Today would complete my first week at Urban Airship. It really flew by! I got a great nights sleep and was feeling much better after my super blah day yesterday. I was going to go in early again with Andrew but he decided to stay home so Wayne drove me down and I got there just before 09:00. Amanda was working away at the desk and everyone looked pretty intent on what they were doing so I slipped into the glass office and got to work.
There was some confusion over the tickets we were working on so I started a different one dealing with accepting 200 and 201 http status codes when a device token is registered. Currently there is an error when a 200 occurs. This ended up being a bit of a yak shave since I’m new and don’t know the system. I had to start from the point of error and work my way backwards.
I had to send v1 API requests (UA is on v3) via curl. Well what’s the syntax for that? I asked in one of the Slack channels and another employee gave me a whole page of various v1 requests. Great! But what’s “master authorization string”? Got that clarified. Great! Well crap, I need the device token so I need an iOS test device. Obtained iOS test device. Great! Do I need to install a dev kit for this and configure it? Looks like it’s already set up. Great! How do I get the device token? Read lots of docs and find three somewhat complicated methods. Well this is going to be a pain. Mele comes to check on us so I ask her and she says those methods are for external users but I can just go to the “tokens” link in one of the test apps. Doh! But yay! I send my request and get back a 200. Hmmm…that’s good right? The CE and Support teams are oddly quiet and we hear they are working on something critical so I am at a blocking point. No problem since there is plenty for me to work on and learn.
I open the ticket from yesterday which involved removing some old code. I’ve gotten a lot better at searching from the command line so it was a fairly quick process to find the code to remove and the tests to update. I worked through this and then ran tests. One was failing. Hmmm….ok. I looked everything over but it seemed ok. I undid my changes and the tests passed. I started over removing the code and the test was failing again. The failure was due to an invalid argument that had seemingly nothing to do with the code I was removing so I was pretty confused. I dug around and finally figured out that there was a build directory that is generated when setup.py develop is run. There was a file in there that was causing the test failure! I deleted the directory and everything was fine.
Mele has put out her fire and it’s 16:30, demo time. We wander to the Hangar and listen to the presentations. I don’t understand a lot of them but Mele fills me in as best she can. After demos we head back to the CE area and I ask Mele about the previous ticket so I can move forward with it. She says I need to now go into iPython and load the library then send the request from there. Off to figure that out! It was pretty self explanatory but I was making some syntax errors that Mele pointed out. Whew! Things work so much better with the proper syntax. She also showed me how to build the docs in Sphinx and then parse them for any references to code I had removed for the other ticket. There weren’t any so I felt ready to submit a pull request on that one. She went over their procedure and I submitted it. It was late and a PR needs to people to review it and give it a +1 before it can be merged so it would have to wait until Monday. All in all I felt I had accomplished a good amount for my first week so I wished everyone a good weekend and headed out.
Mozilla was having their closing party at 18:00 and Lukas said I was invited so I thought it would be nice to see my mentors one last time before they all head home. Lukas had said it was at the art museum again so I headed for the street car….and just missed it! Oh well. It would be only slightly slower to just walk even though it was pretty far away.
I zig-zagged my way there and other people were also arriving. They all seemed to be dressed in very fancy clothes but I was told to wear whatever was comfortable. I went in and said to the front desk person that I was there for the Mozilla party. He looked very confused and said there was no Mozilla party. Well then…..I messaged Lukas but got no response. At about this time Barbara pinged me on IRC and asked if I was going to the party. It turns out the party was actually at Pure Space clear back where I had come from! I briefly considered just going home but it looked like the streetcar would take me pretty much where I needed to be.
I walked around the corner to the stop and a car came pretty quickly. As I walked toward the event I saw lots of activity, and several travel trailers parked outside. I could hear bagpipes and saw fire. The Unipiper was there! He was outside, dressed in his Darth Vader costume and people were taking lots of pictures of him. I went in and gave my name. Lukas said I was on the list but I worried I wasn’t going to be. There I was! I got my hand marked, checked my coat and backpack, grabbed a soda and headed for the food! There was amazing food everywhere. I was pretty hungry so piled up my plate and then looked for a table. I found a spot with Richard and tried talking to him over the very loud music while I ate. He left and I wandered off to mingle. I soon found Peter so we hung out and talked for a while and then Barbara showed up. I went with her while she got food and ate and then we found Lukas. She introduced us to several people and it was really nice to put faces with names I had seen often. About this time I got an email from Mele. I had deleted a test we needed so my PR couldn’t be merged. Darn! Had this been my first PR I probably would have been mortified at making a mistake but I’d already submitted several for Mozilla and never had one completely right the first time around. I was totally ok knowing I could fix it on Monday. Progress!
Alice had messaged to see if we all wanted to watch a movie at her house at 20:45. It was going to be Expendables 3. It sounded like a pixar film or maybe some movie based on a comic book. I had no idea but it sounded ok to me. I didn’t need to stay too late. I asked if Wayne would come and get me at 20:30 so at about 20:20 said goodbye to everyone and went to coat check. The woman said, “You really don’t want to leave.” She said there was going to be entertainment and I probably really wanted to stay for it. I asked her who would be performing and she couldn’t tell me but assured me I should stay. Ugh, Wayne was not going to be happy! I got my backpack anyway and ran it out to him telling him I was actually going to stay. He wasn’t thrilled but I told him I would figure out how to get home so he didn’t have to come back. I kissed him and went back in. This had better be worth it! I had a strong feeling it would be based on the fancy trailers outside and the high security inside.
Barbara and I mingled around until about 20:45 and then planted ourselves at the very front of the stage. If I was going to stay I was not going to get stuck behind anyone and not be able to see! Soon the CEO of Mozilla came out and thanked several people and made several toasts. He congratulated the team that worked for months to secure the new search partnership with Yahoo! and then the woman who headed up that team came out to announce the entertainment. She talked about how Mozilla is the independent choice and then said something about how these artists were also independent. It HAD to be Macklemore and Ryan Lewis! And it was! They put on such a great show and I got to be right up front for the entire thing. I was so glad I stayed.
Once it was over I headed upstairs with Barbara. Lukas was up there and shuffled us, Yenni, Dino, Christie and someone else to be in a silly picture together. Andrew messaged to say he was on his way so I rushed over to the coat check area and it was complete madness! I handed someone my ticket and waited and waited and waited. It was such a mess of confusion. Andrew was outside and I was still waiting. After a bit the coat check people just wheeled all the coat racks out into the crowd and people started going through them themselves. I had very little confidence I’d be finding mine because it seemed people were going through the coats and just picking something that looked like it would fit. Ugh, but at least I had sent my backpack home with Wayne earlier. I searched and searched with no luck and then heard “I found it! I found it!” and the woman I had given my ticket to forever ago was coming my way with my coat and scarf! I gave her a huge hug and rushed out the door to a soaking wet and waiting Andrew.
Today I learned about curling API requests and building docs in Sphinx. I also learned I can do this. I AM doing this.
