Fresh Code

It was another beautiful morning in Portland. Still really cold in the house but I once again got out of our warm bed, avoided technology and did a little exercise. I felt extra cold so I spoiled myself with a really hot shower. It was wonderful. I checked my email and my phone and still hadn’t heard from Lukas. She has tons of meetings and other stuff to do so I wasn’t too worried. I knew she would get with me.

I went downstairs to have some breakfast and saw a tweet with my twitter handle mentioned. The podcast I was interviewed for was published! Yikes! I didn’t want to listen but had to listen but really didn’t want to listen but I had to. So Wayne and I listened and I kept looking at his face but it wasn’t saying much. I didn’t think I sounded too bad at all. I remember trying not to over think it and just relax and I think I did a pretty good job. After it completed Wayne had a big smile and told me how good it was and how proud of me he was. It wasn’t horrible so I felt ok retweeting it. Well now it was out there!

I pinged Lukas on IRC and we talked about my options with Urban Airship and OPW. She talked to Peter to see what he thought about things and he was fine with me starting later. Lukas then composed and sent an email to Marina, the administrator of OPW, to see what she thought.

Meanwhile I was contacting UA to work out logistics and see if they were willing to let us start earlier than 12/1. All of this just meant more waiting while things are figured out and coordinated. I felt SO much better knowing this could possibly all work out just fine but I was still pretty nervous about everything and was not really able to concentrate on my bug. I don’t even know what I did until lunchtime.

I ate lunch and then got some sourdough started so we could have fresh sourdough bread for dinner tomorrow. It’s cold in the house and I needed a warm place for it to bubble and “brew” for the next 15-18 hours or so. Wayne, clever as always, made me an impromptu warming cabinet utilizing an old dresser and my dehydrator base for generating heat. Perfect!

Amanda and I were wanting to go to a Treehouse Meetup to learn about functional programming in Python but she didn’t have a sitter. I told her I would ask Wayne about having her daughter stay here. He said it was just fine to have her so she’d come by before the meeting and we could ride over together. Adam, from Ascend, also wanted to go so he would meet us at my house as well. I was still too distracted to do anything useful so I have no idea what I did for the rest of my afternoon.

Jayde came home and started baking something in the kitchen. She said I couldn’t know what it was because it was a surprise. I kind of overheard bit and pieces of her conversation with everyone else who wanted to know what she was making so I had a pretty good idea what was going on and it sounded delicious!

Adam showed up and Amanda and child showed up shortly afterward. Amanda was worried that her daughter would want her to stay a bit to help her transition to being at our house but her daughter just wanted us to LEAVE! It was pretty adorable. We made it to the Treehouse office in plenty of time and it was a pretty interesting talk. We hung around after and chatted with some people before coming back to my house. I asked the presenter about list comprehensions and his explanation made things more clear. He is the Python guy for Treehouse so he’s very busy but is working on more classes. He is going to be releasing a Regex series next month. I’m really looking forward to that!

Wayne had made burritos for dinner and kept everything hot for the three of us. We made our food and sat at the table. We talked and talked. I quietly left to heat the tea kettle and brought enough mugs, tea and sugar for everyone. I wanted tea but it was also a ploy to keep everyone around and talking. It worked! Amanda stayed until her daughter was just too tired. Adam left soon after and it was definitely past our bedtime. It was a great day even with the stress!

Today I learned that filter on a list in Python is totally different than filter on a query set in Django. I have a LOT to learn.

The house was freezing but I managed to get out of our warm bed anyway. I completely ignored my phone and laptop so I could do a bit of exercise. I still haven’t figured out how to fit drum practice into my day but I’m getting there. I showered and dressed and then checked my email. Still nothing from Urban Airship but it was still pretty early.

Wayne and I decided to take care of errands early so we could get on with our day. We were out of honey and I was making cornbread for dinner. We don’t generally consume honey since we are vegan but the poor bees are dying off like crazy these days. I don’t think most people realize the impact this will have on our food supply. Anyway, we have decided to support a local bee keeper, Glen Andresen, who has spent the last several years trying to breed a queen bee that is able to withstand our Portland climate. He is very good to his bees. He keeps the hives on scales and makes certain to always leave them plenty of honey for their needs. We feel pretty good about supporting his endeavor and the honey is incredible.

So we ran to the bank for cash then headed to Glen’s house, grabbed honey, stopped at Alberta Coop for some groceries then stopped at Fred Meyer for the rest of our dinner ingredients. I had of course been checking my email a LOT but still nothing from UA.

I finally got on my computer and started looking at more of the code for my bug. I’m trying to change things so that a survey does not display if there are no questions. The New Survey form has a checkbox to make the survey active so I want to change it to error when trying to check the box if no questions were added to the survey. That way it won’t show up even if it is created. The strange thing is that when creating a new survey there is an initial page where the user types a name for the new survey. There is an active checkbox here and then a Save Changes button so the survey can be marked active before a user even gets a chance to add questions. I decided to get rid of that checkbox first. Easy! Except that when I removed the ‘active’ field from the form the entire site puked. Hmm….I put it back and things were fine. Removed it again….puke. The error was so weird. “Unknown field [‘a’, ‘m’, ‘e’, ‘n’]” Amen? Huh. I added another field called “blah” and it threw an error. “Unknown field [blah]’. Oooooooh! Duh, it was looking at a tuple with only one item as an array so taking the remaining field “name” and breaking it into an array of [‘a’, ‘m’, ‘e’, ‘n’]! So I added a comma and a space and all was well. Grrr! But yay! I told Andrew about this dumb thing that took me too long to figure out and he laughed and then said I should just put the field in brackets instead of (name, ). That makes sense. So yeah that’s about all I accomplished on the bug for the day and that wasn’t even the complicated part. Still nothing from UA.

It was dinner night and I didn’t want to eat too late so I went in the kitchen and started making the cornbread. It’s SO good vegan or not. I made a lot since we would have a crowd. We were having a new thing, Green Chile Enchilada Soup. It sounded pretty easy and it was. Equal parts enchilada sauce and veggie broth, rehydrated soy curls, chopped green chiles, corn, onion, seasonings and rice.

Meanwhile my internship offer finally arrived! It was official! They wanted me! I was so excited! But…….it really overlaps with OPW a lot. How can I possibly do both? This will probably never work. Ugh! Now what do I do? I know! Panic! That’s a horrible idea and won’t solve anything so I freaked out instead and messaged Lukas. She knows stuff about things and would know just what to do! I didn’t know if I would hear back from her right away but I felt better just knowing she knew what was going on.

Alice came over and made salad and soon everyone started to show up. We had the five of us, Taylor, Delaney, Jason, Alice, Spencer, John and our neighbors a couple of blocks down, Maggie and Emily. They had been wanting to come but had other obligations on Tuesday nights but those were over now. It was wonderful having new neighbors! We laughed and talked for quite some time. Maggie said it was past “lesbian bedtime” so she and her wife headed home. Everyone else slowly filtered out and then it was our bedtime as well.

Today I learned that lesbian bedtime is 21:30 and that freaking out and panicking are probably the same thing.

Wayne and I got up and dressed so we could pick up Ed, go to breakfast and then drop Ed off at the airport for his flight to LA. We grabbed him and headed to a place close by. We ended up at Cup and Saucer on NE Killingsworth. We had gone to the one in the Kenton neighborhood several months ago but they were out of most everything vegan that we were wanting so I wasn’t impressed. I was hoping we’d have a better experience this time. It was pretty quiet inside so we were seated and tended to right away. I got a nice pot of hot tea and coffee for the guys. We ordered and our food didn’t take long at all. I had the Pesto and Sun Dried Tomato Tofu Scramble, Ed had the same but with eggs and Wayne had the Garden Tofu Scramble. The food was SO good! I’m so glad we gave them another chance. The pesto was so flavorful and it had just the right amount of sun dried tomatoes.

 

I had been waiting to hear from Urban Airship regarding the internship and today should be the day. I was checking my email every two seconds it seemed. After breakfast we shuffled off to the airport where we said our goodbyes and wished Ed a great time on the remainder of his tour. Andrew and I will be in Pittsburgh in January so hopefully we will get together then.

Wayne and I ran over to Trader Joe’s to get some green curry sauce we needed for dinner that night. I also wanted to get more giant corn nut things that are amazing. They just started carrying them again after years of being discontinued. I grabbed some dark chocolate, salted almonds as well. I shouldn’t food shop when I am hungry. Next we went out to Clackamas to look for some shoes for Wayne. We went to Nordstrom Rack first. They didn’t have anything but I did find Andrew a nice flannel shirt. It has orange in it to match his new orange coat he got from REI. I heard from UA finally but just to say that they were working on an offer. What does that mean?? It means they want me so YAY! But until I really have something it’s not happening so I decided to just set that aside for now and not worry about it. Next we went to Kohl’s and again didn’t find shoes. Wayne found some thermal shirts and some socks though. I of course continued to check my email a ton. Nothing from UA.

We headed home and Wayne asked if we could stop by Adidas to look for running shoes. The Adidas headquarters is in our neighborhood so we always have a pass to the employee store. I don’t know why they do this for us. Maybe a thank you for having them in the neighborhood? They are a great addition to the area. They have a beautiful campus with a soccer field, basketball and tennis courts. It’s open to the neighborhood and very welcoming. Anyway, we were able to find him a pair of shoes so success!

I jumped on my laptop so I could keep reading about Django ModelForm and form validation but Spencer messaged to see what I was doing. I asked what he was doing and he said he was going to pick up his new truck. He had been wanting to trade his not very old truck in for one that is a bit smaller and gets better gas mileage. The one he found was in Longview, WA. I told him I wanted to ride up there with him and he seemed happy to have the company. I gathered up some snacks and my Kindle in case I had to sit for a bit while he signed papers. He picked me up and we stopped at his house to take of his tonneau cover then stopped at one of his customer’s houses so he could measure a floor.

Clint took a route that went through Scappoose, St. Helens and Rainer, Washington. It was SO beautiful taking the smaller winding road along the Columbia River. There were HUGE ships like we see here in Portland but many more. It felt like we were on a road trip and I would be delighted each time I reminded myself that this was where I live now.

We made it to the dealership just as it was getting dark. The salesman had everything ready to go so it was only a matter of cleaning out the old truck, moving everything to the new truck and signing some papers. It took about an hour including the fifteen minutes or so that Spencer had to wait for the finance person. That was it! New truck acquired and we were on our way home. I had heard from UA in the mean time and they apologized for the delay and promised there would be an offer……tomorrow. Ok I can wait again. It’s not that stressful. That’s a complete lie. It’s very stressful! But in a good way.

We drove back down Interstate 5 which isn’t nearly as beautiful but it was dark so it didn’t matter. His new truck is so nice! Tons of buttons, lights and gadgets. We had fun checking everything out on the way back.

When I got home, Alice and Wayne were making dinner. It smelled so good! There was a fire going and Lauren was in the living room so we sat and talked for a bit. Taylor randomly showed up and joined us for dinner. We veggies and soy curls in a green curry sauce with lemon basmati rice, sauteed mushrooms, asparagus and sourdough bread. Yum!

We were going to watch a movie at Alice and Jason’s house but it got too late and Jason wasn’t going to join anyway. He had work to do and Andrew did as well. Andrew had spent most of the day importing Perl 5.20.1 into OpenBSD so he had to work late for his day job at GSG.

Wayne and I ended up watching a movie we knew Andrew wouldn’t care about missing. I don’t even really remember the name of it. It wasn’t very good anyway.

Today I learned about some scary/fascinating/cool tools the NSA had access to.

It was cold when I got up in the morning. My pajamas were pretty comfortable though so I threw on my warm fuzzy boots and a sweatshirt. I should have exercised a bit but I headed right for my computer instead. I checked my email and there was nothing pressing so I decided to file a bug report for an issue I found. I first made absolutely sure I could reproduce it a couple of times. I’m still very much in the over thinking stage of things.

Snow was in the forecast and schools were already on a two hour late start but I soon got a phone call that the schools were completely closed. I still hadn’t seen a drop of rain! Oh well, the kids would be happy. Amanda messaged me shortly after to ask if I would watch her daughter since schools were closed. Amanda had her interview with Urban Airship and was expecting her little one would be in school. I told her to of course bring her over. I wrote some thank you emails to those that interviewed me yesterday. They were all so nice and I just wanted them to know how much I appreciated their time.

I then grabbed a quick breakfast before Amanda’s daughter arrived. She is little so I knew I wouldn’t do much work with her there. I was really looking forward to some small child time and we had a lot of fun. It did eventually snow. Big flakes even! It wasn’t enough to really stick around but it was beautiful. I still can’t believe I live somewhere where it snows.

Amanda finished her interview and came to pick up her daughter. I wanted to hear all about her interview though so she sat and gave me the details. Wayne soon joined us and the three of us talked and talked. He had a fire going, the little one was playing with our animals, the conversation was great, I had hot tea, and I was still in my pajamas! Perfect day!

Amanda and her daughter headed home and I went back to work. The issue was definitely reproducible so I filed the bug. Peter looked at it and wanted the traceback. Doh! I should have known that. I added it in a comment and then started looking at the error.

MultipleObjectsReturned: get() returned more than one Survey — it returned 2!

Well that would definitely be a problem. So with some advice from Andrew I looked at what to use instead of get() and it seemed I would need to use filter() in order to return one or more items. That worked to return the list of surveys but now I would need to loop over the list so more than one survey could be displayed. Once I had that done in the template none of the surveys would show up. Hmmm. No more error though! I was really confused. Andrew looked at it with me and it seemed it would need a ton of JavaScript rewritten. It was way over my head! I pretty much spent several hours going down a rabbit hole only to determine I wasn’t ready to be fixing that particular bug. Oh well, at least I learned something.

Wayne made us dinner while I was in the middle of that mess. We had not-chicken strips, tater tots and brussels sprouts. It was an unhealthy delicious and quick dinner. I researched some JavaScript stuff just to see if there might be another answer that I wasn’t aware of and that went on until bedtime. I didn’t get much further really.

Today I learned that what might first appear to be a very small, easy fix can really be a giant mess.

I am getting ahead of myself though. Today would be the day the Outreach Program for Women applicants would be announced. They would be announced at 11:00 but I had an interview at Urban Airship from 10:00 to 12:00 so I would have no way of knowing if I got it or not.

I got up and got ready. It was really cold and windy out so I picked something warm and cozy to wear. The email from UA said they are a casual environment so business clothing was not required. Perfect! I decided that instead of making myself nervous and sick about the interview I would just go into it thinking I was not actually getting the position but would interview as practice. It may sound silly but it calmed me a LOT. I drove down and had a bit of a panic when I couldn’t find a parking spot nearby. I circled around once though and found an open spot. I checked in with two women at the front counter. One woman was training the other and it seemed as though it was the new woman’s first hour of her first day. This made me even calmer for some reason. The UA offices are in an incredibly beautiful building owned by Vestas. Cherice, the recruiter, met me downstairs and took me up to the third floor and into a conference room.

The customer engineering team was already there waiting for me. I met with Mele who is the manager and Jesse, Jhenna, Bretty and Donato. They were all so nice and friendly. They asked me questions, I asked them questions and before I knew it our time was up! I was really enjoying our conversation though. They left and Robb, a professional services engineer, came in next. He explained his position and what he envisioned an intern taking on in order to help further this. He is very big on test driven design which is awesome! I don’t feel that TDD is really taught or presented in a way that shows how beneficial it is. I’d love to be on a team where TDD is the way things are done. We had a great talk and once again our time was up so quickly. Robb left and Todd, the lead data scientist, interviewed me next. He was also as easygoing and friendly as everyone else. We talked about all sorts of things and I don’t really know if I am what they are looking for but I sure enjoyed the interviews if nothing else. I really got a sense of how happy everyone seemed to be working there.

Once we were all done, Cherice gave me a tour of the rest of their space and then walked me down to the front desk. I thanked her for having me, told her I was immediately available and said goodbye. I walked to the lobby and looked at my phone only to see I had been accepted to OPW! I still had to drive to meet Amanda so I couldn’t go home right away and jump on IRC to thank Peter and thank people for their congratulations. I hope it didn’t seem like I didn’t care. The timing was just not ideal.

Now I had a real problem. The UA internship and OPW would most definitely conflict. What to do?? I wasn’t going to think about it right then. I was too happy with my entire day. I met Amanda at Green Leaf Juice Company. I was definitely skeptical about this place because I wanted food not juice! They had some steamed soups that sounded ok though. I ordered the Tomato Basil with raw cashews and she got some spicy southwestern type soup. I told her how wonderful the interviews were and how nice everyone was. I was hoping to calm her for her interviews the following day. We talked about what she should wear and what type of technical stuff they asked. She was still ridiculously nervous.

Our soups came and I took a sip of mine. Wow! It was incredibly good. It far exceeded my expectations. I guess they were kind of low to begin with but really this soup was incredible. We sat and talked until our parking permits were about to expire. I headed home just as happy as could be even though I couldn’t figure out what to do about the conflict. Whatever was supposed to happen would happen. Either way, I was a Mozilla Intern!

I got home and told the guys my good news. They were very happy for me and both said the obligatory, “I knew you would get it!” They are always so good to me. I jumped on IRC so I could thank people for congratulating me and to thank Peter for choosing me. He responded by giving me another bug! I love it 🙂 Now I have two to work on. Andrew says this is how it goes and to be prepared to have a lot more than two in the future. I’m good with that!

One of my bugs involves surveys so I was researching Django ModelForms. I have set up Django websites but I don’t really remember much about form validation so this will be a good refresher for me. I had to leave again to get my hair cut. My stylist was working at the Pearl location this time so I asked Wayne do drop me off so I wouldn’t have to find parking. He dropped me off and picked me back up when I was done. He and I went to the grocery store to get dinner stuff for the next two nights since there was supposed to be a snow storm. The store was packed with people doing the very same thing.

Wayne made us yummy nachos for dinner. I ate a huge plate of them and then went back to my research until I could barely keep my eyes open.

Today I learned that even seasoned developers struggle to set up development environments from time to time.

Today I was going to breakfast with my friend Shanna. We decided on one of my favorite breakfast places, Junior’s Cafe. They have a ton of vegan options and pretty decent vegan French Toast. We drove over and it wasn’t busy at all which is pretty rare. I got tea and she had coffee. We both ordered the French Toast, mine with a side of potatoes and her’s with vegan sausage and braised greens. The French Toast was extra good this time. Really better than ever.

We sat and talked about all kinds of stuff for a really long time and I had just started to tell her my crazy fake friend story but people had come in and were waiting for a table. We both knew this story would take a while so we went out to the car. We sat there while I told her the short, but still really long, version and then she told me the story of her sociopathic friend while I drove over to Food Fight and Sweet Pea Baking. Wow we do have some stories. We sat in the parking lot for quite some time talking and then went to the bakery so I could get John a cake for his birthday. It was dinner night so they would be over and we could celebrate! We wandered over to Food Fight and both got some things. They carry these vegan Snicker-ish bars that are really good so I got some of those. One for Lauren since she is having a stressful time lately.

I needed to stop by Homegrown Smoker and prepay for a Thanksgiving Hyam, a yam infused smoked seitan roast. We sat in the car talking some more. It was great! After the hyam was ordered we headed home. I dropped her off and wanted to stay and talk more but I had the cake in the trunk. It was probably cold enough though. Brrr! That winter storm was even more intense. The wind was blowing like mad, trees were falling all over the place, power was out in various areas. I got home and all was well at our house.

I kissed my guys hello and then started to declutter the entry table. I am horrible about filling up flat surfaces. So many papers. Wayne got a fire going so I made sure to stop and stand in front of it whenever I had the chance. I got some feedback from Peter about the PR I submitted the day before. It seems I used some extra parenthesis but other than that he was happy with it so it got merged in. I forgot to ask if he wanted me to fix the parenthesis issue though. Hmmm. I thanked him for the merge though and he sent another bug my way.

People would be showing up soon for dinner night so I started making the hoisin sauce for the spicy noodles we were having. Wayne did all of the chopping of the vegetables thank goodness. This is one of my favorite meals. It’s an improved version of a dish served at PF Changs. Everyone loves it when we make it and John requested it for his birthday dinner. Jason and Alice were both sick so they wouldn’t be joining us but I told them I would pack up and bring over noodles and cake.  Tonight we had the five of us, John, Spencer, Glenn and Roger.

Once we were sufficiently stuffed it was of course time for cake and ice cream. Natale and Andrew handled the candle lighting and we all sang happy birthday. Cake was cut and served all around. I could barely eat mine but it was very tasty.

Today I learned that Tesla is offering a self driving car. Sort of.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Firefox web browser! It’s also Monday and the Mozilla Monday meeting. I decided this would be a great day to go down to the office and join in on the meeting. I’d also be able to see Katt and hopefully others I know that work there. I called Katt to make sure it was ok and she said it was fine. I also let Amanda know I was going and she said she’d come down as well.

I headed downtown on the Max and went to the bank first and then over to the theater to get tickets for a showing of Citizenfour later that night. The box office wasn’t open yet so I headed to Mozilla. It was kind of cold so I decided to cut through Powell’s. Of course I love books too much not to stop and look at them and of course they were having a buy two get one free sale. I ended up with some books.

I continued my way to Mozilla and It felt great to be going back there. I walked in, chatted with Katt for a bit while I signed in, and then headed over to the kitchen. There were several Mozillians there and it seemed they were making pancakes. Jim, who helped with my drama bug, was there and it was great to see him. Christie was also there. I had met her at Open Source Bridge earlier in the year. I talked with her for a while and she mentioned that she was developing a learning resources wiki page and wanted to know if I would take a look at it. Katt also let me know that there would be lunch and that I was welcome to stay and join. Ok!

Amanda showed up and the meeting was about to begin so we all sat down and watched the meeting. It was a very happy celebration that included a champagne toast. One of the Portland Mozillians presented the new Firefox Developer Edition and it looked so nice! Another Mozillian showed off a great add-on called Privacy Coach for Android which should help the general public with their privacy settings. Those Mozillians are doing so many cool things!

Lunch showed up and there was my favorite pizza from Sizzle Pie as well as a delicious kale salad and some lemon or lemongrass tempeh. There were also vegan chocolate cupcakes with a coconut caramel filling. I was SO full! Thanks Mozilla and Katt!

Christie and I moved to a table and she showed me her preliminary learning resources page. We talked about what her vision was for it and she had me get an account so I could contribute. She had to leave though as did Amanda so I stayed for just a bit longer before packing up to head back to the theater to get our tickets. I stopped in to Sir la Table to see if they had the stainless steel cooling racks I had been looking for. They did and they were on sale! Yay, more stuff to carry. I finally made it to the box office and decided on the 21:15 showing. I bought an extra ticket for Jason in case he wanted to go since they were only $5.

I got home and found out that Jason was sick so I asked Roger if he wanted to join us since his husband was out of town. He said he did so problem solved. I finished up a bug I was working on and submitted a pull request. Peter was gone for the day by then though so I’d have to see if everything was ok the next day.

I practiced drums for about a half hour and then screwed around on the internet until it was time to leave. We decided to go to dinner before the movie. Ok, I decided we’d go to dinner before the movie and of course picked Los Gorditos! Roger had never eaten there (what?!?). It wasn’t very busy at all since it was Monday. Our food was great as usual and Roger really liked it. We were all so full!

We walked our stuffed selves up to the theater but of course ordered popcorn and drinks. It’s a Living Room theater so the guys were able to get beer and wine. We sat down and it was ridiculously cold in there. I was shivering and the air just kept blowing. Finally it shut off and warmed up in there. This was not good either though because it was late and I was warm and full. I nodded off so many times! What I saw of the documentary was good though. I think Ed Snowden is a hero and I hope even more people come forward to call out government wrongdoing.

When we walked outside we were all shocked by how much the temperature had dropped and how much the wind had picked up. Some intense Arctic storm was blowing in. Brrrr! We walked quickly to the car. I got to see our beautiful city all lit up as we drove home. I love living here!

Today I learned that I might have a thing to do for Mozilla for a few months. I’ll know for sure in a couple of days.