CivilToCS

I am a civil engineering transplant currently working for a NYC-based tech startup. About a year after earning my undergraduate degree in civil engineering, I decided it wasn't for me. I dropped everything in order to pursue a career in the technology sector and that has lead me to my current position as a Junior Systems Engineer. I hope to post more frequently as I improve my skills and share GitHub gists when I have the time.

[civiltocs-blog]

Covers our approach to using MMS and MongoDB log files with techniques to optimize your own MongoDB deployment, whether in the cloud or on your own hardware.

This is a fairly short read, but useful to keep in mind when diagnosing MongoDB performance issues.

[civiltocs-blog]

Just stumbled upon a very useful post on http://matt.might.net/ covering all things bash. Instead of reposting the good parts, I'll just leave you to reading the whole thing. It's a fairly short read and a great primer for those new to bash.

Via: The awesome Hakka Labs weekly newsletter

[civiltocs-blog]

Okay, I'll admit it. Sometimes, I forget to use 'screen'

I will have to confess that I don't often use 'screen' as much as I should, but I've been getting better at starting it up when I start a new session. I have, on occasion, started a process that ran much longer than expected and was then forced to either wait it out, or kill it and start again under screen. No more! I found out about reptyr today (via this post) and will be using that moving forward.

The steps are outlined in the aforementioned post, but I'll reproduce them here.

ctrl+z to suspend the process

bg to resume it in the background

disown <job name> to prevent a SIGHUP from killing the process if your session ends

screen

reptyr <pid> and you're done!

You might need to install 'reptyr' on your Linux distribution, but once you have it, it is invaluable.

[civiltocs-blog]

Take note of your daily accomplishments, not just to-do list entries

Working at a startup means moving fast and breaking things, but sometimes the goals you've set out to achieve can appear to be overly ambitious. I know I've certainly felt nervous when the work day was coming to a close and the project appeared virtually unscathed. In this post over on iDoneThis, the author quickly goes over Marc Andreessen’s so-called "Anti-Todo list" as an aid to recognize daily accomplishments and stay motivated. It's a fairly short read and I encourage everyone to read it that's ever faced a seemingly insurmountable task.

  Links referenced:

http://blog.idonethis.com/post/34170232603/marc-andreessens-productivity-trick-to-feeling

http://blog.idonethis.com

[civiltocs-blog]

Always read the FAQ when using unfamiliar software

Tonight I learned that you should Inherit from "sensu::plugin::handlers" or risk getting hammered with emails regardless of a client/check(s) silence status. In case you haven't heard of Sensu yet, here are some links to get you started:

Sensu Website

Sensu GitHub

  If you're considering implementing Nagios, or one of its many forks/clones, and your company's infrastructure is constantly changing, try Sensu.

[civiltocs-blog]

Startup Engineering

Quick update:

Since the last time I posted, I completed one of Stanford's free online courses, Introduction to Databases.

Started at a new company

Got myself a road bike (okay, that's unrelated, but it was a big deal for me)

Now, I am currently taking Startup Engineering, which is another Stanford course hosted on Coursera.org. The class covers a number of topics such as how startups operate, the linux command line, emacs, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and node.js. Having done sys admin work since September of last year, I'm excited to try out node.js to see what it can do. In a little bit over a month from now, I'll have built a HTML5 web app with the help of Twitter Bootstrap, node.js libraries, and whatever else I can fit into another 6-7 weeks of class.

[civiltocs-blog]

The YouTube Video That Changed My Life

This video changed my life (seriously). Gary Vaynerchuk is an awesome speaker. The best part of the whole video is towards the end.

Audience member: “How do you get money to do what you love?” Gary: “You don’t. I lost a shitload of money when I started doing what I loved. What you do is you position yourself to succeed. So for example, if you're doing something else and you want to do this thing you love... you work 9 to 6, you kiss the dog, and you go to town.” [...] “Everyone has time. Stop watching fucking LOST.”

https://www.facebook.com/gary

https://twitter.com/garyvee

[civiltocs-blog]

Five Interview Questions For Hiring DevOps Staff

Consider this an interim post for now. Any developer, or systems engineer, should have a look at this post by Matthew Skelton.

http://blog.matthewskelton.net/2012/03/04/five-interview-questions-for-hiring-devops-staff/

[civiltocs-blog]

Employed! (Kind of)

I took an unpaid internship back in early September and I am now finally starting making headway into my new career! I couldn't be happier.

For now, just having the opportunity to learn, write, and test things on real servers is proving to be much more valuable than doing problem sets or going back to school (and cheaper, too!). Being employed has also given me more direction in what technologies I should be looking at, and so for the second time, I have adjusted my focus.

Currently, I am learning a number of technologies including bash, git, Ruby, Python, MongoDB, AWS, and MySQL. The DBA who sits next to me has recommended signing up for 10gen's MongoDB course, which I am enrolled in now. I am also enrolled in a SaaS course (CS 169.1x on edx.org), which goes over how to build a Ruby on Rails application using Agile methodologies. Once I'm done with these courses, I expect to complete more courses on CodeSchool and picking up a book on data structures.

I'm hoping that by the end of the year I'll have learned enough to contend with my fellow job-seekers out there and finally land gainful employment. Until then, my posts may be few and far between, but I will make my best effort in updating this blog when I can. I should have my first GitHub contribution up within a week's time, so be sure to check back soon. Edit: Here is my first post on GitHub. It's a simple MySQL backup script that uses capistrano and the AWS Ruby SDK to make, and tag, nightly snapshots. There is also a pruning task within that same repo which will delete extraneous weekly and monthly backups. https://github.com/srodrig0209/capistrano-tasks

[civiltocs-blog]

Karel the Robot Learns Java

Since the last time I wrote on this blog, I have completed various lessons on Code Academy, but have recently gotten sidetracked. I am now focusing on Python & Java, and occasionally going back to Code Academy to cover JavaScript.

Progress has been slowing down lately since I have picked up a second job on weekends (read: worst idea ever). Trying to juggle two jobs, the gym, learning 3 programming languages, and a social life is proving to be quite the challenge. I may have to quit my weekend job so I can catch up on my Java and Python homework (and if I have the time, some "Simply JavaScript" reading).

I need to keep this entry short as I am going to read up on a few more pages from this PDF and then calling it a night.

Until next time.

[civiltocs-blog]

Back to square one

In all honesty, I should have probably started this blog about 2 months ago (November 2011) when I started to become reacquainted with web programming languages and computer science in general. 

Anyway, as this is the inaugural post, I should probably introduce myself to anyone who might have stumbled upon this blog. I will try to be brief. Try, is the key word.

I am a recent civil engineering graduate from a private engineering school in the northeast. I am a part of the Class of 2011, and like many other recent college graduates, I am without a full-time salary job. Luckily, I am not completely unemployed, however, many of my student loans are quickly entering repayment, and some I have already had to start to pay back, but I digress...

When I began college, I was certain that engineering was what I wanted to pursue, but for the first few semesters, I was still undecided on which particular field I wanted to study. I eventually settled on civil engineering as I had previous experience with AutoCAD in high school, and I would use this experience as a selling point to land my first two internships.

While the internships provided me with great learning experiences, I wasn't initially happy with the companies I had worked for, but I kept a positive mindset thinking the next internship would be better. What I should have realized was, it was not the company, but the actual field of work that I was quickly losing interest in.

Unfortunately, this became clear to me as I was interviewing with companies over the summer. At the same time, I am happy to have realized it now, because I would not want to be in a career where I was not putting forth my best effort.

I always held an interest in UI/UX design, computer science, and web programming and so I am now gravitating back towards that now.

Now I am back to square one, which leads me to the explanation behind this blog.

This page will be, primarily, used to track my personal progress as I teach myself a number of programming languages, such as PHP, SQL, Javascript, and others. In addition, I will be posting whatever books and websites I use, and will make my best effort to include reviews of said material. The reviews will be brief and will likely be composed of three parts: who the book is written for, is the website/book worth your time/money, and what range of topics are covered.

I should note that I do have some experience with C++, HTML, and CSS, but I have not used it for several years so the initial reviews I post will likely be useful for beginners. Anyhow, this post is getting too long. I hope whoever comes across this blog finds it useful, insightful, or at least not a complete waste of their time.