Grinding and post interview

I have to keep up the grind! it feels good. I haven't lost my motivation because I can see the end of the tunnel. Let me back-step for a second.

I had an interview with LaunchCode on the 5th of this month. It went really well in my eyes. Afterwords my interviewer told me she thinks I'm ready for the next step. That they're going to start trying to match me with an internship! I've gotten really excited about this and in turn I've decided now is the time to step even harder on the gas pedal because I'm so close. 

I'm revamping my entire portfolio page in React with my new knowledge in SASS. Wow has Sass made CSS fun for me. It was a little complicated at first to get the 7:1 Schema (architecture) but after going through some tutorials, I was left  in awe. It works just like React, almost as if Sass was made for React. Now I'm having a blast styling my pages and seeing how much is out there to do with CSS.

One thing I never really thought of at the outset of this journey was the style implications. I never really thought about having to learn about primary colors, color scheams, design patterns and everything else involved with web design. Now I realize how much there is to learn just on the CSS side alone! I feel like I could spend the next 3 months focusing on CSS alone and only scratch the surface of all there is to be offered. I'm excited for the journey though. 

Even though I've been doing more CSS lately I haven't forgotten about the React and Redux side of things. Like always for me having a week away from the React side seems to have given my brain time to breath and soak all the information in. I now feel very comfortable with basic React webpages with navigation and the works. The state manipulation is even starting to make more sense to me through Redux.

All in all I feel like I've been really productive the past month and the sky's the limit. I'm going to just keep push and I know if I just keep learning improving and making projects there's no way I can be kept out of this industry. Have a great day everyone!

Hacker Space

Wow, I've just been to this place called Hacker Space in Tampa. It's a non profit with all sorts of everything for the public. Wood working, metal working, sewing, 3D printing etching equipment. So much for so many people. I just came for a meetup here and I can't believe this has been here for so long. I'm definitely going to be coming back here next week, I guess it's every Tuesday they have this meetup. It's a pretty neat place to be able to work at too. Even some people working on robotics which is where I might eventually want to get to.

In other news I've been trucking along on my Todo API and it's finally finished! It feels good to have it completed. The next step is to add a front end to it, which doesn't seem as if it's going to be nearly as hard as I was anticipating. That's actually what I'm working on tonight, putting all that together.

I've started my React course as well, and it's surprisingly much easier than I was anticipating. The class is going great and I'm learning so much about the framework. I think it will be easy to apply all the information to my API and get it fully up and running. My first big personal project I plan to get started on is a youtube.com recipe box, a place to save all of your favorite youtube recipes. I;m sure it's probably been done before but it'll be good practice to help me grow and constantly improve.

I'm super excited to keep it moving!

Steady

I've been going at this Udemy class pretty handily. I've been getting stuck here and there and doing research to figure out these problems. It feels great when I'm able to research and figure out a problem. The class I've been taking really emphasizes that. He says that's what real programming is like so that's what I've been doing. It feels good to know that I've been building the skills I'll need to succeed at a real job. Everyday my confidence is growing with how well this is panning out. I'm about to put about 5 hours a day on average to my code , and although at sometimes it feels difficult and hard to continue I just keep pushing.

What's been helping me a lot is listening to motivational speakers. When I hear them talk about going after it and chasing my dreams it really helps me out. I liked Arnold Schwarzenegger a lot. He talked about having goals and purposes. He talks about hard work and dedication and being happy with what you are doing. Why wouldn't I be happy if I have the opportunity to chase my dreams and increase my knowledge on a daily basis. It's wonderful. Even when I get stuck I know the next day I'll come back to it and it'll be that much easier to understand. The other one is Dwayne Johnson. He talks about hard work. I love when he says "we call it clangin' and bangin'" he's talking about the gym but that's what I'm doing with my keyboard! The other thing he says is that there is absolutely no substitute for hard work. That is what makes me keep moving even if I'm not feeling it. Hard work pays off no matter what. If I put in the time I will get better. I may fail, but I will always grow. That's why I'm going to keep working hard.

Hard work

Just finished up a temporary job I got hired for last week. I was working running a forklift in  a freezer for a company called GA foods. Wow was it a lot of work; I worked 70+ hours a week, with one week even going over 80 hours. It was difficult and it left me no time at all to study. 14 hour days are difficult to do anything but come home eat and sleep, and even then only getting 5 hours of sleep.
But I did it, a couple months of that gave me a solid income to be able to put all of my effort into programming and striving fro my dream job.

For the next couple months I'll be able to commit most of my time to practicing my code and achieving my goals, and it makes me so excited to be able to do that. I've written out a calendar and a daily schedule to keep on track with everything and log all my hours. It's always been one of my goals to be more organized in my life. I've been trying to keep up on a bullet journal for a while now but it always seems that other things tend to get in the way. I've found organization is key for me being able to accomplish all of the things I want out of life.

As far as the programming goes it feels good. I'm working through a few Udemy courses on Node.js and then I'll be moving to React and Redux. I've been listing to a lot of podcasts about programming as well. They really helped to keep me motivated on those long work days in the freezer. If anyone wants to check them out I suggest programming throwdown, I just loved those two guys banter and the way they talk about things in general. I also really enjoyed CodeNewbie. She does a really good job of keeping things relatable to the newcomer looking for help and guidance, as well as asking good questions of the guests to help me further on my path and stay motivated.

Well that's it for today. Officially on the #100DaysOfCode challenge. Good luck to everyone out there trying to make their dreams come true. Don't ever give up on your goals.

Fixed Up!

Wow, took me quite a while to get the portfolio up and running so you can actually view my projects. The random quote generator was pretty simple to add in and I had it done fairly quickly. The local weather app is what gave me problems, it took me 2 days to get it up and running.

It ran fine on my local machine, but did not on my website. The issue stemmed from a Mixed Content problem. I found that out by using the dev tools in google chrome, easy enough. Then I had to research the issue. After googling for a little bit I found what I thought to be the solution. The problem was that my website is https and the website I had sent an xmlhttp request to was in http. So now the problem was how to I go about switching it to an https request.

After more googling I figured I had two possibilities. One would be to re-write my code using a different API that was https. The other was to route all of the info into my javaScript using a different API to get the longitude and latitude. The real problem I was encountering was that chrome doesn't support unsecured connections when it is using one of its methods. For this project I was using geolocation.

I decided to do some more research before I jumped into either solution. The first would be a large undertaking and seeing as I'm trying to use the website currently to apply for jobs having that link down wouldn't be an option. Luckily I found another solution with just a little more research.

All I had to do was change the link I was sending out in the XMLHTTP request! By just adding on an s to http that was the original link I was able to avoid having any Mixed Content. Wow disaster averted. It felt great to finally have it figured out and working!

Moral of the story is more research is never a bad thing. But I still have to put in the work to hit on those new problems and ways of viewing the problem to come up with some better ideas. Also I need to document my code better. I can't remember why I originally put it as an http instead of https.

Changes

A lot of big changes have been happening in my life recently. First off I just moved in with my girlfriend of a year and a half. I'm really excited about it and the new adventurre we're off on. I'm also looking for new work. I'm talking to recruiters to help me get a job out in the tech field. Part of me suffers from imposter syndrome, but I know that will pass. I feel confident that I can make a strong impact on any team I'm a part of. With moving and looking for a new job tomorrow will be the day for me to jump back into my code. I want to start a new project and see how it goes. I'm also planning on updating my website to make it more interactive with a couple of pages. All good things that can help me out on the job search.

New Courses

So I've recently started a couple new courses. One is on mongoDB from MongoDB University and it has been extremely helpful in learning the back end. I'm starting to get pretty comfortable. It's also helping to refine my knkowledge on Node.js. I also got a course on Node.js just to make sure I have a really solid understanding of that as well. Once I'm done with those two courses I'll have a couple nicer projects to add to my portfolio. Things are going smoothly, the learning has been getting easier and concepts haven't been taking me so long to understand. It's crazy how it just takes some time and effort and before I know it I can already see progress with my learning and understanding. The job hunt continues as well. I'm going to be looking into Launchcode.org once I've done a few of the coding challenges on hackerrank.com

Anyways I think that's enough out of me for one post.