Omar Abu

For now since I am running short in time I will just say, OMG I got into Princeton, Cornell, and UPenn (and something about a waitlist to this weird school in Boston. I think it starts with an H and is up the river from MIT or something).

I had class until six meaning that I wouldn't be able to check decisions until way after the they came out. My parents, however, came up with an ingenious plan to keep me not so focused on class, but yet informed about my status. They planned to send me emails with the subject "[School] - Yes/No" (for example, "Princeton - Yes"). Using my iphone, which I cleverly hid behind my leg, as I sit in the front row, I was able to continuously check my email. I think my professor noticed though as I pretty much stopped taking notes and never looked up, but this is important stuff so I thought sacrificing 30 minutes of a 1 hr 40 minute lecture was worth it. Pretty much this was the order of emails with 5 minute intervals in between: Cornell -> I start smiling -> UPenn -> I start hopping up and down in my seat -> Princeton! -> HUGE smile plus my brain explodes leaving nasty brain guts on my notes -> weird school that starts with H -> Yes, I didn't get in! Even bigger smile :-)

I just had the best math class of my life. I will never forget fourth quarter senior differential equations. Never ever ever evar. MIT here I come.

Winner winner chicken dinner. That phrase echoed through my head as I sat there drinking sip by sip. I kept an eye at all exits as that phrase just took over my mind, money driving me forward. Wait wait...I'm not Jeff Ma (the actual person...not the fake Ben Campbell). Yes, that is to the effect 21 opens with nice special effects of course as the camera closely pans over the cards and tables (to point of dizziness). From that great opening to the end, I was engrossed, laughing, fidgeting, loving every moment. I really enjoyed seeing views of Boston and Killian Court. Even though critics may not agree, I give it two thumbs up.


Here's me! I like movies...and books...and MIT shirts... especially that shirt.

It's too bad the book has the movie poster on it as Paul '11 had pointed out earlier. Makes the book seem tacky for some reason. Matt '00 will probably post this picture on the MIT blogs soon along with the other prefrosh who trekked out to watch this fantastic movie. Well, I'm going to go get ready for this long week ahead of me. I only have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off this week and then Spring Break. School, thou art a cold hard b....

Instead of enjoying my day off yesterday, I along with 30ish other people were at the regional ISEF tournament. I had no expectations for the day and pretty much went into the whole event chill and relaxed. As the judging went on, I realized how much reverse alphabetical ordering sucks. Notice that my last name starts with "Ab" and so I was the last person to be talked to after 2 and a half hours of waiting. Let's just say I am not a patient guy, but I managed.

After going to lunch at my favorite Indian restaurant that has an all-you-can-eat buffet for lunch, I headed back to the fair site. Little did i know, my chemistry teacher had came to look at people's research. He also brought some good news for me. While conversing with some friends, he pulled me to the side and told me that I had qualified for the USNCO. Yay! He made me happy for a total of two seconds because then he said unfortunately the national date might conflict with the regional chemistry scholarship competition, a chemistry test that doles out wads of cash to the winners. So the question of the day I guess: Is money > national competition?

I ended up escaping to my house for a few hours to relax until the awards thing in the evening. They announced all the cash special awards first and (no surprise) I was not included. My friends got many awards though. Then they began announcing the people who placed. Third, someone from another school. Second, a good friend of mine who is a junior. First, it was unanimous (oh great...no way that would be me) Omar. Woo! I did not really expect anything especially with my showing last year, but then somehow I managed to come away with first and a spot at ISEF 2008.



There is me all happy because my thoughts are "Yes...free trip to Atlanta...free trip to Atlanta." Five minutes later, we are pulled aside and the fair director who represents my school, which hosts the fair, tells us that our school cannot afford the 5000 dollar cost of the trip and that we are on our own to pay if we choose to go. Great! While everyone else is paid for during their stay at the Hyatt Regency (the main hotel for ISEF) and for their flights, we have to find awesome deals, a hotel that will probably not be close to the main hotel site, and have to incur some sort of expense. That happiness was short lived.

I head home and then spend a couple hours looking online for good rates for hotels and airports and plan ahead for what I might miss during the trip (May 11th - 16). Guess what! On the 12th, I have AP Bio, AP Physics C Mechanics, and AP Physics C E/M. Guess even more! On the alternate AP exam dates, Bio and Physics C Mechanics are at the same time. Hmm...well after some pondering, I rush my browser over to MIT's class of 2012 page and read that MIT does not even accept the AP Bio credit. So I figure, I won't take the AP Bio exam and everything (I hope) will be ok. Small problem solved.

While trying to figure out all the logistics of this, my Johns Hopkins decision found its way into my email inbox. Wooo I'm in (don't worry, I've decided on MIT)! After some more internet browsing and talking on the phone, the 2nd place junior and I semi-agreed on a game plan that will be the best for both of us. Looks like we will be going to ISEF 2008 after all! It'd be awesome if we could even get a company to sponsor us and pay...but who knows.

With most of this partly settled, I then lay down to watch some TV when the doorbell rang. My MIT shirt came! The one with the equations that spell out MIT. Yesss. Just in time for the "Night at the Movies," which I will do tonight with friends. I hope 21 blows my mind away.

So overall, the net balance of yesterday = awesomeness :-)

If anyone was wondering what a perfect storm has to do with all this, the perfect storm of Ivies decisions occurs this Monday and I thought it made the title sound cool. Enjoy the weekend!

This morning Google greeted me with what you see below. At first I thought something had gone wrong with my computer, but then I quickly read the small line of text below the search box. Apparently, Google is supporting Earth Hour, an energy conversation effort, and so if you feel like supporting the cause, then turn out all your lights today from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm in your local time zone. If not in the energy conserving mood, at least enjoy the dark side of Google for the day. I know I will.

I just had a very eventful, amazing, strenuous, weird day. I will blog about this tonight/TOMORROW. Keep an eye out!

Are you clumsy? Do you chronically trip on smooth surfaces? Do you dislike all your scrapes and bruises? Do you wish you could just be like everyone else? Well there's a solution that should alleviate your distress. 

It all started yesterday morning. I tripped over a nicely waxed, smooth surface and got to thinking what if I had fallen and broken my neck, tore an artery, or broke some bones (excuse my drama queen melodramatic ponderings...it's who I am gosh!)? Seriously, I am so misfortunate I could trip on a frictionless surface. So what does a despondent person in my situation do? The person thinks like an engineer!

What if some mystical object could soften the fall, making it seem as if I were jumping into bed for a nice long slumber. Yes, I am talking about nothing other than an airbag suit! A suit that deploys an airbag just like a car in an event of impact. With this thought in mind, I hit google and came up with this:



Check that out. An airbag comes out of a suit upon impact. How crazy is that? All us clumsy nerds never have to fear the floor, asphalt, or whatever surface again. We are safe. Our savior has arrived in the form of a not-so-bulky, cleverly hidden, amazingly useful airbag...in a suit.

Getty Images

Those darn californians. They have done it again. They aren't just satisfied with good looking surfer boys with ripped physiques. Nope. They have to have surfer boys with self-healing muscles that generate electricity O.O.

The folks over at UCLA have created an artificial muscle capable of expanding 200%, mimicking human muscles in movement. Carbon nanotubes (doesn't the word nanotubes just make you giddy?) are the culprit here as they allow for the muscles to handle extreme duress that occurs from normal, everyday usage. There's one more thing...they are smart muscles too! In the event of carbon nanotube failure, the surrounding area seals off and prevents any more damage from occurring.

Now what's the selling point for all this because who cares about self-healing artificial muscles? It generates electricity. Imagine this. You are walking down the street. Beep beep (the annoying one that signals your cell phone is out of battery). Oh no I'm going to be out and about all day and my cell phone is nearly dead. What will I do? Wait, due to the artificial muscles I now have, I'll plug my cell phone into my upper bicep. There you have it. You can be a walking power plant. I bet you never dreamed about that as a kid?

The future of nanotechnology!

Read all about it here.

A phone conversation with my senior picture studio a month ago:

Me: Hello?
Some guy: Yes, this is Main St. Studio. We have your wallets that you ordered ready. Please come pick them up within a few days.
Me: Oh yea sure thing. Bye.
*Click*

A couple days ago:
Me: Oh hey mom. I told you about Main St. calling a few weeks ago right?
Mom: Umm no why?
Me: Hmm umm...yea we were supposed to pick up my pictures a while ago.
Mom: WHAAAT! I told you we were waiting for a call!
Me: I'm a busy guy.
Mom: You are never to pick up the phone again!
*I laugh on the inside and shrug*

Yes, the story of my life depicted by this simple anecdote.

The not-story of my life is the amount of good fortune that has happened in the past month or so. Observe:



YES! It finally came today, the coveted MIT acceptance folder chalk full of goodness. This is how all Mondays should start.



The packaging after I ripped through it. I couldn't contain myself. Side note: half that damage was done by USPS itself. How hard it is to take care of mail? Seriously. You could see everything that was inside the folder by looking through the 2 inch gaping hole on it. My folder was beat up too. I dream of a day when USPS becomes a superior mailing service that actually cares about what they deliver. I think I'm being too harsh (seriously though...if you have something important I recommend not-USPS). They do have brownie points with me though since they are the ones who delivered my MIT folder.



The folder all gutted up. Of upmost importance is the 10% COOP coupon in the lower left. Methinks I will be making excellent use of that in the coming days.



Oh my gawd. Tim the beaver wants me to come out and play. Maybe I'll get to see him at CPW. For all your non-MITers: do you know why the beaver is MIT's mascot? There's quite an ingenious explanation behind it all.



And as if MIT was purposely trying to add the cherry on top, the shirt I ordered last week from the coop was sitting on my doorstep, just waiting to be worn by mwa. I quickly tore off my current shirt and slid into the freshly delivered MIT one and ran off to my differentials class. Ahh, how good it feels to make fun of Harvard, all in good fun of course. I plan on taking Arabic there so I cannot completely alienate the neighbors. What would happen if I wore that shirt to Arabic class? Did someone say experiment?

All in all, today is definitely a day I did not have someone say to me "Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?"

I wake up today to the signs of a beautiful day. The sun was rising, the air was crisp, and the grass was green (sorta). I go to class and then come back home at 10 am to a cloudy sky and chilly temperature. In just two hours, the weather went from great to just alright. I sigh and go inside and immerse my self in autoCAD, which I am attempting to learn and will blog about soon. After an hour of messing around, I again leave the house for class. I step outside and to my amazement the ground is covered with an INCH of snow! In less than 3 hours, the weather has gone from that of a nice Spring day to ridiculously terrible! Roads were becoming impassible, accidents were everywhere, people were getting stuck, and the snow was just piling up.


Here is my yard just an hour into the storm and the snow is still coming down fast and steady despite the calmness depicted in the photo. Just two hours ago, my yard was completely green.

I ended up popping in Super Smash Brothers Brawl yesterday and I found it quite enjoyable. The single player is actually fun now since you cycle through the characters during this captivating story line and all the levels relate to the characters you play with. Overall, I think it is a definite improvement over the old one. I still need to get a group of people together though so I can pwn everyone in a four player battle royale. I know I could play against the machine itself, but what fun would it be to trash-talk a hunk of plastic/metal?

To make an already crappy day worse, I did not find my MIT acceptance packet waiting for me when I got home. I was all giddy since I figured that if Karen got hers yesterday and she only lives a state away, I should receive mine today. Well that logic failed as miserably as my entire class did on the last bio test. Perhaps tomorrow. Speaking of things that did not come, I am still waiting for my MIT shirt that I ordered last sunday to come as well. I assumed it would have arrived by today, but that assumption failed too. Well you know what they say when you assume...

TGIF

Bio Test: Check.
Psych Test: Check.
Physics Test: Check.
Differentials Midterm: Check
Research Poster: Check

One extremely long day: Check.


I leave the weekend coming out high and enter a week at rock bottom. That's alright though because after today, I can just enjoy the rest of the week and revel in the fact that I can finally answer someone when they say, "So Omar, where are you going to college next year?"

Today, my school brought in people from all over the city to read applications for next year's incoming freshman class and this reminded me of myself four years ago, anxiously waiting for my high school decision to come in the mail. Thinking about the perils of not getting into this science/math magnet high school and spending the rest of eternity in the realm of humanities and english was tortuous (I was 13, forgive me please). I remember opening my "first" admissions letter back in 8th grade when acceptance letters actually started with "Congratulations" (I still love you MIT) and doing my little jiggy out in the street. It reminded me how much that process was similar to the past three months. Stress. anxiety. what ifs. always turning out for the best (no matter which way it goes) :-).

As previously mentioned in the MIT blogs, I was promptly called at a little past 6 this evening by Paul himself! How cool, eh? I got to ask some questions, hear about some aspects of MIT, and get pumped up about CPW. I'm just thankful the call was not as awkward as Karen '12's conversation. She lucked out though. Snively is giving her another chance! Plus, he is going to reveal stories about the bloggers. Fun stuff.

In other news, please don't yell at me, but I bought Super Smash Brothers Brawl a while ago and still have not played it. What am I doing? I know I know. I promise I WILL finally play it tomorrow and will post my initial impressions because I know you all want to hear my opinion since of course my opinion is law.

As I was typing this, I realized that this post has become really random, switching from topic to topic with no clear theme. Oh wait, wouldn't that mean the theme is randomness? Hmm...that's a good question. Regardless, why don't i just make it more random! Here is a t-shirt I found on the COOP's website that I desperately need to buy as it rox!


How can you not just smile at that?

Continuing on with the randomness: I just registered for CPW! About time too. Only 11 days left. All I have to say is this spring break is going to be the best evar. I totally cannot wait to explore MIT's campus and perhaps catch one of those "secret" tours everyone is raving about. To all hackers out there: please, please, do a hack during CPW. I think I speak for all prefrosh when I say that we all want to experience a hack while we are there!

Ok. I'm done now. Time to finally rest after a ridiculously tiring day.

So in the past 72 hours there has been such a plethora of greatness. I can not even begin to describe it in words. That is why I will use pictures too. Although if pictures = 1000 words then in actuality I'm still describing everything in words, but let's not worry about the silly details.

Friday Morning 4:30 am: I stumble out of bed to the annoying beep of my alarm clock and rush to the park-and-ride to meet w/ my carpool.

5:15 am - We leave for Saginaw where the Michigan State Computer Programming Competition is held. I stare out at farm land for an hour before nodding off.

7:40 am - We arrive early and watch the people set up the breakfast table and registration area. I am hungry.

8:00 am - We get shirts that look like this (if you get the joke, you rock!):


10:15 am - My three person team (well just me) gets yelled out for typing code early. I get pissed off. See, it's good strategy too write out code you might need before hand to save time. In previous years, this has been allowed and it has come in handy. This year I did it and got yelled at. Go figure :-p

10:30 am - The gun goes off (the guy mutters GO to everyone)...

11:30 am - I complain of a headache. My team this year decided to go with a new plan this year. Since I am an awesome, uber fast typer, we decided I would type the entire time while other two would write code/pseudocode. We weren't sure how well it would work, but it did! I even fixed two programs and ended up writing one and a half as well as typing out everyone else's programs.

12:30 pm - The guy yells stop (doesn't really matter. The submission software stops allowing submissions anyway). We got six programs out of 12 in 2 hrs. Now before you go like 50% how awful. Consider this. We wrote 6 not so easy programs in 2 hrs! yes, six is pretty good usually. We were'nt sure this year though because Midland high school is very good this year. We shrugged it off and walked away to lunch.

1:00 pm - I for all intensive purposes pig out at the cafeteria. This cafeteria is absolutely amazing. In fact, my friends believe that SVSU is putting on a show for everyone to entice them to come next year. No university can have all you can eat amazing food like this. They have every single type of food you can think of from soup bowls to hamburgers to interesting asian meals to awesome Italian meals. Then there is even a whole section devoted to deserts with Chefs constantly making deserts and other confections. A lot of people at my school want to come to this competition for the food. It has quite a reputation :-p.

2:00 pm - Time to present the awards. 3rd Place - Midland 3 with six programs. My team realizes that we did better than them since we had better time and less mistakes and so we all get giddy and excited. 2nd place - KAMSC (us). We flip out and rush the stage. People take pictures of us and hand us 1 gig usb sticks. We also receive a plaque and medals will be sent. 1st place- Midland 1 with 9 programs. Go figure again. But w/e...we got 2nd place in the state!

3:45 pm - On our way home, I start coming off the high from winning and realize it is less than 24 hrs till decisions come out.

6:00 pm - MIT stress begins to trump my winning-high. I start to worry, but then remember I have an all night Sci-fi Film Fest to attend. No sleep for me (like I would get some anyway with decisions on the horizon).

7:05 pm - I arrive at the film fest and chat with friends. We discuss how ridiculous the Movie selection is this year:

7:30 PM - Enemy Mine
9:30 PM - Planet of the Apes
11:30 PM - Timeline
1:30 AM - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
3:30 AM - Capricorn One
5:30 AM - Ultraviolet
7:30 AM - Sunshine
9:30 AM - Explorers
11:30 AM - Deja Vu
1:30 PM - Serenity

The only good movies on here are Deja Vu and Serenity. The point of this entire thing anyway is to loudly criticize the movies and discuss how bad the physics and production quality is. In fact the only rule is to be loud enough so everyone can here your comment and laugh.

8:10 - Enemy Mine is so easy to make fun of. Going into it, everyone thought it would be like Alien vs Predator. The story is about a war between humans and these lizard creatures. One humand and one lizard creature crash land on a bad planet and then the human is captured by the lizard. The conditions are tough though and so they become friends and learn each other's languages within a week. Then this movie goes Brokeback Mountain and they start living in this house and the lizard becomes pregnant! The human begins following the lizard's religion and then has to raise the lizard child since the lizard dies. At the end, this human-lizard child relationship brings both races together and ends the war. YES ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS! But everyone had a good laugh!

9:25 - I go outside the presentation center and play cards. Then pizza arrives and I eat.

Saturday
12:35 am - I am starting to become very tired. Remember I only got 6 hours of sleep the night before. I begin to doze off and then finally fall asleep. Thirty minutes later I wake up and am rejuvenated like the energizer bunny. The night goes slowly and pretty much we all keep making fun of the movies.

5:00 am - The stress of the impending doom that is MIT decisions begins to consume me. I can't think, i can't eat, i cant slee- well i can sleep and I did.

6:30 am - I wake up and decide to leave when the movie (now Ultraviolet) ends.

7:05 am - Yay I get to go home...and worry more! Oh well.

8:30 am - I get home and try to sleep. Hmm...I'm unsuccessful...I wonder why..OH I KNOW decisions have taken over my mind. Stress exponentially begins to increase.

11:30 am - I stop talking in the chatroom MIT12 where everyone (even the EA people) are awaiting the RA decisions. I head over to my parents and begin rapidly refreshing the decisions page.

11:45 am - The page finally comes up and I quickly type in my username/password. I read "On behalf of the Admissions committee...pleasure...offer admission..." and I quickly begin screaming "IM IN IM IN!" The chat room becomes frantic and I cannot concentrate on anything. I sit in disbelief and feel the stress dissipating, leaving me tired and ecstatic. The entire three months of disappointment and hope are now over and I'm in at my dream school. Everything seems to finally click into place.

1:00 pm - My parents and I leave to Coldstone where I eat my favorite Birthday Remix ice cream and think about how awesome CPW is going to be and how I really am in at MIT.

2:30 pm - I decide to return to the film fest to catch Serenity, a favorite of mine. Let me tell you, this is the first time I felt relieved in months. I was able to just relax and actually enjoy a movie. What a great feeling! After the movie finished, people were all proud of themselves for staying the entire time, an incredible feat. I was a poser as I had left, but I had too. It was for MIT people...come on. Anyway here is who was left at the end (yes i know. I wasn't looking grrr):




6:00 pm - We all go out to this Japanese restaurant I was saving just in case I was accepted to MIT. I still could not believe it.

12:00 am - One great day ends.

Here is a graph of the stress I felt during the the hours leading up to decisions and the aftermath. Yes stress is coming back. I have basically done nothing all weekend because of my "celebrating" and so I'm sort of behind. >.> Oh well, MIT >>> tests. I think I exaggerated the stress of Sunday night in the graph. It is no where close to the stress I felt for decisions, but w/e :-).



So there you have it. Three amazing things just happened to me: 2nd place in the state, Scifi film fest, and MIT MIT MIT! I still don't feel like an official MIT '12. Maybe it is too early or maybe it is just too surreal. One thing is for sure though. I do, absolutely do, want to go there. CPW will only confirm that. What a dream come true! Thank you to everyone who supported me and to MIT admissions for taking the time to consider everyone and thinking that I have something special that I'll be able to contribute to the class and university for the next four years. To everyone who was denied, follow your dreams no matter what! Go make your college experience be the one you want. Don't let the college make the experience for you. Because you applied to MIT, you have the ability to do ANYTHING! You WILL change the world. Godspeed.

The proof Snively ;-) Haha just kidding. I only had a chance to read the first line before freaking out.

I'm in. More to come later. Celebration time.

Remember that wireless electricity I talked about earlier? Well, MIT featured this research on their homepage yesterday and I have the video for you all. This is amazing stuff and is yet another reason why I want to go to MIT.

Now if I could get over my fear of roller coasters, I would totally be up for doing this. I mean come on if the roller coaster is going like 5 m/s then I'm only feeling a centripetal acceleration of 2.5 m/s^2 on all those loops (10 m radius ) and such. Come on, who could possibly be afraid of 2.5...I AM! But one day...one day...that would be hilarious to do. Until then, maybe one of you readers would be willing to do this and send me pictures eh?

Oh I found this link that actually shows people who have done this! Cool, huh?

Ah the time has come...again. The decision date for MIT was just released and as I have been saying all along, it is the 15th (kudos to myself :-) ). Whatever happens, I'm already in at college with two free trips so at least the next few months and the next four years will be awesome no matter how it turns out next Saturday! To make things easier for the night of the 14th (since i wont sleep) I'm going to an all night and all day saturday Sci-fi film fest. That way, I don't have to sleep and I won't feel bad about it. Back to physics...

Check out Ben Jones' awesome post about this monumental date.

Today (March 3rd) rocked, absolutely rocked. Aside from not having school, my awesome friends and I went down to Indiana for the midwestern JETS tournament there. And guess what? We got first! We are the champs! Soooo awesome. We got this large trophy and five hundred bucks for our school. Too bad it's going to the geology department and not to us grrr. Anyway, today was fun nonstop. Fighting, laughing, crying, punching and all as we worked for 3 hrs on multiple choice and free response essays. Now we have to see how we will place nationally after our essays are all graded. Be sure to keep an eye out. Here are the pictures!




That's Chris. He's my friend and behind him are my best friends: textbooks! OHHHH sooooo many! The green one is my java book. Yea basically we are awesome because collectively we have all the knowledge known to man :-).



The damage we did :-p. Ok ok...the damage I did. What, don't look at me like that. I need my space to spread out err make a mess.


This is my friend Chris again. He likes his coke...



Oh oh oh, look at me and the trophy! hehe...

This was definitely one of the best Mondays evar.

I have to say this. THANK YOU Snively! You have helped me set a new record for this blog. You have helped it blossom into a "man." How so? This blog has reached the triple digits in the number of visitors today. Yes, more than 100 people came here and no it was not me 100 times! I owe it all to Snively who posted a link to my blog in his MIT blog post today. Apparently, this is actually interesting, which was not the case back in November (what a long time ago huh). Well, I guess that is my trip down memory lane.

I guess the true test of how interesting this blog really is will show in the number of people who come back tomorrow, eh? Come on help me out. Come back to me (totally resisting the urge to say "That's what she said" on that).

Enjoy two wacky music videos I found below. If you are running short in time, I recommend the second one, which is aewsome because it deals with robots. Adios!




ROBOTS ROBOTS ROBOTS! They're going to kill us all!

I'll try to keep my xkcd posts to a minimum as I'm sure you all religously visit their website, but today's comic is just too good not to blog about. It's about the game of course! The game you lose by thinking about it. If you have somehow never heard of it then go here to learn more. Without further ado, enjoy!

OMG this cartoon made me laugh for like 5 minutes straight. It's also related to the post below...double win!

As I was scanning, the College Confidential forums, I came across something that actually made me laugh out loud. Something that funny deserves to be shown to you all! While I do not completely agree with it, it sure helps us direct our frustration with the entire admissions process :-)

Because I have fingers of gold when it comes to programming (bad metaphor...they'd be too stiff too type), my biology teacher asked me to create a program that integrates detailed case studies along with DNA searches in databases to simulate the DNA analysis process for students. I agreed and quickly went home to download Visual C++. After an hour of tinkering around with that program, I realized that Microsoft uses a wacky syntax for C++ that I did not feel like learning and so I then downloaded Visual Basic. While I vowed to never use Basic again in my life after seeing how simple and not very useful it was 4 years ago, I found visual basic to be perfect for what I needed. It could make fantastic visual programs using simple commands and in my excitement I did a little jiggy right then and there in my room.

So for the past 4 weeks I have slowly been building this program as it involves a lot of patient cases, DNA sequences, result pages after searching, and questions. And all this time, I figured I had no deadline because my teacher never said that I did. Well, yesterday while I was leaving class, he nonchalantly asks if I'm going to have the program next week. I tell him that I can bring in a copy of what I have so far and he then sorta freaks out and tells me that he needs to have it completed so that he can make copies and distribute it at a conference he is going to. YIKES! Now, I have to hole myself up in my room (like that is different from any other weekend) and program the tips off my fingers. I have no problem with this because I absolutely love programming, especially when your programming visual stuff. Basically, this weekend is going to involve many, many hours of coding and frantic panic sessions while I try to get this out the door.

OMG IT"S MARCH 1st.






OMG IT'S MARCH 1st.