Fresh Code

Today, after wishing our youngest a happy birthday before she was off to school, I listened to Serial, worked on my Mozilla bug and sat outside in the beautiful weather. After Andrew was done working he, Wayne, Natale, Wayne, Jayde, Estelle, and I piled in the Excursion and drove down to Sellwood for BSD Pizza Night. The pizza was ok and the conversations were interesting as always. We need to add new places to our list though or we will have to begin again from the top.

Today I learned about HackerRank. I haven’t messed with it a lot but it could be another useful tool for coding practice.

I’m happy and relieved to be moving forward. Today was totally stress free. I had some comments and suggestions from Peter regarding the PR I submitted so I did a bit of work on that and also listened to Serial. I’m kinda hooked.

Today I learned that there is another podcast, Undisclosed, that goes further into the Adnan Sayed murder case.

I continued working on the Air Mozilla bug and got to the point that I needed to submit a PR for review and comments. It feels good to be working on something AND I think my job choice is pretty clear.

Wayne, Andrew, Natale, John, Spencer, and I went to the movies and I stayed awake for the whole thing which is amazing because I was pretty tired.

Today I learned that Mad Max was actually a pretty good movie.

Today I decided to just dive into an open bug on Air Mozilla. Weighing each offer over and over was exhausting and I knew I was just in over-thinking hell at this point. Spending some time immersed in a puzzle would hopefully snap me out of it and give me some clarity.

Today I learned that Japan has come up with an amazing solution to bike parking.

Still thinking. So much stress but I am pretty sure I know what I am going to do. Peter was correct. Thinking Time is a great ally.

We did go see Tomorrowland and I loved it! We all did. It was a nice escape for a couple of hours and of course I ate a shit-ton of popcorn. When I got home I had a nice, long talk with Erica about Air Mozilla, Outreachy, the tech industry, and life in general. It was great to hear how she got where she is today.

Today I learned about the documentary Project Code Rush. Interesting!

I’ve a lot to think about and consider while deciding between these two job offers. It feels huge and I don’t want to make the wrong choice. I’m not going to post more than this while I think.

Today I learned that I LOVE our new towels! Kinda weird at first but they are great!

I found a salvaged built-in with a leaded glass cabinet that looked nice and was pretty cheap so I emailed the seller about it last night. He got back to me in the morning and said we could come and pick it up so Wayne and I ran over there. It turns out he is a contractor who restores old houses. We talked for a bit and I said I was going to pester him for some subcontractor recommendations.

We stopped by a big antique mall to see if they had any treasures we couldn’t live without but they didn’t and then I had to get home to watch the little ones while Alena went to a job interview. We had fun playing and watching Tangled until she returned. She said it went really well and she liked the company a lot so fingers crossed she gets it!

I heard back from UA and they would like to make me an offer. Well now this complicates everything because the job sounds amazing! I would love to build tools for customers. I feel like it would be a very creative and challenging job which is exactly what I am looking for. I want to work on problems that are increasingly more difficult. Well, I will see what happens tomorrow because I have to have an answer for the other company one way or another.

Lauren and Jordan baked a strawberry pie. The third pie of strawberry season and we are only about a week in. I wasn’t kidding when I said we have a lot of strawberries! We pretty much ate the entire pie after dinner.

Today I learned job hunting is simultaneously easier and more difficult that I had imagined.

So many stressful things to do in such a short amount of time! Today I was headed to court to fight my Max ticket. I was hoping the guy wouldn’t show up but nope, there he was. Before the judge got going the jerkface that ticketed me called my name and asked if he could speak to me out in the hall. He basically said they had enough proof that I wasn’t going to get out of it but they would knock the ticket down to $75 if I plead no contest. If I still wanted to fight it I would have to come back for a trial and blah blah blah. It sounded like a pain in the ass and it could end up costing me more money so I took the deal and was quickly on my way out the door.

It was SO nice out that I decided to walk to Spella Cafe and treat myself to one of the best cups of chai in Portland. Unfortunately I was on the wrong street and walked all the way to Burnside before I noticed. Oh well, it was still really nice out so I decided to just keep walking toward home. I figured there were Max stops along the way so I could hop on one if I didn’t want to walk anymore. It was only a 4 mile walk though so I didn’t think I would need to and besides I didn’t want to buy a ticket just on principle. I was amazed at all of the things I noticed while walking that are nearly impossible to see while driving. It was great! I also got a chance to stop at the new coffee shop, Naturalia Cafe in the neighborhood since I was walking right past it. They unfortunately didn’t have house made chai like Spella but the drink I got was good, the place is cute and the barista was very nice. They are also going to try and bring in some vegan pastries. I’ll definitely go back.

I spent the rest of the day at home not doing much of anything, we made a quick and tasty dinner with veggies from the garden and some rice and then went to Jason and Alice’s house to watch Mordecai. Great movie! I think we should own it.

Today I learned that the walk from downtown is really nice and I should do that more often.

I spent the morning going over some JavaScript syntax trying to figure out where I have holes in my understanding. Everything I read/did made sense so I don’t know why I can’t put it all together. Grrr!

Alice rescued me in the afternoon and got me outside in the gardens. It was SO beautiful out. I shouldn’t have squandered this lovely Sunday looking at code. I picked a bunch of strawberries and some rhubarb so I could make a pie but we were going with Kristin to a nearby RV park where some mutual friends of ours are staying. We joined them along with a new friend, Todd for a little happy hour. We all met in Todd’s beautiful vintage bus. Todd and Russ also travel full time and work on the road. We stayed a bit longer than intended and it was getting pretty late by the time we headed home. We stopped at the store because we hadn’t eaten dinner. Wayne made a quick meal of spaghetti, Italian sausage and bread. Jason returned from a day at the Write the Docs conference just as we were finishing up dinner. We sat around and talked until we were all pretty tired.

Today I learned that Todd and Russ’ air horn on the bus plays music and even came with a book that lists the songs available.

Kristin and Jason went to Voodoo Donuts in the morning and brought some back for us. Nice! Wayne, Andrew, Jordan, Natale and I headed over to Dale and Miri’s current house so we could help disassemble furniture for their upcoming move. The guys made quick work of it and then we all had some pizza before going back home.

Alice came over in the early evening to see what we were doing for dinner. We talked about different things we could have and decided on fajitas. Alice, Andrew, and I ran to the grocery store and then returned home and got busy in the kitchen. Wayne was putting up drywall in the new bathroom so I was unfortunately the one helping Alice cook. We got it all done pretty quickly but it definitely wasn’t our best dinner. Glenn joined us and it turned out to be a really nice evening in spite of the food 🙂

Today I learned that Automattic seems to be really good to their employees.