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.

Long needed update

     Well, back at it again. I haven't kept up with this at all like I should have been. I feel much more confident in my programming skills. I've still been working on JavaScript and also a couple of other projects. I've found that my passion really revolves around building things. The learning out of books and websites is great, but I can't really get passionate about it unless I'm actually building things.

     That being said I'm working on three things right now, my portfolio webpage, a local weather application, and a random quote generator. I put them off for a little while but when I get something working in them it feels so good. I've put the most work in on the weather app because it interests me the most. The quote generator mostly just needs some CSS work to get it cleaned up and looking nice. The weather app needs a lot of CSS work and it will start looking really pretty.

    It seems to me that CSS is now my biggest struggle, not the actual doing of it but finding the motivation to actually do it. It feels like the grinding part of it, but just as with all the other programming I do starting is the hardest part. Once I get into it and actually start working on it, it really is a lot of fun. Mostly I'm just trying to finish some stuff so that I can have this portfolio finished and I can have something to show off.

   Well that seems about enough for today. Lets call it quits and get some more programming done!!

Step One.

So I'm going to try and start this blog to outline my path of becoming a computer programmer and getting an entry level job into the field.
     It's going to be difficult to keep up with but I'll be trying my hardest to keep posting. Currently I'm working my way through freecodecamp.com and loving it. It's the first coding lessons I've had that I've been able to stick with everyday consistently. That has been one of the biggest challenges for me, to find the motivation to keep on moving forward. As my brother would say "Gotta keep it movin', gotta keep it movin'."
     So for anyone that might read this here we go!