have to bring one device with me to hold my textbooks, as opposed to the armfuls one can find herself hauling when a research paper is in the works.

Annotation: Despite the fact that I rarely annotate books (I usually take notes separately with reference to page numbers if I must), the win still goes to the books here. Kindle downloads can be annotated using an actual Kindle device, but not through the iPhone app (the app can be used to read existing notes, though).

Testability: In my computer science department, the majority of tests are open book/open note. Not only would I not be able to use an electronic device to view the book, but with Kindle downloads I wouldn’t even be able to print out crucial pages to bring to the test. The win clearly goes to non-electronic books.

I think Amazon is missing an obvious market: computer users. If I were only able to read Kindle downloads on my computer, that would solve the flexibility problem, and would ideally solve the annotation problem. Until I can purchase my textbooks as PDFs that I can annotate and use with all my devices, I think I’ll just have to stick to good old fashioned paper and ink.