Fresh Code

I was going to go downtown with Andrew this morning and meet up with Amanda but my eye was still quite swollen so I opted to stay home. It was another beautiful, rainy day. I curled up on the couch with my tea, cat, and laptop and started checking email. There was something from the OPW career advisor already! I read through his email and he had so many helpful tips and suggestions. He also pointed me to an article that was really helpful to me personally. I sent him an email back thanking him for taking so much time to look over my resume and to send me so much advice.

It looked like another day of resume writing for me. I was going to have to start all over so I made myself comfortable and got to work. Between formatting issues, finding dates and proper wording, additions and deletions it really did take me nearly the entire day. I only took breaks to eat and go to the bathroom. I could hear Kronda and Lukas telling me to get up and take a mandatory 15 minute break so I at least did that!

Andrew had come home early. He had a headache and wasn’t feeling well so I made him lunch and got some laundry going. Wayne was spending the day mudding the TV wall.

I sent off my resume and requested another quick glance and then worked on the Haskell homework. The first time I looked at it it seemed really difficult and confusing but I just spent some time and it wasn’t bad at all. I missed a couple of questions but did pretty well overall.

It was BSD Pizza night so Wayne, Natale, Andrew and I headed to the next pizza place on the list, Life of Pie and it was excellent! We haven’t found many really good pizza places but we would definitely go back to this one. My pizza had marinara, caramelized onions, kale and basil. They have a pretty cool wood fired pizza oven and it’s really nice inside. We still like Handsome Pizza the best though.

Josh was the only other person to show up for pizza so while he and Andrew talked about whatever they talk about the rest of us went down the way to What’s the Scoop to see what they might have that was vegan. They both mango and chocolate sorbet. We opted for chocolate sorbet with sliced almonds. Yum! I wanted a waffle cone but they make theirs with butter. Oh well. It was good anyway. We headed home and watched an episode of Dr. Who. We are so far behind!

Today I learned that Josh wrote a lot of the code for the Transmission BitTorrent app.

I decided to take a break from the resume stress today since I was now just waiting to hear feedback on mine so I started working on another Mozilla bug. I happened to see a conversation going on in the #OPW IRC room with a career advisor so I lurked in on that and saw that they offered to review resumes. I asked if an OPW applicant could also send in a resume for review and they said sure. Another set of eyes couldn’t hurt so I sent it off to the address they gave then went back to my bug.

I first pulled in any changes from the remote Air Mozilla repo and then started making changes to the Roku channel feed XML file. I ran the tests to see if my changes broke anything and holy crap nose tests completely puked. I reverted my changes and ran the tests again with the same pukey results. Well hmmmmm. It obviously wasn’t the change I made. The error was related to the database so something must have changed but I’m using my own local database so I had no idea what I could have possibly done. I figured I’d just drop the database and recreate it. Simple! Except PostgreSQL wouldn’t let me drop the database. It was telling me there was another connection. I had stopped the server so that was weird. I had to dig around and figure out how to see the connections and then kill the process. Finally I dropped the database and recreated it but I still had the same issues when I ran the tests!

What I failed to realize since I’m not very experience with databases is that the test suite creates its own database test_mozilla.db. Someone in #airmozilla-dev said something about manage.py migrate not migrating the test_mozilla database and also asked if I had dropped it and recreated it. Well no I hadn’t dropped it because I didn’t know it existed but once I did I was able to do just that and everything was happy again! It’s so nice to be able to get the help I need so I can keep moving forward. Had I not asked for help and gotten that tip I would surely have given up.

Loyal Lily stuck it out with me.

With the database fixed I went back and made my changes again, ran the test suite, and sure enough I broke stuff! It was only the stuff I knew I would break though so all was well. I took a break from that and started working on the lab for the Haskell course I am taking. I started working through things and everything was fine until I had to figure out what this did before trying it in the interpreter:

(head [length]) “Hello”

I looked at it and I know what head and length do but this just looked weird. A function inside of a list inside of parenthesis with another function. I guessed it would evaluate to 4 but it evaluated to 5. Hmmm…I tried changing it in many different ways to see if I could gain some clarity but I just didn’t get what was happening. I screwed around with this for TOO long and finally went to ask Andrew. He was really busy thinking so he wasn’t much help. Back downstairs to try and figure it out.

A few classmates and Kronda showed up in IRC so we talked a bit and it made me really miss everyone. IRC is great but it’s just not the same as hanging out. It was a nice distraction from Haskell though!

This all took long enough that it was time for me to head to my eye doctor appointment. I had this stupid stye that never went away. It was awful looking but I didn’t want to get it taken care of sooner and have to miss any days of Ascend.

I drove over to the hospital and checked in pretty early. I didn’t know how long it would take me to get there or if I would have trouble finding the office but I brought my tea and a book just in case. They were happy to get me in early though so I went back to the room and was told they wanted to dilate my eyes and do a full exam. Ok, whatever but do I HAVE to wear the stupid dark glasses afterward? Nope, not if I didn’t want to, the assistant said. Great! Dilate away! Eyes were checked and deemed healthy. The doctor came in and checked some other stuff and also said my eyes were healthy. He looked at my eyelid and asked if I wanted him to take care of it right then. Why yes that would be wonderful! He went off to gather the supplies and told the staff to find out if my insurance required pre-authorization. While they were investigating that he saw other patients so I sat for quite some time. Fortunately I had a book! Unfortunately it’s really difficult to read with dilated eyes!

No pre-auth was needed so we were good to go. He came in and told me how it was going to go. First an injection into my eyelid to numb the area. This, he said, would hurt the most. It would burn quite a lot. It did burn quite a lot but I have a very high pain tolerance so I sat there and took it like a woman! Yeah! He then put a clamp on my lid to hold it folded back. I couldn’t feel anything. He kept asking if I was doing ok and I so just wanted to ask him that right back but I didn’t. The whole thing took maybe five minutes.

He said it went well and he thought I would have a really good result but that my eye was going to be bruised and swollen at first and I would have bloody tears for a hour or so. Cool! He gave me some antibiotic ointment and sent me on my way. Wait, what? I’m supposed to just leave? And drive a vehicle? With dilated eyes, one of them crying blood? Well ok! So off I went. It would have been a pain in the ass to have Wayne and Andrew come and get me. Andrew would have had to stop working and then they would have to drive all the way out to where I was so I figured I’d see how it went.

I was way out at Glisan and 47th but Portland has about one million different ways to get anywhere so I took small streets all the way home. My distance vision was really not bad and I didn’t get in an accident so obviously it was totally fine. I dabbed at my eye whenever I was stopped and the bleeding eventually subsided. It hurt though and I couldn’t wait to be home! Once I got there I went and closed my eyes for about an hour and then there was no more pain. It was definitely bruised and swollen though and we had a book signing to go to.

Andrew loves the books by William Gibson and he was going to be at Powell’s speaking and signing his new book The Peripheral. I wasn’t about to drive at night in the rain though and Andrew hates driving so we talked Wayne into driving us with the promise of Los…..wait for it…..Gorditos for dinner.

We got to Powell’s about a half hour early but wow the room was already packed! We had to find a place off to the side to stand but Andrew was fine with that. He had a long day full of using his brain in overdrive so he was just happy to be there at all. The talk and questions were going on for quite some time though and Los Gorditos was going to close so Wayne and I walked over, had a wonderful dinner as always, got a burrito to go for Andrew, and walked back up to Powell’s. Andrew was just waiting to get his book signed so we sat and people watched. One lady walked up and seriously had about 30 books for him to sign! He didn’t seem to mind at all and just went through each one. She claimed her friends couldn’t make it so she was doing them a favor but I think Ebay!

Andrew got his book signed and we headed home. It was raining lightly and the night was just beautiful. Another wonderful day in the best city.

Today I learned that > (head [length]) “Hello” first takes the length of the string “Hello” which is 5 and then returns the head of 5 which can only be 5. It’s a terrible example to use! But at least I get it now. Terrible example….

Our friends woke to a warning sticker on their window. Seems they had been given 72 hours to move their bus. How nice of Portland to give them an extra three days! They had to hit the road today though and head to Eugene.

Once they were up and packed up we gave our hugs and kisses, made sure they had all they needed and off they went. It was great to see them and spend some time with them. Now we will return to following their adventures on their blog.

Lukas posted the internship opening at Urban Airship so resume writing consumed my day. I haven’t had to do one before so it was quite the struggle. I really don’t like it at all. I have no idea what to say about my employment gap or why I have really only had one job. Yes it was a 14 year career but still one job. I sent it off to Lukas as well as Hope Nielson, a senior recruiter at Mozilla for their review so maybe they will have some suggestions.

I was glad the day was winding up and that dinner night was ahead. I needed to be done with the resume stress! Jason had requested meatball subs and that sounded good to us! I headed to the kitchen to make some mozzarella to top them off while Wayne went to the store. Once he returned people started showing up. Carmen arrived first and brought the book 1491 for Natale to read since he had mentioned his interest in Columbus. I’m going to try and borrow it after he is done if she doesn’t need it right back.

Alice showed up and began helping in the kitchen so we went into the living room to socialize while dinner was being made. Tonight we had Carmen, Jason, Alice, Spencer, John, Randy, Roger, Barbara and the five of us. Dinner was excellent! Here is a picture Alice took of Wayne’s plate.

After dinner we watched the new Ok Go video which is pretty amazing (the song, not so much) and then several more of them and then this led to dogs shaking off water in slow motion which led to Roger filming Jason in slow motion shaking his head (Hilarious! But I promised not to share.) and then of course this led to silly cat videos because things always lead to silly cat videos.

Today I learned that Ok Go used this rad drone to film their latest video.

Today a storm is blowing in. So far it’s just cloudy and cooler but we are supposed to get quite the storm by midnight and into Wednesday. I have a very early appointment with a doctor in SE Portland so I am up and dressed. I leave a bit earlier than I need to but once I get to the major streets I am glad I did. The traffic slows me and I arrive just in time. The office visit is quick and simple. I just need a referral to an ophthalmologist.

I’m going to hang out with my friend Shanna today so I head home and pick some stuff from the garden. She is going to make us breakfast and I am providing some of the ingredients. I pick kale, basil, tomatoes, peppers, and squash. I head over and let myself in. Her house is immaculate as always. I’d love my house to be that way but my messiness along with a house always full of people and constantly under construction doesn’t lend well to an immaculate house.

Shanna made us an amazing breakfast of sauteed kale and veggies, grilled tofu and wheat bread with aioli spread, basil and tomato. I could eat that every day! I was pleasantly stuff but she also had berry cobbler. I couldn’t turn that down. We sat and talked about life and coding, about the upcoming Ladies Rock Camp where she will be instructing and I will be a student. This year it will be a drum retreat. Twenty-eight campers and twenty-eight drum kits. I can’t wait!

I headed home because our friends Chris and Cherie would be arriving in their bus at any moment. They are nomadic so travel all over the US to wherever they feel like being. They just finished up a month of hosting the Cape Blanco Lighthouse. We were lucky enough to be able to visit them last year when they hosted the same lighthouse. It’s such an amazing and beautiful place.

I was working on my bug when I heard their bus pull up. Wayne had put cones out to save the parking in front of our house for them so I headed out to move them. Our neighbor, Glenn beat me to it and had the cones all moved. I love our neighbors! They are so welcoming to everyone. They got all situated, we gave hugs and welcomes and they both happily noticed we had hung our Nomad Port sign out front. They had the sign made for us last year as a housewarming present. It is one of the most, unique and fitting gifts we have ever received.

The symbols are hobo signs. They provide information, directions and warnings about various things. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what our sign says 🙂

We visited for a while before they gathered up some packages that had arrived here for them and went to their bus. I got back to working on my bug. I changed the code and fixed up the tests so everything was passing. I still had to gut the AngularJS code and dig into the CSS though. I’m not terribly familiar with AngularJS so spent some time commenting stuff out and then testing to see what it would break. This was fairly effective and I was pretty sure I had it the way it needed to be.

It was time to get my bread rising though so the bug would once again have to wait. I headed to the kitchen and got my dough all happy, oiled and set in the warm oven to rise. The children were home from school so we talked about their day and then they got busy with homework and chores.

It was dinner night so people began to show up. I got my bread baking and Wayne started on the not-chicken noodle soup. It was the perfect meal for the rainy weather. Alice soon showed up and began making the salad. Andrew made a fire mostly for Jason but we all loved it. Tonight we had a wonderful group. The five of us, Alice, Jason, Glenn, Chris, Cherie, Carmen, Spencer, John, Delaney, Nan (Delaney’s mom visiting from Arizona), Taylor and Roger. Dinner was so good! Wayne got everyone’s attention and with teary eyes told us all how happy it made him to have so many wonderful people gathered in our home. It was so sweet!

Today I learned about punk houses.