Euro Cup Finals....

will be between Spain and Italy.

I was personally hoping for a Germany vs Spain  match, but truth be told, Italy played fantastically today (Mario Balotelli, where did you come from?) and definitely deserved the win.

The Champions of Europe will be decided on Sunday. Who are you rooting for?

Always rooting for La Roja,
Brown CS girl 

Congratulations Spain!

For those of you who don't know, I am a huge football (soccer) fan, and I absolutely love the Spanish national team.

And today, they beat Portugal 4-2 in penalties to secure their spot in the finals.

Well done la roja! You deserved it :)

Coding playlist!

Some of us are lucky enough to be able to listen to music while we work. And, considering that's how I used to work during the school year as well, I have a "go to" playlist that ensures maximum efficiency while coding (sometimes).

1. Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon album: The entire thing. I love it. Somehow Kid Cudi is able to strike the perfect balance between the spoken and sung parts of his songs. My personal favorites are Heart of a Lion and Pursuit of Happiness. Fun fact: I once listened to Pursuit of Happiness for 3 hours, and solved 3 251 problems in that time span.

2. Cinema by Skrillex - So I was never much of a dubstep fan, but being at a nerd school like CMU, one of the few constants during the school year is that someone will always be playing it. And that's how I was introduced to this song. Occasionally a little loud, Cinema is a great song to listen to if you're frustrated and want to throw something at your computer.

3. The Intro by xx - Ominous, cool sounding. That's pretty much the reason I listen to this.

After this, it really depends on what songs I'm hooked on. Right now it's Katy Perry's Wide Awake and *gasp* Justin Bieber's Boyfriend.

Please don't judge me,
Brown CS girl 

Web links for the bored

So Mondays are the days that our releases are well, released. While this means that my boss is extremely busy making sure that everything that we fixed over the week are actually correct, both me and the intern are the exact opposite of that. And doing "nothing" for 8 hours is extremely boring. And it's impossible to Facebook/Gmail/do-social-media-related-things for 8 hours. Which is why I have a list of links that I go to cure my boredom.

1) FreeRice.com - Not only are you curing boredom, but you're also helping end world hunger, 10 grains of rice at a time! For every question you answer correctly, FreeRice donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Programme. The questions are in various categories, ranging from SAT prep to English Vocabulary to Basic Math. In order to track your progress over time as see how much rice you've donated in total, you have to create an account, but you can easily play as a guest as well. I'm currently at 29,380 grains, and hoping to reach 50,000 grains.

2) wikipedia.com - We've all used wikipedia when we need information, but sometimes, it's fun to just visit the website, and click on the "Random Article" link on the left hand side of Wikipedia's home page. To get there from the link, click on your preferred language, and you can find the "Random Article" link on the left. Many times, the articles that the Random Article link links you too will remind you of a topic that you wanted to read about at one point, and now, with all of your free time, you finally have time to read about it. For instance, today, I remembered that I wanted to know more about the Knights Templar, and spent 15 minutes reading just about the history of the order. Boredom somewhat cured!

3) WikiGame - Somewhat along the same lines as #2, this link points the Speed Race part of the WikiGame website. You're given a wikipedia page to start at, and using the links in that page and subsequent pages, you need to make it to the "goal page" of that round. And you compete against other people to see who can get there the fastest, which is possibly the best part of this game if you're an extremely competitive person (cough me). The last few rounds have been from Iceland to ABBA (which was solved in three clicks- Iceland-Sweden-ABBA), Linear Regression to Walrus, and Toronto Raptors to Tibetan Scripts. Pro tip if you're reading this blog: if you can't find an obvious connection between to the two topics, try to get to the United States (or another country's) page, because that links to a variety of topics.

Hope this helps! I'm going to go check Facebook, and then go back to FreeRice!

Cheers,
Brown CS Girl (:

Starbucks Sunday

Sunday Travels: Shopping at Rue 21, buying fries from Five Guys, Iced Cafe Mocha Venti from Starbucks and a new Starbucks Card, tanning on the Greek Quad, gymming, dinner, then
Razzys.

In the picture, two of my friends are working on their last programming assignment. That's my iced cafe mocha venti.

Cheers,
Brown CS girl :)

Summer Weekends

The biggest difference between summer weekends and school year weekends is during the summer, you actually have free time on the weekend, whereas school year weekends are the same as weekdays minus the classes (although it's debatable how many of us go to classes on the weekday anyway).

Anyway, a typical weekend for me includes grocery shopping, normal clothes shopping, eating delicious food, cooking for the rest of the week, and anytime leftover is spent chilling :)

Today was spent working out and then watching the Spain-France match with a friend and eating Chipotle. To all my Spain fans, two words: Xabi Alonso (:

Onto grocery shopping,
Brown CS girl

It's Friday, Friday...

I won't finish the song. BUT IT'S FRIDAY. It's been a long week, and after 3 pm today, my motivation to do any work at all exponentially decreased . Thankfully, I didn't have to much longer. After 4:20, the office only had 4 people left in it. One was actually working, my boss and I were playing darts and talking about how my other boss was president of one of the frats that got kicked off of CMU's campus. And the other intern? Watching Euro Cup. Not a terrible Friday afternoon at all.

I'm currently waiting for the bus to arrive in the ridiculously warm Pittsburgh weather. Although, seeing as my office is probably colder than the Arctic, the heat isn't completely unwelcome.

Speaking of the heat, I unfortunately must congratulate the Miami Heat on their victory. OKC, I was rooting for you all the way, and there's always next year.

Until next time,
Brown CS Girl