Well we arrived in sunny California on Sunday, and got all checked in to the hotel, got the car and most importantly a MAP. Then on Monday we left for Boeing Corp. When we arrived it seemed that the building was a little dead. Then we were told that there were a few meetings that we should attend. This started the gajillion hours of meetings on this Boeing produced middleware called SOSCOE which it was trying to sell to the army. So here was my to-do list: Google SOSCOE, wikipedia Middleware, wiki ABCS, BC, BCS, BCTM, C2V, FBCT and a whole slew of other acronyms that I had no idea what they meant but the room full of smart, government appointed nerds threw about like weapons. It was a crash course on SOSCOE and politics in general. in an observer's position I watched, and learned, and even laughed a little at some of the personalities.

So after a few days of being thrown into the ocean not knowing how to swim and barely floating my comrades and I were given a proposition: with a little tutorial, can you write a functioning App that connects with SOSCOE and have it ready for a VIP meeting tomorrow morning? OH yeah, a three star and two star will be there. Thanks!

so that started the 12 hour design of the android apps that we presented. We split into two teams. Team 1 (the A team!) was Me and Andrew Wei, another senior who is a Computer Science major who were in charge of writing the android app. Team Two: Major Morell, and Andrew Tindall used the SOSCOE tools to take our message and transmit it to the other platforms that were in the demonstration already. --This was the self described "magic" of the SOSCOE middle ware, the ability to transmit data from all sources over a SOSCOE-secure line to any other receiver-- So there we were, in a conference room with 6 monitors, 3 laptops and 1 i-pad. and three amazing experts. What Team Two did is a little bit of a mystery to me and Andrew Wei, but in that time we created two apps, One app was for a 9-line Medevac and the other was for a CBRN report. The 9-line took the longest because we had to learn how the android platform integrated into the SOSCOE comms, which was where our mentor John came in a lot, he showed us his previous apps (which they used for the demo) and modified his underlying framework, so some fancy graphics and created the 9-line. Our second Lapp we did almost completely from scratch and it was smaller, simpler just because we stared it at like 1-2 in the morning. So to conclude we finished it, in time, tested it on the platform, and we were out of the building at 0500 to go to the hotel, take a shower, a one hour nap and change clothes for the presentation that morning.  

Our Demo went off without a hitch, the only side effect of our night was the 17(count it) cups of coffee I had consumed that day-night-morning. After the presentation and meeting and lunch with the VIPs afterwards we took our exhausted mortal coils to bed. (well, I had to call my mom first) and I personally slept 13 hours until 0500 the next day. (the others I was told were able to go out to dinner, and shop later that night, I however slept like a champion) We are on standby right now to decide what our next project should be at Boeing... after all it was only the first week!

Signing off,

Christina West