Wow - FRIDAY! Finalement! En general, I would be quite stressed but today is good because I am going to excuse myself out of a CS assignment due date, or rather, delay it - by using a late day.

This however, means I will be spending the weekend studying for an Econ midterm as well as trying to figure out which of the bugs in the program are caused by me and which are caused by Thetis.

FANTASTIC NEWS yesterday - Thursday.

Or maybe it was Wednesday. I received an email from Bell Lab's Director of Theoretical Physics and Complex Systems, Steve H. Simon, offering me a summer research project whose ultimate goal is to be published in Nature magazine. Quite a high aspiration as an undergraduate project, especially for a freshman/sophomore. He did say that not being published would not be a failure but that it would be great if that happened. (I agree.) So what is this project? It's very open ended - very research like. Basically, I would write some algorithms to try to find patterns in music, and perhaps to differentiate between music of different genre or era. A less likely possibility would be judging the probability of a certain composer due to style, or lack of certain elements of style�.�The test cases would be midi files for note simplification.

So currently, I must decide between a very well paid internship at HP with the software development team for Imaging and Printing (likely writing or improving or testing software for their print servers) BUT requires car and gas money, in which I would live at home, OR this Lucent/Bell Labs project, in which housing should be provided but whose compensation I am uncertain about.

I was so excited Thursday! BELL LABS!! http://www.bell-labs.com! The most famous research institution practically!

Thursday morning was quite amusing as well.

I went to the bank - I was not too happy about it earlier since I'm so electronically/internet oriented that I would have preferred to do stuff online but apparently closing an account must be done in person? I dunno. So, I arrived in my usual, pre-senior year fashion. Running shoes! And a purse. What a weird looking person. Arriving at 8:55 am, I had time to change reservations to Kan Zeman for dinner Friday night. Yay off campus dinner! I've never had Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian, etc food... I hope it goes well because the other people in the group let me choose...

I digress.

At the bank, the customer service representative convinced me to donate $5 to the March of Dimes (I now consider it the March of Dollars). In addition to being able to write my name on a paper shoe to be stuck on the wall.. I received a yellow baby duck with an off-white bunny hat, ostensibly for Easter. No, not real - stuffed animal. Its name is Waddles. I refer to it as Baby Duck. Any name suggestions welcomed. What an amusing sight it must have been to see some random, un-runner type runner, holding a yellow baby duck stuffed animal running down University Avenue and through the campus. What does she stand for? Saving Yellow Baby Ducks? It might have gone better had I worn pajamas. That way, everything would have matched. Oh, and brought a security blanket too.

But that leads me to wonder: What DO I stand for? DO I stand for anything? Do YOU stand for anything? What drives you? What drives me? What is the passion that keeps you going?

Speaking of standing for something, I heard Katie Koestner talk about Date-Rape, Acquaintance-Rape, Drugs, Alcohol - Sex No-Yes Wednesday night. This is something she clearly stands for. She has endured ostracization from her parents, college friends, and people in general, especially those at her college, William And Mary, because of her talks. She is a very effective public speaker. I am not sure how much of it is learned, how much of it is genuine, but this is an issue she speaks from the heart. The definition of rape extends beyond that of a random stranger attacking some poorly dressed woman in a dark alley in the middle of the night. 84% of all rape is by someone the victim knows. The victims are also males. What can be done to reduce or eliminate rape? Education likely... The overall talk was quite jarring..