Wow. I sat down to write about RicRacRoe, and then saw the date. This is yet another date that I’ve been watching get closer & closer each day.
If you were to hit the back button on your browser and scroll to the bottom (although I really need to re-organize this), you would notice my very first post: Blog Post One. It didn’t have much to it as I’d spent most of that day just getting everything set up, but it was effectively the first push I ever made. I’ve made thousands (thanks to trello integration) since then, and I’ve pushed myself repeatedly & recursively (which, i think applies–wow, three clojure commands in one line) throughout the last year.
Today was exciting. Admittedly, I think I’m already behind on all my tasks–i spent too long doing koans to further understand the syntax of Ruby, but i’m considering this an investment of my time in hopes that I will actually be able to get to completion faster than if I hadn’t. I’ve got the minimax started–i started with the minimax this time. I may regret having done this, but we will see. Furthermore, I think i know how to get this trello handler to work.
I had to backtrack a lot and follow the functions backwards a ton, and I finally fell on the root where Micah & I had previously discussed adding a trello-wrapper. I dug into this, and after about an hour, I was about to change up my game and ask Micah for help. I didn’t want to do this, because his deadline was just moved up by like a week and a half, so he’s very busy, but I couldn’t let that be a reason not to call him. Then I opened the anti-forgery wrapper.
It had a long description that I had to read like seven times before I was able to retain and make sense of all the words in my small mind. :strategy
It defaults to the session token, but as an option, you can give it a different strategy. It’s a defprotocol, and those have intimidated me since I tried to implement one like six months ago. I laughed as I typed that. Being intimidated by a function six months ago was perhaps allowable, but it’s not today. And it didn’t intimidate me today. I saw it, and got that initiate remembrance of fear and feeling of “oh, no i can’t do this!”, but I looked at it, considered it. This is just a Class. It’s a Protocol, and, aye, I have worked with protocols at this point. I understand that all I really needed to do was implement its functions.
I did this, and then went back to try it. And oh no! The caller is being pushed through the thread macro, and thus, it’s going to be a little more difficult and possibly ugly to get it to turn out right–unless, I just make a new function that calls the one in need. Huh. Now that’s an interesting idea…
The other thing that was interesting today was our meeting. So I never mentioned in detail that a couple weeks back–on my birthday actually–we had a meeting with one of my former employers–a different one than the last. This one is actually making current efforts to digitalize their paper trail.
A good friend of mine called me about a month or so ago to inquire about what I was actually doing right now–what my job was–and he mentioned this. He mentioned what a huge pain it has been working with one of their current development companies in that the entire visual design has been put on one of his colleagues and that they have to meet with this company like 2-3 times a week to explain things to them–again–and again.
After I explained what we do at Clean Coders, he was interested, but this being a corporate chemical company, there were some red-tape concerns. Nonetheless, we decided to go forward with an introduction meeting. This was on my birthday two weeks ago. Then today we had our kick off discovery meeting, which I got to lead. I explained our process and was prepared with epics already laid out for them a vision that I could verbally excite them with. I even got a few (in paraphrase) “yes! That’s exactly what I’m looking for!” and one “Yes! I hadn’t even thought about that!”. This is where the value of my past life comes in.
My friend called me immediately after, although after I was already on a post-discovery call with Micah & Nick, to tell me that he was really excited about the meeting and that he thought it went really really well. So…Cool!
I got enough information that I should be able to easily walk the group through all the stories as I had done for the previous one, and I think this go around will be different. First of all, I was approached this time as opposed to ‘cold-calling’. Secondly, I’ve already done this once, so I think i can be more efficient, and lastly, while there’s a lot more data involved in this project, I think the over concepts are a lot simpler.
If this goes through, then I will be really excited to watch it come to life. That will be a first for me, and that’s exciting. I’m actually really excited to watch Nick bring the vision to life. Nick can turn words into pictures, which is a skill, I absolutely do not have, and he’s efficient and really good at it. He’s amazed me a couple times as people speak and he draws, and then suddenly there’s this visual image of exactly what the person was trying to convey–only better than you’d imagined. And he knows how the software works with it, so he’s experienced in designing based on both what the client sees and what is actually feasible in the realm of software.
Rex: Rex has been agreeable lately, and when he is, he says “alright” with the cutest little twang. Our friends have always teased us that we yankees have ‘cajun babies’, and they’d joke by calling Rex “Ree-shard” (think Richard, which is his name, in french, which Louisianians pride themselves on use). Then last month, my mom & dad actually pointed out that Rex has a southern accent. I finally noticed it like last week. He totally does! His little ‘alright’, so matter-of-factly and with agreeance is so cute and so southern-twanged. Oh man, if that kid ever takes his accent north, the girls won’t have a chance. This kid with his cajun-twanged charm and his dark-olive skin…
Leo: Speaking of charm, Leo’s little dimple has his whole daycare wrapped around his finger. I’ve gotten like two or three compliments just this week about his little single dimple and his toothy smile. Leo is learning to share right now, and while he doesn’t like sharing, he accommodates–sometimes.
He’s also figuring words out more & more quickly. Words that he could say one minute ago when he first tried to ask for something, he then says in his own way with extreme excitement. This happened with ‘water’ today. He kind of just moaned that he wanted more. Then I asked if he wanted more water, and as i went to get it, he followed me and started exclaiming “Wa-woo; Wa-woo!”. When I acknowledge him saying ‘water’, he smiled, squeaked and stomped his litte feet out of pure pride.