We made it! It was a long, fascinating, stressful, fun week at the Ascend Project. We started with our usual check-ins. Most of us seemed pretty happy to be there and thankful that the weekend was coming up so we could give our brains a rest. The group worked on getting an alias set up so that Sublime opened for them instead of Vim when doing a Git commit. I use and love Vim already so I worked on figuring out why my prompt was tabbed in. I looked and looked at my bash_profile but I don’t know anything about bash script so it all looked ok to me. I also helped Yenni and Carmen as they needed. Shawna was here again and we were all thankful for her added help. She is also an encouragement because she has been programming for about a year and is starting a job as a Junior Programmer on Monday.
It took everyone a bit longer than expected to get Sublime set up as their default so we really moved into lunch at this point. Katt ordered pizza and got our vegan one from Sizzle Pie. I’ve had their pizza before and really like it but this one was SO good! I’ll have to get it again.
After lunch we delved into the subject of web literacy and then had a maker party. We were divided into groups of mostly 2 and then were given a web literacy topic to explore. I was paired with Yenni and our topic was Community Participation. We were both so happy to have this topic because it’s something we both feel so strongly about. We really connected and went off onto side discussions about foster care and other invisible populations.
After we researched our topic we had to take turns presenting. Adam and David presented on open vs closed licensing for content. We presented next and it’s starting to feel better being up there. Whew! Virginia and Eva spoke about sharing, Mary Anne and Becky talked about security, Jessica, Peri, and Sofie talked about privacy, Candida and Carmen discussed navigation, Mel and Barbara went over credibility, Tina and Zeus showed various ways to search, and finally K and JD talked about collaboration.
After we were done with web literacy we were directed to webmaker.org and were told to use one of the tools to create a “thing” that kind of reflected on why we were in Ascend. Yikes! It felt stressful to have to create something on the fly but it was a great task! It didn’t have to be perfect or even very good. It was just a way to kind of show what sort of skill level we have. I had no idea what to do at all so just made a quick image and video montage in Popcorn Maker. We had to then write a week one blog post and insert a link to our “thing”, commit, push to our remote repo and then submit a pull request. I blog at the end of each day so I just inserted my link into a blank document but I managed to get it done.
We did our check-outs and everyone was very glad it was the weekend and pay day! We were able to hang around after for some social time if we wanted but it’s Andrew’s birthday so I wanted to get home as soon as I could. It was incredibly beautiful outside again so the walk to the train was wonderful as was the walk down our street. The beautiful weather did not stop me from letting my insecurities get the best of me though as I reflected on my week. I started over-thinking everything as usual but took the time to email Lukas about my concerns. She got right back to me and put my worries to rest. I wish I could just stop them entirely! I am hoping this program will at least help me to deal better with this part of me. Bleh, enough of that.
Andrew was still working and Wayne needed to run to the store but we planned on going out to dinner so I read a book until we were all ready to go. Jayde was spending the night at her friend’s house and Natale wasn’t feeling well, Jason and Alice had other plans so it ended up just being the three of us. We wanted to try an Ethiopian restaurant we had been hearing about so we drove to SE and ate at Bete Lukas. Wow, it was fantastic! We always get the vegan platter whenever we have Ethiopian and there are usually one or two items I don’t really care for. Not at this place! I loved everything they served and there was plenty of food. We actually had some left on the platter by the time we were all stuffed.
We came back home and watched and episode of Dr Who. Andrew had a bit of a cold so he went off to bed and I read my book for a bit. Now it’s bedtime for me.
Today I learned that Beethoven was black. Ok, there is a lot of discussion about this but it’s pretty clear that he was NOT white as history has portrayed him and as pretty much everyone I know was taught.