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Show Monday, Aug. 24, 2009 AggieLife Page 9 Student creates site to ease driving stress By COURTNIE PACKER features editor Utah Statesman: Where are you from? Sterling Cobb: Currently my parents are from Highland, but I am from California. US: Why did you decide to go USU? SC: For a girl, actually. I was doing a summer sales in Portland, Ore. I started dating a girl out there and she was going to USU at the time. I had decided to go back to school and USU was a good fit because not only was my girlfriend at USU but it also has a good engineering program. US: What do you like to do in your free time? SC: A lot of my free time is spent programming. I consider myself a hobby programmer. I enjoy learning new programming languages. Most of my time is going to Ruby User Groups. They have a local group that meets once a week and I will spend a lot of time there. I do spend time programming and conceptualizing business ideas. US: Tell me about what you have programmed. SC: I created the Web site www.theridepool.com. The Web site was created because I had friends that needed to get rides and even I needed to get rides to different places, such as Salt Lake City and back on the weekends. US: What did you have to do while creating it? SC: I made it with the idea that students can use it and can do what they want to do with it. I did some research before I created the Web site to find out why students weren’t using the other rideboards. I cut out all the fluff that I could find so it is very simple. US: What do you hope to accomplish with this Web site? SC: This Web site could be very successful, but I am not pushing for that. I am just pushing for the school to use it. I want to have some nice features, such as a text messaging feature in the future. I hope that others will want to use it. US: Why did you create the Web site? SC: I created this Web site for our school. I am a believer in open-source programming. I feel that if I create something that it should be able to benefit everyone, not just a few select people who are in on it. SOPHOMORE STERLING COBB said he considers himself a hobby programmer. Cobb created a Web site in his free time to help teach himself a new programming language. TYLER LARSON photo US: What do you hope the students get out of this Web site? SC: This isn’t something meant to be used every day. It is meant to used once a month or once a semester. Hopefully, students can now find rides back home even if it is just back for the holidays. self 10 years down the road? SC: Definitely not programming Web sites. I see myself getting out of graduate school, working for a company for a couple of years and starting my own hardware company. US: What has been the most difficult part of learning this program? SC: In order for a Web site to work, a lot of people need to use it at once. I am struggling on how much information students want to view. I am wondering if it is better to use a community of schools instead of just ours. –courtnie.packer@aggiemail. usu.edu Auditions open for Author: Connection speaker’s book USU production By USU Media Relations The theatre arts department and the department of music in the Caine School of the Arts at USU present the musical thriller “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” in October, and open auditions are scheduled. Auditions are open to the public, USU students, staff and faculty. Casting is not restricted to theater majors only. Auditions are Friday, Aug. 28, and begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Morgan Theatre of the Chase Fine Arts Center, approximately 1110 E. 610 North, Logan. A sign-up sheet for auditions will be posted on the theatre arts department call board, located near FAC 148. Sign-ups are for four-minute slots. If additional times are needed, auditions will continue Saturday, Aug. 29. Those auditioning should prepare 15-32 bars of music from “Sweeney Todd” or another appropriate choice. Those auditioning should be prepared to read from the script. Portions of the script will be made available for copying from the theatre department office, FAC 234, the week of auditions. Callback auditions, if needed will be the afternoon of Aug. 29. For information, call 797-3046. “Sweeney Todd” will be directed by theatre arts faculty member Kevin Doyle, with musical direction by Lynn Jemison-Keisker. The production runs Oct. 22-24 and 29-31 on the USU campus. US: Where do you see your- educates and impacts USU students -continued from page 6 incoming freshmen, multicultural students and beyond. The students conversed with her about their family roots, and she shared wisdom from her past. Many of the students she has met with have said they can relate to her book about growing up in poverty and working endlessly for the education that has now made Hart a respected author, mathematician and employee of IBM. Krista Bustamante, sophomore in political science and Spanish, read the summary of the book and related so well to it she said, “This is me.” She dove into the book out of curiosity, she said. When Hart met with students that could relate to her past, she looked at them with empathy as they shared their families’ sacrifices and struggles with her. Hart said her dream is to make people equally grateful for migrant workers and university presidents. She said, “I like to think that God valued my mother, a little Mexican woman, a little more than a CEO.” Hart’s mother was often exhausted by the long days of working in the field and had a difficult time providing substantial care for her children, though she tried. Hart said her mother had nervous breakdowns and from this Hart learned to nurture herself. Hart said she now enjoys solitude and even created her own meditation space out of a closet in her home. “Being alone no longer feels like a burden,” she said. In the morning, Hart said when she picks up an apple or an orange for breakfast, she thinks of the hands that picked that piece of fruit. “Before you’ve finished breakfast you’ve depended on half of the world,” Hart said. She said she encourages others to think about paying a little extra for organic fruit so that migrant workers can be saved from pesticides. The stories in “Barefoot Heart” were chosen by the intensity of the emotion in the event, said Hart. She left out all the experiences she had climbing the corporate ladder at IBM because they weren’t as attention-grabbing. Hart said the word barefoot in the title of her book symbolizes humility and a willingness to learn. These were feelings that she had growing up in a segregated world. Students aren’t the only ones that benefited from interacting with Hart. “I’ve been profoundly moved,” Hart said. “I have a new hope for the future. You touched me and you changed me and I will never be the same.” In the future, Hart plans to finish the novel she is currently working on and compile a spiritual autobiography while still raising awareness about migrant workers and her own story. –catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu |