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biography
mentors biography
my project
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Biography
Hello my name is Russell Lindell, I am a senior at Clark High School in San Antonio TX. My hobbies and interests include computer programming, software development, running, and triathlons. I plan to attend Texas A&M next fall, and major in computer science. I am in the second year of computer science where I am learning C++. I am also taking classes in HTML during my ISM period. I decided to take the ISM class because at first I wanted to write a multi level strategy game which I was hoping to sell once it was finished. But after speaking to a friends parent who was working on the year 2000 computer crisis I decided to switch and work on this problem. I figured I could always make money off of computer games, but I only had to the year 2000 to profit from this. Well 6 months later making money is not what I would consider one of the highlights of this experience. I have learned more about real life programming with a 200 line program that prints a 19 in strategic locations, then I have with being able to combine a file with a database alphabetically, and print the results in ascending order by GPA. Even the latter was a little more flashy, and took more space, I did not have to worry about a thousand different people using it, and decisions that they would have to make and what I would have to do with illegal data. It has been a very educational experience and another benefit of this class was during the summer I went to a workshop called the Young Engineers and Scientists (YES) at SwRI. Here a started my learning in C++ and HTML. I also took several tours of the facilities, listened to speakers in different areas of engineering, and took a mini course in circuitboards and electronics. To learn more about me feel free to look at my resume, or visit my personal web page at www.girrafechronicles.com.
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Mentor
Steven W. Dellenback
Staff Scientist
Software Engineer Department
Automation and Data System Division
B.A. in Computer Science, University of Tx at Austin, 1981
M.S. in Computer Science, University of Kansas, 1983
Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Kansas, 1985
My Mentor Dr. Dellenback has had an extensive career in computer science. At the University of Kansas his major areas of study included computer graphics, operating systems, discrete event simulation, and Artificial Languages. In his professional career he has been involved in many projects ranging from microprocessor, assembly language based development efforts to very large, integrated factory floor automation efforts. He has been a technical consultant on a variety of research grants for NASA. Currently Dr. Dellenback is working on developing/evaluating replacement strategies for the global positioning system. He is also working with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)on the Transguide Automated Management system. His efforts for TxDot include a consultant role for the initial project, and he is now leading the software management activities for TransGuide.
As a mentor Dr. Dellenback has been an invaluable source of information, and resources for my project. He has been eager to help me with my project in all ways and critique all the work I have done to make it the best it can possibly be. I am definitely fortunate to have such a mentor who is exemplary of how the ISM program is supposed to work.
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Project
Now that I have told you about my class and my mentor I'm going to let you know exactly what the situation with The Year 2000 Computer Crisis is, starting with identifying the problem. All computers are based on a 6 digit code for the dates, mm-dd-yy. This means that 1997 would be seen as "97" to the computer, and 2000 would be seen as "00". For our uses a "00" to the computer means 1900 to us. Meaning all dates past the year 2000 put into a computer will essentially be 100 years behind. This may not seem like a big problem, but just think of what will happen if it is not fixed. One possibility is that of a 67 year old man waiting for his social security check, but it is not going to come because when the computer was calculating his age it thought he was -23 years old not making him eligible for social security benefits. Another example would be about the interest on the money that a parent has put away for his daughter for college. If the computer is calculating interest by the number of years the money has been in the bank and it does this with a negative number, not only will he not get the amount of interest he was counting on, but it will actually take away from the original amount.
This problem can not be fixed by just putting to more spaces for the year variable, even though that is every good start. Since programs were built around computers only having two spaces for the year this means everything that has to do with the date has to be fixed. For example when banks have customers they do not refer to them by their name, but by an ID number. In some cases, not all, these ID numbers are made by using the birth date of the customer. So when the birth date has two more digit that means the ID number has two more spaces. This gives the banks two options either allocate two more spaces for the ID number or delete the first two digits off the year of the birth date. Either one is fairly simple to do, but it still needs to be done. Another scenario for this would be ____
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Cool Links
www.year2000.com
www.tamu.edu.com
www.kissrocks.com
www.swri.sat.tx.us/~yes.com
www.swri.org.com
www.runnersworld.com
www.runningnetwork.com/runtrinews
Kathryn@aol.com
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