Teens Connect

New Puppy Playfulness

Jessica L. — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:31:14 +0000

On Christmas I got a new Great Dane puppy that I names Grace. She is black with white on her feet and chest. She got her ears cropped six weeks ago, and they have been posted five times now. At first the vet told me that they would only take two postings but then she broke the cartilage in them so they needed at least two to three more. And of course they still will not stand properly and now I don’t know how many more postings her ears will need. But I love her to death, I really do though she is a handful. She gets into everything and she really does eat my homework if I’m not paying any attention to her. Like yesterday I was working on an advanced placement class project and she chewed on one of my newspaper articles. Thank goodness I could still use it.

Lately I have been walking three miles everyday and she loves to walk with me, it gets all of her extra energy out - so why wouldn’t I let her come with me? Well I soon found out why not to let her walk with me. Sense she is still a puppy the pads on her feet are very tender and walking on rough sidewalks and blacktop make them bleed. Now she is my baby and I didn’t want her to walk because I didn’t want them to become infected so I carried her about a quarter of the way. Well I don’t have much upper body strength and carrying a forty-one pound fifteen-week old puppy is not fun. But as I said before she is my baby and I will do anything for her.

Stressful Second Semester

Jessica L. — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:27:08 +0000

I am in tenth grade at Tennessee Christian Preparatory School and it seem as if every project is due at the same time. I have a research paper due in a week, an advanced placement (AP) environmental science newspaper scrapbook due in less than a week, and a science fair project due in a few months. To me it seem that I had absolutely nothing to do in the first semester and now in the second everything is backing up, and on top of all these projects is homework. Every night I come home with at four subjects worth of work to do. Now I know that college is going to be harder but I am stressing out. Now I hope that everyone is not having a stressful second semester like I am. Also I think that next year I will not take an AP course.

Limerick Contest

Kimberly H. — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:59:34 +0000

Limericks are a form of humorous verse. They take their name from the city of Limerick, Ireland. No one knows how or where the form originated.

The limerick is a poem of five lines. The first two lines rhyme with the fifth. The third line rhymes with the fourth. There is a definite pattern to the stress given each word:

There was an old man with a beard
Who said, “It is just as I feared!”
Two owls and a hen,
Four larks and a wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”

Writing Limericks is fun and easy. The Cleveland Library will be holding a limerick contest - see what you can do! Make sure that you follow the limerick verse form outline above, and then turn it into the library before March 12th.

*Important: Make sure you fill out the contest entry form when you enter your limerick! You can pick one up in the children’s room.

It’s Christmas Time

Jessica L. — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:00:45 +0000

Well, Christmas is finally here and the hustle and bustle of the holiday has started. Right now the stores are having all sorts of sale for the last few days till the big day. But this year the big question is, “Is there enough money?” I just want to remind you that even though it is nice to have gifts under the tree, that’s not what Christmas is about. Christmas is being able to come together as a family and have a great time. Share some laughs with the family, sing some Christmas carols, and just let the stress fade away. You don’t have to agree with me but I do want to wish everyone to have a happy and safe holiday.

A Penny For Your Library

Kimberly H. — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:58:27 +0000

The Teen Advisory Group is about to begin a “Million Penny Fundraiser”. We are recruiting officers for the fundraiser. Responsibilities include advertising our penhy drive and collecting donations, as well as attending our TAG meeting each month. Not only would your participation help the library, but volunteer hours look great on college and job applications. Also, teens who collect 10,000 pennies will get a certificate of accomplishment as well as a book donated to the library in their honor.

If you are interested in donating, we will be happy to accept your donations at the children’s desk. If you don’t have many pennies, don’t worry; we will convert donations of different denominations for you.

Thank you for your support of the library!

Twilight Saga: New Moon

Kimberly H. — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:30:11 +0000

Friday November 20, 2009 I went and saw the movie New Moon. This action-packed sequel was a wonderful movie full of adrenaline pumping action scenes and tear jerking moments. I laughed, I cried, I wanted to scream. I give New Moon two thumbs ups. The actors and actresses did a wonderful job in this film. Anyone that has heard anything bad of this movie cannot judge it by what everyone else says. You don’t even have to take my word for it. The only way to tell if you will or do like this movie is to go and watch it.

Minutes before I went to go see New Moon a friend of mine called and said that a friend of a friend that went to see it said that it was a bad movie, and she asked me if I would call her afterward and let her know what I thought. I called her and told her what I thought about it and she said she was going to go see it.

Again you can’t decide whether or not you want to see a movie based on what one of your friends says about it. Those who are reading this that have not seen the movie please don’t take my word for. Go and watch it for yourself. I personally loved the movie and I’m planning on going to see it a second time. Go and see New Moon if you want to find out if it is good or not, because only you know what kind of movies you do and do not like.

The Doctor Visit

Jessica L. — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:26:47 +0000

On November 17, 2009 I had to go to Cleveland imaging to get an ultrasound done. I had been having pains in my stomach area and my doctor thought it was my gallbladder, so she sent me to have tests done. Well the ultrasound came back negative so they sent me to have another test done. This is where the story really begins.

When the doctor called me back he had the look on his face that I always get because I am fifteen and over six foot tall. I had to laugh when he said, “Well it is rare that i have to look my patients in the eyes let alone look up the them”. By this time he had read my chart and said, “You’re only fifteen! How tall are you?”. Since I always am asked this I just gave my usual answer, “I’m over six foot and my brothers and dad are six foot six”. This surprised him and throughout the rest of the test he kept bring up my height, but nothing else really happened.

But it turns out that nothing is wrong with my gallbladder and the pains stopped. So all in all I have no idea what was wrong with me but at least I had a few good laughs along the way.

Online Gaming Day

Kimberly H. — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:14:26 +0000

On November 14th, teens met at the library to have an Online Gaming Day. We introduced each other to various internet games.

Pablo enjoyed playing Bloons. Alex also liked Bloons, and he introduced us to The Impossible Quiz, which was Forrest’s favorite game. Anne’s favorite game was Four Second Fury. It has a sequel called Four Second Frenzy.

We also went old-school with Frogger and had fun with the platform games Fancy Pants Adventure and its sequel, Fancy Pants Adventure 2.

As a note of caution, many gaming sites have embedded ads or pop-ups, and these can occasionally be infected with spyware. Be sure to have good spyware protection on your computer before you visit, and browser add-ons like Firefox’s AdBlocker Plus can be extremely useful for the online gamer as well.

Death’s Acre by Dr. Bill Bass

Jessica L. — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:21:23 +0000

I am now reading the book Death’s Acre by Dr. William Bass. The book is an account of his amazing work in making forensic anthropology more advanced. Dr. Bass is the founder of the body farm in Knoxville Tn.

The body farm is a facility where trained forensic anthropologists study the decomposition of the human body. The bodies at the facility have been donated by willing people for research. The research that has been done has helped many murder victims identified and their killers put behind bars.

I have yet to finish this book but so far it is an amazing story, and once I have finished it I will post more information on Dr. Bass and the body farm.

What’s it like to be…a computer scientist?

Kimberly H. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:46:26 +0000

When I was a little girl growing up we didn’t have a computer at home. My dad was an electrical engineer and had access to computers (and video games) at work. Therefore, my deal with dad was this: if he came to my room and told me that he could take me to work with him, and I would get up. At any hour of day or night, I was willing to go just so I could play with computers.

Perhaps I should have known then where my career path would take me.

It took me through four years of bachelor in computer science, information systems specialist, and on to being a software developer.

Many people have an image in their head of what a programmer’s life is like, and I will admit a lot of the stereotypes fit. We do spend hours in front of the computer, forgetting to eat, and consume copious amounts of coffee.

I love my job. There is nothing in the world I’d rather be doing, and I’m lucky enough to think I would do my job for free if I didn’t have to work for money. That said it wasn’t without hard work and some intense courses at the university that I got to where I am.

A reassuring note for those only moderately fond of math: completing a computer science degree may require surprisingly little of it compared to some other disciplines. The stereotype of a computer geek being what it is, I went into the university thinking I’d be doing math all the time, but as it turned out it was my double major in Economics responsible for that. Once I got a little tired of lambda calculus and switched to Computer Science Specialist I only had to do first year calculus and linear algebra, and second year linear algebra. (Of course this will depend on the university you get accepted to.)

A reassuring note for those very interested in math: in later years you can specialize in areas where calculus and algebra are more applicable and study them to your hearts content. Math has a lot of practical application in computer gaming and graphics in particular.

The courses I took towards my degree fell into the following categories: (a) software development, (b) database management, (c) theory, (d) math & related fields.

A software development course is usually one where you get a lot of assignments and spend the majority of your time coding. These are the most practical of all courses and generally where you develop the basic skills required in the professional world.

A database management course is where you learn about, you guessed it, databases — how to make them perform better and what is the theory behind today’s most popular storage technologies.

In theoretical computer science courses you learn all the deep stuff. (I thought these were the most complicated courses but also the most fascinating!) An example of what you might learn here is the Complexity Theory — how to figure out how complex your algorithm is that is in what amount of time it will complete, and how much memory it will use. These courses are not essential to go out and start developing in the world, but you will find that as your work tasks get progressively more involved this is the knowledge that keeps you afloat among your peers in the workspace.

As for related courses, these are many and varied. In fact, one of the perks of computer science is that many academic fields can be related to computers, which are, after all, based on human brains. You want to study philosophy — why it has applications in computer science, since logic is vital to working with computers! Linguistics? The study of languages is about learning to communicate, and what do we do with computers except try to communicate our ideas to them. Biology, economics, algebra, calculus, psychology, art and many other disciplines can be related to the kind of work you do.

So what is it we do every day at work? This depends mostly on the kind of company and industry you end up going into. In my opinion, the most fulfilling jobs are working for a purely software company (a company whose business it is to develop software) rather than being an in-house developer (for example at a bank, where a small department is kept that supports all of the organization’s computer-related needs).

A developer’s job at a bank or some other institution will generally be easier because these companies are not looking to keep up with the latest and greatest trends, but are rather looking for stability and function. Slow and steady wins the race out there.

At a software company on the other hand, you get to explore the latest technologies, and depending on how forward-thinking your company is, can work on the cutting edge in R&D (Research & Development) departments, coming up with applications that everyone will be using in a couple of year’s time, like, for example, Google Wave.

During one of the years in university I worked in Artificial Intelligence department, and I still consider that area to be the most fascinating area of study. This is when it becomes clear where the horizon of possibilities lies.

And the possibilities are endless.

- Natasha