all in a days work

There's a reason that I love my job.  That reason is because it rocks.

There has been a summit planed where kids would come and see each of the engineering groups do presentations about their field and how it "changes the quality of life."  And as a naturally born awesome person, of course they came to me (and my group) to present on behalf of the computer science department.  We were thrilled because we really haven't had much to do since school got out, so we quickly got to work coming up with some ideas to show how computer science helps for a better life.

First stop, the SCI institute.  Now SCI does some pretty cool things.  They have movies about doctors who are doing surgery on patients just by looking at monitors doing images and representations of what they are working on, they have models of chemical explosions with timelines to see how everything looks at a given time in 3D space, and countless other cool stuff.  So we thought, "Hey, let's do a tour!"

Next, we recycled the module they did from last year.  It's based on a simple green screen and the program would take in the first photo, and a second photo to overlay on only the green parts.  This is a thing they do in basic movie making to make the characters look like they are somewhere else because the second image (of Mt. Everest or cemetery) is overlaid.  This makes actors happy, because they don't have to climb Mt. Everest nor do they have to deal with rotting corpses climbing out of the ground hunting bbrrrraaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnsssss.

For two weeks setup and stress, the group coming was a tad smaller than I had expected.  There were only eight.  Now, don't get me wrong, this worked out pretty well for us because we could do some more one-on-one helping with our presentation (which rocked.  Hard core) but I hope to get the word out a little earlier next time so we can have TONS of kids.

It was fun and I think the group had fun too.  They were quiet, but they seemed interested in the stuff they were doing with our groups today.  We go again Friday so they can show us their finale.  (A letter/ powerpoint going to the governor).  Awesome.