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.

Next Steps

Well I'm on to the next step, which is rinse and repeat, keep learning. I've found that my motivation to work on anything has drastically spiked up when I have a project to work on and something to work towards finishing. Problem is I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas. Right now I think I'm going to make a cookbook or something like that with recipies from around the web or maybe a learn to cook website that puts all the information from my favorite videos right to hand. I guess they say you just have to build and as you do you get better so that's what I'm going to try and accomplish now.

On top of that I'm going to start my react class and make sure I can get the basics of that done with node.js. Soon the mongoDB class I signed up for is starting. I believe it's on August 8th or something similar. I know I have a couple weeks left until it happens  so i should be good and prepared for when it finally does start. All in all things are on the up and up. Keep on coding everyone and don't stop moving forward.

Keep Moving Forward

Well I'm just about done with the portfolio page. I've had to add in some pictures and some CSS work to make it look pretty. Next step will be simple enough but adding in the resume. Easy to just add it to the files. The biggest thing I'm worried about is the resume itself. I've never really made one before so I'm very nervous about it. My sister's fiance told me that I probably have impostor syndrome; where I feel like I just don't belong even though I probably have all of the skills. I'm going to show it to a few friends to have them critique it and let me know what they think of the thing.

I've found that one of the biggest things at this stage is asking for help about the networking process. I'm afraid to ask people if they can help me look for a job. Maybe it's all just fear that I'm going to get rejected. To be honest I do have fears that I'll constantly get rejected and never make it into the industry. From what I've heard getting a job is all about who you know and how well you can network.

Well I guess that's enough of my rambling for now. Time to finish this webpage off and see if maybe I might be able to get a job after all. Who knows maybe luck is on my side, I did just get a fortune cookie!

Web Page!!

So I got my webpage up and running and copied all the files from the resume repository over to the github pages repository. It took some time and thinking but I finally got it done. What took me so long was that I wanted to get the CNAME right. I was having a lot of difficulty navigating all that with godaddy.com so I decided to just go ahead and to the website forwarding from my domain.

I'm happy with the results but I'm not done yet. still have some more <a></a> to add my resume to the website and then a couple images of my projects and I'm off to the races! Feels good to be almost ready to legitametly hit the job market. I've put a lot of time and effort into this and I'm excited to actually see the fruits of my labors. I can't believe I actually have a website. I remember thinking a year ago how that would be crazy and I wasn't sure if I could ever get it done. But here I am.

Just gotta keep on striving forward and I know I can make it there one day!

Getting it moving early

    So this week is  a trial run of living with my girlfriend for a week; it's to get a base idea of what it might be like to live together and move in. We plan on moving in together in October. Of course we haven't officially said we're going to yet, I don't see why we wouldn't.
     Today is day number one of that, and so far it's been great. Especially for our work schedule differences. She has to get up early for work which helps me to get out of bed and get going in the morning. So far it's helped me to get a lot more accomplished. Look I'm even posting on my Blog!
     The code has been going pretty well. I finally completed by local weather application and now I think I'm going to get back into some hardcore lessons on doing react and node.js. Once I have a good handle on those I feel like I'll be ready to go ahead and get a junior developer job. Although the time to start applying is now from what my mentor told me. I need to make some cold calls to start with but that'll be when I've finished my porfolio which I only need to add a couple JavaScript images to. So much work I still have to do, but I'm looking forward to it. It's exciting to have gotten bit by the code bug as Steve would call it. I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking about writing code a lot more in my everyday life. I've even got my girlfriend to help me come up with website ideas to make for cool websites to make.
     Anyways that's enough for today. I'm going to try and update this thing at least 3 times a week and stay at it regularly. maybe I'll add in a daily goals section, A gratitude section, and an improvement section. I think that would be helpful. Anyways that's all folks.