Fresh Code

I had a great talk yesterday with Peter about my project and what I would needed to do but today I felt lost and confused. It just feels like there are lots of parts and pieces to this one and I’ve never done some of them.

I did start building out the project structure by adding a new app to the directory and creating the submodules. I looked at the structure of some of the other apps and tried to see how mine would fit in. I spent the remainder of the day working on learning JQuery. It’s pretty cool and interesting.

We had a quick dinner of burgers and tots and then headed over to Alice and Jason’s house to watch November Man. It was intense! Not sure how I felt about it though. Maybe uncomfortable is a good word. I dunno.

Today I learned Northampton, Massachusetts now has an Amtrak stop! Our friends live there so that’s super handy.

I was up early and rushing to get ready so Andrew and I could head downtown. We were both a little late so ended up driving the car to the end of the street so we wouldn’t miss the Max. As luck would have it we heard the train coming in as we were locking the car so we went running while buying tickets! Just in time, whew! We hopped on and caught our breath. At the next stop I noticed the Trimet guy checking tickets so I pulled mine up on my phone. When he asked me to show mine I showed him the phone and he wanted to see the QR code. No problem. I showed him and then the most ridiculous thing happened. He said, “Why did you just validate your ticket?” Huh? I said I didn’t. He said, “Do you have your ID?” I gave it to him and he wrote me a ticket?! What the hell? Andrew and I got our tickets at the same time but he didn’t even glance at Andrew’s phone! He handed me the ticket and exited the train. Well then. I hardly knew what happened. I was mad though! I headed straight for the courthouse so I could do whatever I needed to do to fight it and of course I had to take off my knee-high lace-up boots and they had to dig through my backpack. Turns out I couldn’t take care of anything since my ticket wouldn’t be in the system for a few weeks. That’s also ridiculous. The ticket will be $175 if I end up losing. Bastards.

Anyway, I got to Mozilla before 09:00 so that was good at least but I was grouchy so I just went into the Intern room and luckily nobody was there. I worked on my project for quite some time and then Barbara showed up. She had lots to do as well so we were both quiet. Peter wanted to meet and there was also a privacy talk/cantina happening at 14:00 so I asked if we could meet after. He said that was fine. The talk was by Nico Sell and maybe I was just grumpy but I found her talk really irritating. I’m all for privacy but she just did not present well. It was more like a sales pitch. But hey, it was streamed on Air Mozilla! That’s my gig!

After the talk I met with Peter and we talked about my progress and plans. He listened to me and gave me his thoughts. He was very encouraging and helpful. I’m very lucky to have him as a mentor. He made everything sound like it wouldn’t be terribly hard. We’ll see. At least I feel like I keep moving forward and kind of see the road ahead.

Once we were done I worked a bit more and also helped Jordan with some Django issues he was having. It’s funny because Air Mozilla is a Django site and it feels so daunting but helping Jordan with his new Django site feels so, SO easy. Weird. I left around 16:30 and headed down to Andrew’s co-working space. We grabbed a Max home. It was PACKED! I got to see my long lost neighbor who I used to ride the Max with in the morning. She was doing well and it was nice to see her.

We got home and Wayne had torn out a ton more of the old kitchen. It’s really sad and shocking how much material was wasted and ruined because of how the old owner did their “remodel”. I bet she used every available nail in all of Portland. It’s so ridiculous that I had to take pictures. Look all of those nails! Every single wall and the ceiling is just full of nails. She also destroyed so much cedar by coating it in gobs of lacquer. It all just has to be thrown away. Ugh!

Wayne finished up for the day and quickly showered so we could head to BSD Pizza Night. We ended up at Denicola’s Italian Restaurant since it was next on the list. I was skeptical but the pizza was really good! The sauce was excellent.

Today I learned, thanks to Natale pointing it out, that comprende sounds like comprehend which I had never noticed! Duh. He’s taking Spanish.

I debated about going down to Mozilla but PJ’s and cozy couch won out so I was able to get to work pretty early. I decided I really like the idea of stars for saved events to watch later since it has a nice tie in with Firefox bookmarks. I need to make it save the data on the user side and then have Ajax sync the data to the server. Ok. What the hell is Ajax and where do I get it and how do I use it? I asked Andrew and he kind of laughed and then told me that Ajax is not a thing. It’s a way of transferring data and updating a webpage without reloading it. Ooooooh-kay.

I decided I should probably hit up Treehouse and learn some stuff and things so I started a JQuery track. That was the majority of my day and JQuery is pretty darned cool! And the Treehouse teacher is excellent.

I was supposed to have a meeting with Peter and Richard but it was cancelled so I just plugged along until the day was over. We decided on leftovers for dinner so it was pumpkin pasta and brussels sprouts. Yum! After dinner we watched more Dr. Who. The Doctor regenerated and as per usual I don’t like him! I’m sure I’ll get used to him though.

Today I learned a lot about JQuery.

Yay! My PR was good and Peter said he’d merge it in once I squashed all of my commits. No problem! I found a handy way to do that without rebasing or doing a merge squash.

git reset --soft HEAD~3 && 
git commit --edit -m"$(git log --format=%B --reverse HEAD..HEAD@{1})"

This will squash your last three commits onto the current one and also extract all of the commit messages and pass them to git commit. Very handy! As long as one remembers that ~N refers to the last N commits NOT including the latest one. I didn’t remember that so ended up squashing one in I wasn’t supposed to.

Even though Git can go horribly wrong horribly fast it is pretty forgiving so I was able to:

git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD

And viola! Back to where I was before I messed up. I corrected it, pushed it back up and waited for Travis to be happy. Once it all passed, Peter merged it in and I could wipe my hands of that one!

I spent the rest of the day pondering how to implement my next feature. I needed to mimic some functionality that Youtube uses. There is a lot to think about so I poked around Youtube and looked at the Air Mozilla site trying to figure out where it would go, how it would look and what to call it. This will probably take me a few days to work out.

Tonight was dinner night and it was up to me to cook since Wayne was busy with the kitchen demo. I decided to make Creamy pumpkin almond sauce over spaghetti, salad and bread. I made a list and headed to the store. I thought the store would be really crowded but it wasn’t bad at all so I was out of there in no time. Once I got home, Wayne let me know that Alice wouldn’t be coming. Well darn! She always makes the salad and I didn’t buy anything for that and besides it’s not the same without her at dinner night.

Luckily I had stuff to make a simple salad. The bread just had to go in the oven and the sauce is ridiculously simple to make. I also got some fresh spinach to layer under the hot pasta if people wanted that. Dinner came together really quickly because I don’t like cooking so I always pick things that are simple and fast. They also taste great because I love eating good food.

Tonight we had the five of us (Jordan went to a show), John, Spencer, Lauren, Sean, Estelle, Dale, Miri, baby Michael, Jason and Glenn. I always forget to mention the dogs but we have Comet and Lily. Glenn brought Pika, Dale and Miri brought Penny Loafer and Jason brought Ladybug so there was a lot of dog playing going on. I LOVE our full house!

Today I learned about this coolness from the Internet Archive!

Andrew was working from home and Jordan wasn’t feeling well so I decided to stay home too. It was cold in the house again so Wayne started a fire and I got to work.

I was trying to write a test to check that a region was properly edited but I couldn’t get it to pass and I couldn’t figure out why. I changed so many things and just couldn’t get it. Finally I asked Andrew to come and take a look at it. He was able to quickly explain where I was going wrong and get me back on track. I got enough forward momentum going to get my test passing! I had three more to work on though and then next one of course had issues. I was expecting an http 200 response but was getting a 302 redirect. I had no idea why or if this was correct so I bugged Peter about it and he helped me figure out how to see what was going on in my test. Once I got my brain wrapped around that I was able to get all four of my tests written and passing. They still need to be more detailed but I have a great start.

Wayne has spent the day demolishing the old kitchen. It’s a lot of work! It’s going to be a nice space once it’s done though. He spent a lot of time making lots of noise, swearing and questioning the construction techniques of the previous owners. Good times!

I remembered that I was supposed to add a link to my blog on the Gnome Wiki so I did that.  Sorry anyone that comes here from there!

We went over to Alice and Jason’s and watched Maze Runner. It was pretty good. Lots of action.

Today I learned how to set up a Google Alert for a Craigslist search I can never remember to manually do. We’ll see if this works out.

And one step back. That’s sure how it feels these days. I make some progress and then I get stuck a bit but I figure it out or ask for help.

Andrew was going downtown today so I got up early and headed down with him. I got off at the stop past his and wondered if I might find a lucky penny. Seriously, right around the corner I found two! A man was walking by so I held it up and I said, “Lucky penny!” He said he picks them up as well so I gave him one.

I got to Mozilla pretty early so wasn’t sure if Katt was there. I don’t think the door opens until 08:30 so I waited a bit in the lobby and then went upstairs. She was already there. A man was there hooking up the monitor in the intern space so I set up in the area where we sat for Ascend. It seemed so big and empty all by myself! It didn’t matter for long though because soon I was immersed in what I was doing. I had gotten an email with comments on my PR. Ugh! What a shitty PR I submitted. I don’t even know how I missed some of the things I missed. I fixed them up and resubmitted.

Peter said it was ok and that it happens all the time. We agreed that one just looks at the same code for so long that things just kind of blend and blur. He called it Homeblindnessism. I’m so glad he’s patient and understanding.

We were going to have a Vidyo conference after lunch so I just worked on things until then. The technician had finished setting up in the intern space so I moved in there and got all connected for our conference. It worked perfectly! I was having some issues though. Peter had noticed that I didn’t submit any tests with my PR. Yeah, I missed that. He had submitted a small PR against my PR as well so once I merged in his change to my remote fork, I pulled in those changes to my local branch and then my tests wouldn’t run. I was getting some error about not having the funfactory module. I have NO idea what this means. But Peter said it was an easy fix. Something went all weird with my database or something. He walked me through getting it all fixed up by dropping the database and starting over. Definitely an easy fix.

We talked about my progress and how I felt I was doing. I said I thought I should be faster. He said, “After two weeks?” Well I guess so. I don’t really know. I’m always going to thing I should be doing more most likely. He said he thought my pace was perfect. Whew!

Adam showed up while I was having my conference. It was nice to see him! He was there to work with his pseudo mentor on an issue he was having. Something about a ‘waffle flag’. I dunno. Probably not this:

Jordan was leaving school early so Wayne swung by and grabbed me and then Andrew. It was SO cold in the house so Wayne started a fire. I worked on tests until the point of frustration and then called it a day so I could make dinner. We had Spicy, Creamy Kale Pasta. It was SO good!

Today I learned that there are keyboard shortcuts for Gmail! Why did I not know this until now????