Well today the rain is gone but at least we got a partial day of it. I left early with Andrew since he was going to work downtown. I guess it isn’t really downtown though because his co-working space is north of Burnside. I still don’t really understand all of these neighborhoods and areas. Aaaaanyway, I hung out at CA with him for a while because I can’t get in to the Mozilla office until 08:30 when the door unlocks. I ended up being ten minutes early anyway but some Mozillians were there and let me in.
I couldn’t wait to get working on my Tutorial so I could finish it up so I jumped on it as soon as I got my computer. I paused for check-ins and everyone was pretty happy that it was Friday and also the monthly Cantina. After check-ins and announcements we were given lots of time to work on catch up stuff so of course I worked on my tutorial. I also tried to help anyone that needed it. I had several screen shots to take and had to figure out how best to show them on the command line. I’m not sure I succeeded but hopefully some classmates will read through it and give me feedback.
We all broke for lunch which was once again delicious! We had food from Cha! Cha! Cha! and I definitely took a little too much this time. There was a spicy tofu dish and a warm quinoa kale salad of some sort, really good guacamole and Pico di Gallo. We are very spoiled.
After lunch we talked about testing and what tools we would need in order to work on bugs and test them. We talked about needing things like a text editor, the testing software, the suite of tests to be run, one or more versions of the software to be tested, a local version of the code, terminal, git, etc.
Lukas searched Bugzilla for bugs tagged “good first bug” and then chose one from the list of results. It was a bug in a Mozmill test related to some code that needed to be moved outside of a class. We were able to watch Lukas begin with no knowledge of this particular bug, read and dig down, read code, dig down more, poke around until she could see what was going on. It was so interesting and also very encouraging to see her go through this process. It shows me that although she has years of experience on us she still has to look at and figure out what is going on with each new bug. I guess it’s kind of like reading a book. Some people have been reading books a lot longer than others but they still have to read through a new book and gain an understanding of it as they go. They don’t pick up a new book and automatically know everything that is going on. Sure it takes the new reader more time to put it all together but they can eventually get there and will get better and faster with practice.
The bug did turn out to be a great first bug but we all got worried that we were going to have to fix it right then. Someone asked about it and I think there was a collective sigh of relief when Lukas said we could start that process next week. Then she came up with our cheer. “What do we do?!” …”Fix bugs!”….”When do we do it?!”………..”Next week!”.
Lukas talked to us about the Gnome Outreach Program for Women and let us know that anyone in Ascend could apply no matter what gender. I had heard about this program last year two weeks before the deadline. I thought it would be wonderful but I didn’t have a clue where to even start. I looked at some bugs in the Python code base but honestly I couldn’t understand a thing in their bug reports. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I had two weeks to figure it out. It felt impossible so I didn’t do it. I’d like to give it a shot this year though.
The day was winding up and it was nearly time for the cantina so we did our check-outs and then I rushed to get my tutorial pushed to my repo so I could submit my pull request. Andrew showed up shortly after and introduced him to a few of my classmates. Wayne showed up not too long after Andrew. I tried to make sure and introduce them to all of my classmates and I tried to meet any guests that were there. Some people were playing Rockband and others were just mingling. We had a really nice time getting to meet everyone’s friends/family.
Katt thanked us all for coming and then very nicely told us to get the heck out so we cleaned up what we could and headed downstairs. The three of us planned to go out to dinner and Carmen was standing with us so we asked if she would like to join us. She thought that sounded lovely so we began searching for a place to go. Katt came down and we invited her to join us as well. Since she is so great at picking wonderful food, we left the place up to her. We ended up at a really nice Vietnamese place where we had good food and fantastic conversation. I think we stayed a lot longer than the staff would have preferred and were the last ones out the door. The night was beautiful and we were really enjoying hanging out so we all took a nice slow walk around. There were so many people walking, talking, laughing and enjoying themselves. I loved being a small part of that. Portland looks so different at night. The building architecture is so much more apparent so we ended up seeing things we had never noticed before.
It was getting late and everyone was getting tired so we walked Katt to her bus stop and waited until she was on her way and then we walked Carmen home. Once she was safely inside we made the long walk to our Max stop. We don’t really know the late night schedules but we were lucky enough to catch the very last train for the night!
Today I learned that Downtown Portland is an entirely different kind of beautiful at night.