Code to live by. Scavenging the internet for happy fun times

I spent the week between the time that my lease expired and the time that I began house sitting for a month, living with my boyfriend. And as a thank-you for housing me and everything I own, I put together a treasure hunt for him. But not an out-dated map-and-shovel treasure hunt, this was a 21st century digital treasure hunt. QR codes taped to the back of paintings and masks that led to websites with scrambled pictures, fill-in-the blank puzzles and math problems which led to the location of the next clue. It was the first time I've brought together all of the different facets of web development that I've been learning. Using javascript/ Jquery, HTML, CSS for an actual real world application. I had fun making the sites I used -- but more importantly, my boyfriend loved it! It was amazing to be able to translate my hard work and learning into a smile on the face of someone I care about. I think web development is a powerful tool. A way to customize things and make them relevant, meaningful and useful to people. This scavenger hunt was good proof of concept for that...

Arthurs Quest began with a QR code on the Back of a construction-paper super hero emblem...

His first site...

Led him here...

On the back of the painting. A QR code took him to this site...

The Sunglasses had a code taped to the back of the lens...

and so on...

and so forth...

etc...

etc...

until I led him here...

To the rubicks cube with the URL to his final clue...

rubicks are a point of struggle for him...
So he just popped all the pieces off and put them back together so the letters and characters in the URL were lined up right.

then he breezed through the last page...

And straight to the prize at the end of the road,


...a custom comic book. And being as thoughtful and adorable as he is, he sent me pics of his journey. 

Personal code 6.8.15 Networking

Yesterday I went to my first coding Meetup, "Coffee and Code". The event was hosted by a group called Girl Develop It. This is the part where I should say "I didn't know what to expect", but I totally had a preconceived notion of what it would be-- a bunch of noobs like me getting tutored by the one or two ladies in the area that work as web Developers...WRONG! Apparently there are a lot of women around here that do web development -- and sometimes they just like to get together with other like-minded tech savy ladies and shoot the breeze.

It was really encouraging to see so many successful women working as programmers. It seems like there are a lot of good jobs out there and a lot of people to connect with...but at the same time I felt a bit intimidated. I couldn't follow everything they were talking about -- discussion touched on languages, libraries and general technologies that I haven't even heard of. I am proud of the progress I've made and new knowledge I've acquired in the last couple months, but that group reminded me that I am pretty far behind most people working in the industry. Most of these women had a decade + experience on me.

My noobness to both "networking" and coding rendered me a bit shy at the meeting, but I know there is a lot I can gain from these women, so I plan to go back and see what I can't glean from them -- and if nothing else, I'll be able to at least bring an eager ear and some admiration for their achievements to the table.

Personal Code May 31 2015 Silicon Valley kumail nanjiani

I normally don't watch TV, but I've been hearing a lot lately about this show called Silicon Valley. (And by hearing a lot I mean, when I was in my internet-stalking-Kumail-Nanjiani phase, I saw that he was on this show and then last month they mentioned it on NPR --TWICE). NPR is like my third parent (ie I trust what they say implicitly) and this show has Kumail em-effin Nanjiani on it... a man who chopped up "a ninja" and hid it in his damn name, so obviously I forked over half of the amazon.com gift card I won at work, momentarily cast aside my hippy-who-doesn't-own-a-tv lifestyle and downloaded season 1 of Silicon Valley.

So far I've watched one episode. It was a'ight. I think what it needed, was little more Kumail. (I've got  fever. And the cure is Kumail! #DatedChristopherWalkinSNLAllusion). Even without much Kumail, I must say the show got me excited... about programming.

Oh to create something -- to be at the helm of the next big advance. What must it feel like to hit "run" on your code and have it do something that no one has ever done before. Manipulate data in a way that will suddenly make people's lives easier-- and maybe even improve their quality of life.

I have worked in customer service (in one form or another) since high school. Serving one person at a time. Repeating myself. Over. And over. All day. I love people. I genuinely care about my clients I work with. I want to help them, I empathize when the call to complain about a bad experience they've had with their project, but I've never been in a role where I could stop them from having a bad experience to begin with. I'm just in a support role. I help the people in my company that serve customers and I help relay information from those people to customers, but I don't DO anything.

Things will always go wrong. Damage control will always be necessary, but I know if I am devoting my energy towards solving problems rather than assuaging people after a problem has occured, I can make go much further towards making people's experiences better.

I can't wait to have a job where I can make things better-- more accessible, more visible, more efficient.

One day I will think and create big... but for today, I just created some background pic options for my web developer site...