So this is life...

Hello again my faithful followers!

I'm trying to get better at updating this thing so bare with me...I know it's been a few weeks but in all fairness my life isn't as exciting (or frustrating) during the summer as it is during the school year. Much more time to enjoy being young and get things organized than during the school year so I'm DEFINITELY trying to take full advantage of that...especially since I know when I return to school three things will be occurring: 1) I will be in school, which means classes, which means more work; 2) I will be helping Yoonki work on his study for his Doctoral Thesis (which includes preparing a new paper and modifying the old one for submissions) and 3) I will be working on getting things rolling on my own research for my thesis/prelim exam (which also means more paper writing/conference finding). Trust me, it's not as fun as it sounds :D! I think I like the idea of getting ahead on my thesis work -- it's proving to be more difficult than I originally thought it would be! I want to come up with something really good (I hate feeling like I'm half ass-ing anything; makes me feel dirty) so I'm hoping the more papers I read (I've probably read 5 decent ones so far that I could probably use) the more concrete/developed idea I'll come up with. I just hope I'm putting myself on a good timeline - I stress pretty easily (anxiety sucks) but having some kind of plan usually helps. That is, unless things don't go according to plan which in that case I'm just one big ball of anxious stress waiting to explode. But fortunately no nuclear war yet :)

As for my internship...it's still BOSS! I've been getting to contribute more and more to the project and on top of that I'm getting compliments on my work/workmanship which definitely means a lot being that it's been a while since I've done development work. The more I'm working here the more I'm remembering why I got into computer science in the first place -- problem solving! Not just code problem solving, but overall problem solving -- what's best for the user? how can this be made better? why isn't this working? What it's not doing is helping me decide what I want to do when I'm done with school - I'm really enjoying this and wouldn't mind coding everyday for the rest of my life. However, I do miss reading/writing papers and solving problems on a larger scale - the unknown that is research. If I could have a job where I was able to code half the day and then spend the other half working on research I'm almost positive this would be the perfect job for me! I don't know if I could see myself doing one without the other (and hopefully I won't have to choose)! Fortunately, I have a couple more months at my internship and a few more years in school so there's time to make a decision; hopefully it will be an easy one. In the meantime, I'll focus on taking it a day at a time, enjoying my internship and preparing for the upcoming semester (which includes figuring out my funding - would LOVE to avoid loans at all costs, but it's not looking promising :/).

Well, I should get back to being productive (not that keeping my followers informed isn't important - but it doesn't pay :D )! Until next time... <3

Progress! :D

I mentioned briefly in my previous post that I was working on integrating FindBugs into our Ant build. What I didn't tell you is how much time and effort has been going into figuring out how to get it to work properly! After almost 2 weeks of work, FindBugs is finally working properly in our build (writing reports to the console/xml output file and all!)!! It may sound silly to be so excited about something so small but if any of you knew EXACTLY what I (with help from Joe Rice, the leader of my development team) went through to get this to work. Let me give you a brief overview of what I have gone through to get this wonderful plug-in integrated into our Ant build.

There's a nicely published FindBugs manual that pretty much covers (if only briefly) all you need to know about the FindBugs tool/plugin, including integrating it with Ant. Newer versions of FindBugs come out of the box with an Ant task that can be used for "easier" integration -- yeah right. Chapter 6 of the manual is dedicated to explaining how to use the FindBugs Ant task. The problem is the explanation given probably works...but on simple projects with one build file (and probably not many source/class files). Me being the novice I am, I follow the directions given to a tee....ERROR. In the meantime, I'm wondering how I just followed their exact instructions and my build is failing because of it! In doing a little more browsing (and having a brief discussion with my project leader) I found that there were a "few" things that would have to change due to the nature of our project and the way the build fileS are already set up (yes I purposefully made the s on files bold and capitalized - I want to emphasize this because it wound up playing an important part in my confusion :) ). After a valiant effort, I wind up with this output:


findbugs:
     [echo] Analyze the source code with FindBugs
 [findbugs] Executing findbugs from ant task
 [findbugs] Running FindBugs...
 [findbugs] edu.umd.cs.findbugs.NoClassesFoundToAnalyzeException: No classes found to analyze in C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\ConfigurationDashboard\target\classes_robot_src C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\ConfigurationDashboard\target\classes_robot_test C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\ConfigurationDashboard\target\classes_test C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\ConfigurationDashboard\target\classes_src *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\resources.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\rt.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\jsse.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\jce.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\charsets.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\dnsns.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\localedata.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\sunjce_provider.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\sunmscapi.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\sunpkcs11.jar *C:\Dev Tools\FindBugs\findbugs-2.0.1-rc2\lib\annotations.jar *C:\Dev Tools\FindBugs\findbugs-2.0.1-rc2\lib\jsr305.jar
 [findbugs] at edu.umd.cs.findbugs.FindBugs2.execute(FindBugs2.java:274)
 [findbugs] at edu.umd.cs.findbugs.FindBugs.runMain(FindBugs.java:369)
 [findbugs] at edu.umd.cs.findbugs.FindBugs2.main(FindBugs2.java:1300)
 [findbugs] Java Result: 4

Now, I'm not a big stack trace person so this really isn't telling me much of anything besides that FindBugs hates me. I decided the best first step would be to figure out why it's not finding the classes I specified for it to analyze (the top 4 paths). After more investigating, I found out that I wasn't following the right conventions to feed the path into the xml document. The way the build files were setup all the paths were defined and I wrote it incorrectly. It also didn't help that I was rusty on xml (it's been a couple years). After a while, I was able to make more progress...but then uh-ohhh...


findbugs:
     [echo] Analyze the source code with FindBugs
 [findbugs] Executing findbugs from ant task
 [findbugs] Running FindBugs...
 [findbugs] edu.umd.cs.findbugs.NoClassesFoundToAnalyzeException: No classes found to analyze in *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\resources.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\rt.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\jsse.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\jce.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\charsets.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\dnsns.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\localedata.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\sunjce_provider.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\sunmscapi.jar *C:\workspaces\trunkNEW\External\Tools\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\jre\lib\ext\sunpkcs11.jar
*C:\Dev Tools\FindBugs\findbugs-2.0.1-rc2\lib\annotations.jar
*C:\Dev Tools\FindBugs\findbugs-2.0.1-rc2\lib\jsr305.jar
 [findbugs] at edu.umd.cs.findbugs.FindBugs2.execute(FindBugs2.java:274)
 [findbugs] at edu.umd.cs.findbugs.FindBugs.runMain(FindBugs.java:369)
 [findbugs] at edu.umd.cs.findbugs.FindBugs2.main(FindBugs2.java:1300)
 [findbugs] Java Result: 4

Now I gotta figure out what this is about...why is it not finding classes in these paths?..Are they actually not there? Do I have my jar files in the wrong folders? Are some of my paths whacky that I've added/included? So many questions....so few answers. On top of all that, it was doing weird things....I would add a path to my auxClasspath thinking it would take one things away from the list and it would end up taking away something completely different. Finally, I got to the point where nothing was changing and if it did it was changing in the wrong direction. I flagged down my project leader and he decided to make an appointment on our calendars to meet for a couple hours to sit and look at what I've done and hopefully figure out what I've done wrong. After sitting down and staring at the xml for a while, we were able to make some changes that took progress is the RIGHT direction! A lot of it was manual and tedious, but at the end of the day (literally) we were able to get everything running smoothly on all projects!


Now, does anyone want to know the best part?? I'm still not done!! :) - next step, integration into our continuous integration tool, Jenkins! I'll keep updating with the juicy details! :D

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois [[Until next time in French :D ]]...

New Updates (Finally!)

Hello interwebbers!

It has been MUCH too long!! I feel like I haven't updated this thing in years....but the best part about that is now I've got lots of juicy/awesome things to share that I wouldn't have had a couple months ago :)

Let's start with where I am now...for the summer I am working at Truven Health Analytics (formerly known as Thomson Reuters) as a software developer intern. So far, I LOVE it! The best part is definitely the people I get to work with but some of the other awesome noteworthy points include:

• They use agile processes, something I've been interested in learning more about for a LONG time (like since undergrad) so I'm getting first-hand experience in it! (A sidenote here is that my thesis may involve investigating agile processes -- this I'll talk about a little more later).
• One of the first assignments I was given (which I've actually been able to contribute to the software since I've been here -- AWESOME) was to work on integrating FindBugs into the build process which is directly related to the research I have been working on with Yoonki (for those of you who have been following my blog you know what I'm speaking of -- any new followers I discuss my research in previous blog posts). 
• At least once a week there is some sort of free food for breakfast and/or lunch -- who doesn't enjoy free food??
• Although I am a software developer, I'm still getting to do researchy things (i.e. researching the options for integrating FindBugs into our process).

Although I very much enjoy doing research/writing papers (which I will discuss shortly), I am thoroughly enjoying getting back into programmer mode. I'm getting the opportunity to brush back up on my coding/java before I get started on my own thesis which will eventually lead to coding of a prototype more than likely. Oh how I've missed getting caught up in coding, interpreting stack traces and debugging :) ... It's a little more difficult because I'm working on code that's already been around/worked on but all the more the challenge :D

As far as research goes, for anyone who didn't know I went to Zurich, Switzerland about 2 weeks ago for ICSE 2012. I was invited to participate in the ACM Student Research Competition which was comprised of a first-round poster competition and a second-round oral presentation after which finalists were chosen to go to the Grand Finals. I was chosen to make it to the second round (yay!) however did not place/make it to the Grand Finals :(. Despite this, I am quite pleased with my first international conference presentation. I was even told by a few people that my poster was the best they say in the competition :). Unfortunately, my oral presentation was not as impressive but I was able to get some great feedback from judges and bystanders alike to help improve my odds in future competitions/submissions. I was also able to meet people that were interested enough to want to participate in our user study (once we actually get around to getting it started)! And of course, we can't forget the sight-seeing while in a new country! I took wonderful pictures, all of which can be found here.Overall it was a successful trip filled with networking, fun, and photos :D

On another research note, I am in the process of trying to develop my own thesis for a project. My advisor thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and start thinking about it (initially for a VL/HCC submission but I wasn't able to make that one). Being that I've always been interested in agile development, I would like it to be related to that. And of course I would like to focus on tool development since that's what I've been working on recently/the work that is done in the lab I am in. I thought I had something going, until I spoke to my advisor :). I already knew I had a lot of work ahead of me, but I wasn't able to actually put everything into perspective until I got the feedback from my advisor (where would we be without them??). Now that I have a better idea of the direction I should be going while trying to figure out 'the problem I want to solve', hopefully things will start back going in the right direction leading to a BOMB abstract/research project. 

Continuing the research discussions, Yoonki and I heard back from FSE and found out that our paper was not accepted :(. The biggest problem was (as with my presentation at ICSE) that the results seem inconclusive/incomplete or that more work needs to be done to make the actual results more clear to those reading our work. There were different pointers given from needing a larger participant pool to needing a prototype to validate the results. Although I'm still trying to get the hang of all this, I think I'm making the right kind of progress (which some progress is better than no progress at all I would imagine). I just can't wait to develop the kind of confidence my advisor has in his abilities/ideas/etc. It's a process (as is everything, right) but a process that I think will be well worth it. 

This is getting a bit long and I almost feel like I'm rambling at this point but as things progress with my internship/research I will keep you all posted. Hopefully now that school's out I can be a bit more consistent with my posts...but we'll see :)

Until next time... <3

This too shall pass...

Hello again to my followers...

I know it's been a while but I'm going to try and fill you in on what's been going on and what's to come for me. :)

To start, this semester is starting off pretty well. Just to recap, I'm enrolled in Research Credits (which is always awesome) with Dr. Murphy-Hill, Requirements Engineering with Dr. Annie Anton - who is pretty awesome, and Algorithms with Matthias Stallman - who is also quite awesome. Despite the fact that it looks like I may have a light course load, let's also add in the fact that Algorithms is not easy (so far, a lot of math), Dr. Anton is going to make us read and write so the course is very literature heavy, and I'm also a part-time TA/ part-time RA. How you like them apples? ;) Although it's a lot, I'm kind of loving it! :D The classes are interesting, the professors are awesome, and I'm doing things I enjoy. What more can you ask for?  - except for it to be easy of course ^.^

Anyways, things have been going pretty good so far. Submitted my first paper to the ACM Student Research Comp at ICSE 2012 so really nervous about that. I think it's going to be ok, but now I gotta work on the full paper (for this competition, it only needed to be 2) for upcoming conferences such as FSE 2012. Also research related, my partner and I (Yoonki) are working on a prototype of a static analysis tool based off our study that we've done. So far Yoonki's been working on it while I work on the paper but we're going to help each other get better at the other, so it's going to be fun :)

Being a TA isn't too bad, especially under Dr. Murphy-Hill (I call him Dr. E :D ). And the class isn't huge so the grading's not too bad either (and I heard it can get pretty bad). Classes haven't fully picked up yet, but it's definitely getting there, I can feel it.

Sorry to be short...my boyfriend got sick and ended up in the hospital with heart failure so I've been here the past few days helping him get better (and making sure they take good care of him here!). He's getting better and hopefully I'll be able to bring him home tomorrow. In the mean time, I'm praying and I ask that you do to. :)

Until next time...

Hello 2012!!

Mood: EXCITED!! :D

Hello again!! It's been a while, but I am back to fill you in on everything that is coming up for me (and maybe a few things that have already occurred and I just feel the need to share :) ).

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!! :D I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays as much as I did and are as ready to get back on the grind as I am. I've enjoyed this "break" but it's not time to get back to work.

Just to quickly fill you in on everything, classes start back tomorrow. My schedule this semester is rather light (3 courses-one for research credits) but on top of my classes I will be a research assistant AND a teaching assistant. Which means despite the fact that I only have classes Tues and Thurs, I technically have class Mon and Wed as well since I have to TA a class those days. I'm really excited, though...this is another new experience for me and I can't wait to see what it's like on the other side of the desk for once :). I will be TAing for Dr. Murphy-Hill (my advisor) so that makes it even better.

As far as research goes, I'm thinking this semester is going to be quite lovely as well! We are beginning development of a prototype and may even be traveling again to do more interviews (which is always exciting). There isn't much to share right now besides the fact that I am working on two papers -- at the same time!! Don't get too excited....one paper was already about done when I came on board. I just got to help improve it, which is still a contribution in my book :). I'm also working on a short paper for ICSE 2012, the ACM Research Competition. It would be too awesome to get two accepted papers in the same semester (which would coincidentally be my first two accepted papers ever!).

I don't want to make this too drawn out because I'm sure I'll have more to share once the semester starts...until next time... :D

Happy Turkey Day and things!! :)

Mood: exhausted but excited :)

Hello again!

Sorry I didn't get to update this while in California...it was truly and busy and WONDERFUL experience! :D For anyone who doesn't know, myself, my research advisor, and the student I've been working with went to Mountain View, CA last week (Wednesday - Saturday) to interview developers at the Google headquarters. Now before I get into how successful the interviews were, I would like to say that the Google in Mountain View is everything that I imagined Google to be and so much more! I can't discuss everything on here (some of it is confidentiality issues) but one of the coolest things that I can (and will) mention is that they have bikes (which you will see in my pictures) that they allow their employees to use in order to get around their HUGE campus. They also have their own bus (which is awesome, because traffic and the driving in Cali definitely leaves something to be desired). I think what made the trip was the awesome people we got to meet (and of course the day we got to spend sight-seeing in San Francisco waiting for our flight back home!). I knew that people in technology tend to be much more laid back than those in other areas, but the people are Google are just down right friendly. On top of the awesome people any and everything you could possibly need to do, you can do it right there...there's an eating establishment in EVERY building, there's recreational activities (such as volleyball), there's a fitness center, on site laundry facility...all that's missing is a shower (which I think may be there as well!!). As far as the reason we went, in my opinion it was a pretty huge success. We were able to get 10 Google interviews and 1 from a Mozilla office in Mountain View. The hard part now is going to be going back through these interviews and manually transcribing each... which I am honestly not super excited about. I am super excited, however, about getting to submit my first conference paper! We are writing and trying to submit a paper, based off the interviews we've conducted , to the European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP) 2012. The only downside is that the paper is due December 17, and because Robert--the guy we met with at Google-- and Google needs to approve our paper before we can try to publish, which means we actually need to have it done by about Dec. 9 (which is much closer than it seems!). Don't get me wrong, I love a challenge, but I think the biggest problem is going to be trying to get this stuff done while also preparing for my exams/finishing up projects and papers. I know I can do this...I'm just honestly really nervous about it. A part of me wishes we could have done this trip like 2 weeks earlier to give more time, but that's slightly irrelevant seeing as we can't go back in time to do so. I'm going to do the best I can (with the help of my awesome partner Yoonki Song) and we'll get something together...and then I'll enjoy the hell outta my Xmas break!

On a brighter note (again), here are some of the pictures from my CA trip (I'll post the OR ones in a separate post just so it's not too confusing)! Enjoy!

The Android building at Google

Android Building again

Me with the HUGE Android figure :D

Grapefruit salad at Xahn (Vietnamese) -- soo good (and pretty)!

Another entree from Xahn -- even more delicious!

on the way to Google...such a lovely view!

The Google bike!

Google main campus (filled with random head sculptures)

The Google T-Rex with flamingos (a Google tradition)

We went to this cool pet store -- I saw this HUGE fish...

And this AWESOME eel that I wish I could have taken with me

And this extra-terrestrial lookin thing :)

The view from the mountains...absolutely breathtaking

and again...

again

We went on a hike through the mountains...this is me with a Cali redwood

Banana slug..apparently popular on the west coast? (because I never seen on over here!)

A cool orange mushroom growing off a tree stump (it was even brighter in person)

Here I am with an even BIGGER redwood ( I could almost fit in that hole!)

We were driving and Dr. Murhpy-Hill screamed "NEWT" and pulled over...this newt was trying 

to cross the road and we stopped to help it out :)

The beautiful California coast

My favorite picture from my trip <3

City Hall/Center - the first stop on the 49 mile scenic drive

A HUGE Macy's with awesome Xmas decorations (this pic is for my mom)

Chinatown :)

A view of the bay

The Coit Tower

Another awesome view

Not a great shot, but the biggest Ghirardelli factory/restaurant/store thing I've ever seen!

Palace of Fine Arts....so beautiful

Again

and again

Inside the dome..

again inside....guardian angels

The Golden Gate Bridge :)

Grace Hopper Celebration -- Day 3 (Last Day; Who wants to be ordinary??)

So today was the last day of Grace Hopper...it's bitter sweet. I miss home and school so I'm ready to get back, but I've made so many connections and potential friendships that I can't help but be a little sad at it all being over. My roommate just left for the airport and I will be leaving in the next hour and a half. I took the opportunity today to get to see Portland (aka I didn't go to sessions for Grace Hopper)...don't be disappointed, there really weren't many and none caught my attention, so I took it as the perfect opportunity to get to visit the City. I got to go to Chinatown and Portland Place, which is a LARGE mall filled with stores with NO SALES TAX (a shopper's heaven)! Although it was gloomy/rainy/cold for the most part, Portland is so beautiful and part of me really hates to say good-bye. I absolutely love coming to this conference..I always leave with such a positive sense of self and motivation to do great things with my life. Who wants to be ordinary? The women at this conference inspire me (and hopefully others) to strive for nothing but extraordinary. Not only as women, but as people. I can't help but feel a connection with every single person at this conference, whether I met them or not. Now that's some powerful stuff.

Something interesting happened to me today, and although it's slightly random in a relevant way I want to share it with you...I was about to walk to conference center when I ran into an older man that I had spoken to the day before. We started talking, mainly about sports and things related to Portland and the he looked at me, and he said "You know, I don't know what you have going on in your life right now, but I can look at you and tell you are going to do big things with your life"...Although I have NO idea what this man's name is or much of anything else about him, this meant so much to me. I have such huge aspirations for myself it feels good to feel like others can sense that from me. He asked my age, and I told him I was 22 about to be 23...and he said "Yup, by the time you're 33 you're going to be set. Keep doing exactly what you're doing and it will pay off." Sometimes things mean the most when they come from someone that means nothing to you.

Time for me to prepare for the long flight home...Good-bye Portland. It's been wonderful, and hopefully I will see you again sometime soon! Grace Hopper Celebration, I WILL be seeing you next year in Baltimore, MD! :D

Until next time... <3