My Five Year Plan @my5iveyearplan - Tumblr Blog

Brave Enough

The little book below changed my life last year when it was slid across my desk by a coworker. I was in the middle of what has been the roughest year of my life, where even in my silence she knew I needed something.

On this very day one year ago, I took a picture of one of my favorite quotes from this selection of all of Cheryl Strayed’s prose.

“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long, meandering walks. The days reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

You know what’s funny? I spent all morning racking my brain for what would have caused me to single out that quote in particular last year. At the time, I had a steady job, was going on more backpacking trips than I could count, and had the privilege of being surrounded by the highest caliber of friends. This is proof that no matter what - people move on.

Yet, here I am as an unemployed 27 year old sitting in a coffee shop having approximately 5 existential crises in a day. I worry that if I am not applying to jobs, working on my personal website, or exercising that I am wasting my time. However, when I look back on the past few years I of course remember the big adventures I have gone on, but I mostly remember the sweet little “wasted” moments.

I am terrified of being unemployed. Actually, I really fucking hate it. BUT, just but, this time of uncertainty has been dropped in my lap for a reason. I used to despise that reasoning as it felt like a sell out, but when I look back on even how I got to where I am in this exact second - I wouldn’t have it any other way. Everyone in Denver always asks what brought you out to Colorado, and I always begin my answer with a knowing chuckle. The greatest loss in my life lead me to my future home, and I think if something that terrible could bring me life again then why not again?

For now you can find me posted up at various coffee shops around Denver leeching wifi, but I know that’s not forever. I am going to enjoy chilly morning walks around Cheesman Park with the menagerie of dogs. I am not going to feel guilty inhaling two hotdogs at the Rockies game tomorrow. I am going to cherish the mornings when cars aren’t being towed outside of my house at six in the morning. I am going to be Brave Enough to handle this uncertainty and welcome the little moments that truly make up your life.

#braveenough #cherylstrayed #unemployed #notforlong

I am Diane Lane.

There are times in my life where I think that I have watched “Under the Tuscan Sun” one too many times. I usually watch it with a bottle of Chianti, some cheese, and the notion that I have in fact transformed into a young Diane Lane. What a babe, am I right? Where did my obsession with this movie begin? Well it goes all the way back top my mom plucking it from the Blockbuster shelves, but the real love affair began in college.

I was a fresh faced, pale ginger teen trying to fit in my first year at the University of South Carolina where everyone looked like Barbie mockups. Home felt so far away which is laughable now that I live across the country from my family. I remember reaching a really low point and reaching for the movie to comfort me while I curled up on my industrial twin bed. I figured if Diane Lane could get through finding out her husband cheated on her and rebuilding a villa that I could get through finals. Through the years every time I had a heartbreak or a bout of sadness, I would travel to Tuscany for a few short hours. To me there is something about rebuilding from the ground up - literally for Ms. Lane as she tackled a crumbling foundation - and learning how to “do life” again.

I have to remind myself that running away and buying a villa is never the solution to every problem. However, Frances (Diane Lane’s character) doesn’t just work on the house. She takes up gardening, learns how to cook extravagant Italian dishes, explores on her own, and visits a stranger on a whim in the most gorgeous white dress I have ever seen. This movie isn’t about a man cheating on a woman, it is about the woman remembering what makes her happy and stepping outside of her comfort zone. In the past year, I have taken ukulele lessons, learned how to create mala necklaces, dined completely alone, taken up minimalism, and now I’ve decided to pickle my own vegetables (I’m a monster).

Today I challenge you and myself to not wait for the other shoe to drop - a painful divorce, a job layoff, or a loss of a loved one - to buy your version of a Tuscan villa. Live life. Hell, take up pickling. Just do something!

Cheers.

#underthetuscansun #dianelane #pickling #hobbies

My Favorite App

In a recent job application, I was asked what my favorite app is. I must admit that it made me stop and think - Apple Maps!?! Just kidding Apple, you’ve made some improvement but let’s be real here. I know it sounds so cliched/millenial, but I love Instagram. To me, it is a collection of some of my fondest moments in slightly more flattering filters. So, behold my application/love letter to Instagram:

“A couple months ago, I spent my weekend doing something I never thought I would do - I attended a pagan harvest festival dubbed Vinotok. It takes place in funky Crested Butte and details a town-wide role play, make believe trial, and a march to burn a wooden effigy lovingly named "The Grump." I never would have discovered this whimsical tradition had it not been for Instagram.

Instagram took a simple concept of editing and posting photos and transcended it into a way for people to connect. After the basic requirements of apps - actually works, looks decent, solves a problem - what's left is how the data can be used. Between geotagging images to sharing hashtags, Instagram has soared above and beyond in the relationship realm of applications.

I find myself searching Instagram for hiking trails to see how the conditions are versus calling up the local ranger. Before hopping onto Yelp, I will search the latest posts from the next big restaurant in Denver to see what people are doing with pork belly these days. Instagram took a basic product and elevated it all the while bringing people together in the meantime. Keep on filtering on my friends.”

#instagram #dev

A.k.a. that time I tried to pretend like I am fancy.

IoT is for Me

Ok, ok I know the name of this article is lame. However what ISN’T lame is IoT technology that is out these days. Yes, I am biased as I currently work at Notion - a software/hardware integration to make you more aware of your home. #getnotion #Iamnotbeingpaidforthisunfortunately

Our CTO brought in a couple other IoT products and I immediately clutched onto the LIFX lightbulb Gollum-style. The premise of the lightbulb is that it can be controlled by your phone and includes hundreds of light and color combinations. I was having images of charging people $10 a person to come to the exclusive ~club~ inside my tiny studio apartment when I was pushed aside for someone to snag the iLock.

I brought home my booty with my club fantasies bouncing around in my head. Without breaking my $8 Target lamp, I was able to finally get that sucker in right. I forgot my building’s internet password and after approximately 14 attempts, I was able to successfully remember and connect it to my WiFi.

That’s when the fun began.

I laid in my bed strobing a light and had it immediately dart down into a deep blue and back up to an effervescent yellow. I was traversing every color scheme possible as a merry-go-round of lights flashed before me. I cranked up some old school Britney and pretended like I was making my own early 2000′s music video. I became Britney.

After about 20 minutes of this intense light dancing, I had finally tuckered myself out and sampled some of the *mood* lightning. Let’s just say that there is a lucky guy out there who is going to experience the romantic theme and not know what hit them. On top of the romance factor, LIFX can also integrate with Nest, IFTTT, Amazon Echo, and a multitude of other products. Not that my peasant apartment is equipped with any of this technology, but you know maybe one day I will grow up.

All in all, would I pay $60 for a lightbulb that turns my studio apartment into a glorified light up shoebox? Probably. Do I think that LIFX integrated with Nest and the future ahead of it is bad ass? Absotootly. LIFX was smart and kept the product idea simple, but very successful. The only con I experienced with the product was connecting it to my WiFi network, which is shared with my entire building if that makes a difference. At the end of the day, have fun with it and who knows, maybe it could kick start your night club career.

Cheers.

#LIFX #IoT

First Month

Well I am days away from finishing my first month at my first software engineering job post Turing, and I have a few things to say about it. Firstly, I haven’t been fired yet which is exciting! In all seriousness, it has been a whirlwind of a month with the highlights listed below:

1. Imposter Syndrome is ALIVE AND WELL.

While I was in Turing, I constantly kept looking ahead to the next big milestone in order to keep going. I thought if only I can pass Module 1, Module 2, graduate, etc. then I will be fine. I remember thinking that as soon as I got a position that I would be set for life. However, I still come into work every day wondering how on Earth I got into this and wondering when I will be “found out.” I believe in full transparency and have expressed this feeling to a coworker who chuckled and told me that it never goes away. GREAT. Something to look forward to!

2. Sometimes there just isn’t something for you to do.

So I am working at a full blown start up. No, I don’t mean that we just have a ping pong table and drink beer at work - we do, but that’s not the point. I am talking about boxes of hardware piled up in the corner and an “all hands on deck attitude” all the time. We had a pretty big software problem come up and the senior developers immediately went into “attack and kill” mode on the bugs. It was pretty spectacular watching them jump on the problem, but it also left me a little in the dust for a second. To stay competitive in the industry, it is necessary to continue to hone one’s skills every single day. When I find some downtime, I have been filling my time with brushing up on old skills (I’m looking at you exercisms) and checking out some potential side projects.

3. Paychecks are amazing.

I mean lesbihonest, there is not much else to put here other than don’t go spending it all in the same place.

4. I still have a long way to go.

Don’t get me wrong, Turing taught me so much and I will forever be grateful for that. However with that being said, this industry is constantly changing which is what makes it so exciting, but also very intimidating. I work with (in my opinion) some of the most talented programmers around who have been doing this for years. I am trying to remind myself that learning a company’s code and getting settled takes time.

Anyways, I will continue to reiterate over and over again that Turing was the best decision I ever made in my life. I am so grateful to have made it through the craziness that last year entailed and I seriously cannot wait to see what’s next. Also stay tuned for an announcement of a project I have been working on. Cheers!

Four Basic Properties of Views in Backbone.js (phewf!)

Before we get started, I need to talk about a real problem - FOMO. For the lucky ones unaware of this illness, FOMO is an acronym for Fear Of Missing Out. Every other week there is a newer, headier, and more state of the art Javascript framework out there. Rather than deciding myself, I let a job I am interested in guide me to Backbone.js.

Taking on a whole new framework can be a bit of an undertaking so I have decided to track my journey in tiny bite-sized blogposts, because who really wants to read ten pages straight through on this subject at once? Me? What? To get started, the Backbone documentation explains views as follows:

“The general idea is to organize your interface into logical views, backed by models, each of which can be updated independently when the model changes, without having to redraw the page.”

Wow. That is so concise and beautiful it actually brought a tear to my eye. So let’s get down and dirty to the good stuff. The four basic properties in a Backbone view is:

1. el

2. initialize

3. render

4. events

view.el

Generally, every view needs to reference a DOM at ALL TIMES. The view ejects content into this element. This.el is created by the view’s el, tagName, className, id, or attributes property. However, if none of the previous exist, this.el simply becomes a sad and empty div. What about view.$el? What the heezy is that? Thank you for asking, it is simply a cached jQuery object my friend.

initialize

Initialize is also known as our friend ‘constructor.’ It provides an opportunity to pass parameters that are attached to a model, collection, or view.el. Simple enough, eh?

render

Render injects markup (or HTML for you n00bs) into various elements. However with that being said, not all views have to have a render function. Some elements are independent elements that don’t need no render and can call other view’s render functions. Too far?

delegated events

Delegated events are set up as so:

{”<EVENT_TYPE><ELEMENT_ID>”: “<CALLBACK_FUNCTION>”}

example:

{“keypress #new-todo”: “createTodoOnEnter”}

In jQuery, this would look like:

$(’#new-todo’).keypress(createTodoOnEnter)

Anyways, next time you are at a party and views in Backbone are brought up, you won’t find yourself twiddling your thumbs. YOU’RE WELCOME.

Happy trails, my friends.

Maybe we should stop calling people who experience impostor syndrome “people who experience impostor syndrome” and start calling people who don’t experience impostor syndrome “overconfident weirdos.” The truth is everyone who’s successful owes some of their success to luck.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_ladder/2016/04/is_impostor_syndrome_real_and_does_it_affect_women_more_than_men.html

Accept Your Weaknesses

Last week I was on top of the world after finishing a successful initial interview with my ‘Moby Dick’ of a job. I had been Captain Ahab-ing my way through endless job sites and I finally had set my eye on the prize. However, with all technical positions, the inevitable coding challenge is a mountain that has to be passed over. I let the glory of a wonderful interview wash over me, and agreed that I should wait until the following morning to open the challenge.

Morning rolled around as I sat down at my makeshift vanity turned desk to fire up the ol’ Gmail and check out what I had in store for me. I downloaded the beyond vague challenge and felt all of the blood drain out of my face. Oh no. I am never getting a job. Why did they pick my worst subject?

All of these thoughts immediately started flowing through me, and I could physically feel myself caving as I wondered how on Earth I would ever start a challenge that I had never really faced before.

XML data? I have only used JSON.

Raw ruby project? I have been dreaming of Rails in my sleep for months.

Once I got some color back in my face, I realized that this is what being a developer is all about. During my time at Turing, we had a group discussion on ‘grit’ and what it takes to remain in this industry. I’ll admit that it took seven months of me feeling like I was treading water to truly learn the power of giving it my all. Never in my life have I worked harder for something than I did at Turing. I kept reminding myself to simply push the envelope of what I could take little by little, and before I knew it I was miles ahead of where I started.

So, back to the coding challenge. I am currently at the coffee shop where I have spent about 60% of my time since I have graduated pondering how I feel about turning this challenge in. On one hand, I really don’t love how it looks. However, more importantly, just a few days ago I hadn’t written a raw Ruby project in months, used Nokogiri, or ever even seen XML data. Last night I might have even used the phrase, “I am just putting lipstick on a pig at this point,” when I was trying to refactor some methods.

I guess what I am saying is to not put off your “weaknesses” until the next morning out of fear. At one point, all problems had to be solved by someone. To me, being a programmer is allowing yourself to push the envelope ever further every. single. day.

As far as how this interview goes? I guess that is up to the job gods, which I assume is how you get one of those? Asking for a friend? Either way, I am happy with and welcome the challenge that comes from the unknown. At the end of today, I can still proudly say - one challenge down.

Cheers.

#technical interview #code challenge #ruby

If this were true, I would be going on a lot more dates than I currently am.

8.27.2015

I remember the day perfectly. It was August 27th and I found myself crying outside of Panera Bread wondering how I had gotten there. I had started my adventure at the Turing School three days prior and I was pondering if my old job would hire me back. I was not having an easy time with the program, but if I heard one more person tell me to quit, I was going to lose my mind. I had a friend ask me when I admitted that I wanted to leave, “What would you immediately do once you quit and left Turing?” This question actually stopped me in my tracks as I thought about it. After a few comical facial expressions, I admitted that I would be sad. After acknowledging this, I immediately shook out my shoulders and headed back into the classroom.

Turing’s greatest strength comes from its people without whom I would not be a graduate. I 100% credit fellow students for keeping me sane and reminding me why I applied in the first place. I want to advocate to women that they don’t have to settle for what they think there life should be, but to think of what it could be. I grew up in the South which I hold near and dear to my heart (especially when I drink bourbon and my accent comes back), but it is not necessarily the mecca for going down a different path. Turing fosters the belief that anyone should have the opportunity to turn their lives around. Last January, when I was sitting at Hapa Sushi finding myself newly single, miserable in my job, and feeling pretty hopeless, I thought that I was doomed. However, little did I know that the best decision of my life was only a few feet away from me on Blake Street.

While I am now well versed in the ways of Javascript, Ruby, and other languages, one of the most interesting by-products of Turing is what you learn about yourself in the process. In my cohort (our class), I watched students deal with sickness in families, breakups, and multiple other life changes with such grace. The phrase ‘social experiment’ has been tossed around to describe Turing, but watching students not only grow into developers, but also socially-conscious people is a beautiful thing.

Recently, Turing School has received some bad press from some former students and others. While there was a time when descending those stairs to the basement gave me endless anxiety, I now walk down them with my head held high. I have never in my life felt more empowered than I do now, and I credit Turing for that newfound confidence. I believe that everyone should have the right to voice their own opinions and I will continue to advocate for that. Turing is hard - get over it. However, I wholeheartedly believe that if I was able to shake off my shoulders and stop crying outside of Panera that anyone has the power to get through the program as well.

As long as people are shrouding their identities and slamming Turing on the internet, I will continue to sing its praises. This program changed my life for good - case closed. I told Jeff Casimir (our director) that I still have nightmares occasionally thinking of what my life would have been like without Turing. I can say that thus far, graduating from Turing is my proudest accomplishment. So, where do we go from here? I say fuck ‘em. Also, sorry in advance to my mother for saying fuck on the internet. Shit, I did it again. My answer is to be good to people. Help those who need it and be thankful for it when it is your turn.

Cheers, and for the very last time - Donohue out.

#turing #fullstack

Getting Saucy with Trays in Ember

You’ve done the unthinkable. You’ve built an Electron application and you are feeling prettttty confident in yourself. I am talking fitting into your best-day-ever skinny jeans confident. “How could this beautiful app possibly be better??” is a thought that has entered your mind. Well, I am here to tell you adding a tray icon to your computer’s navigation bar is the answer. Talk about having a cool and professional app to show off to your family at the next gathering. If you are ready to take it to the streets, then please follow these easy steps:

1. Congratulate yourself on an app well done.

2. Find any .jpg or .png image that you would like to use as an icon. I would recommend either 32x32 pixel or even 22x22. It may take a bit of trial and error to find the best fit for you.

3. Create a folder under app/assets/ and drop your image there.

4. Visit Electron’s Documentation on what you need to add to your electron.js file. It is essentially a copy pasta situation except you need to change the file path to ‘./app/assets/you-image-name.jpg.’ I also only needed to add:

const Menu = electron.Menu;

const Tray = electron.Tray;

to the top of my electron.js file. I also added it under the existing app.on(’ready’) since one already was sitting there waiting for me.

5. End your electron session and fire up ‘ember electron’ one more time.

6. BOOM! Behold your beautiful nav bar icon!

7. At this point you can go into the labels (in electron.js) and add any functionality you want available under the dropdown menu. Go crazy! The world is your oyster for possibilities in this menu!

Cheers.

#Ember.js #Electron

Trials and Tribulations on an Ember/Electron Application

It’s been 21 weeks, 2 days, and 8 hours into my stint at the Turing School in Denver, CO. One would think that the adjectives exhausted, burned-out, and disheartened would describe me, but I challenge to say that I am feeling VICTORIOUS instead. This week, I started and finished an Ember/Electron application as my first real attempt at JS frameworks, and I must say that I am seeing stars.

A mere week ago, I had no idea what Electron does exactly. Now, I can say that it is a beautiful snowflake of a framework. Electron enables users to take their javascript/whatever-is-hippest language and it creates a fully functioning desktop app out of it. I paired it with Ember due to the fact that Ember gives you so much stuff for.... wait for it.... FREE! While I was only building a to do list for myself, I was able to complete the entire application in three days thanks to Ember’s helpers.

I think the greatest concept I am going to pull away from Ember is the concept of components. If you are feeling saucy, read up on my full review of them in the post below. However, we are all busy people so I will provide a quick summary. The ‘quick and dirty’ way to describe components would be to compare them to partials in a Rails application. If you are not familiar with Rails, (do you even code, bro?) then think of compartmentalizing tiny bits of functionality into their own templates and files. Another important part of Ember comes from its extensive documentation. Electron is pretty self explanatory as it relies on the code you are using to deploy it, i.e. Ember in my case. I found that it will

YELL AT YOU A TON

if you do not do what it wants. However, have no fear as it has some mildly helpful error messages in your terminal. Despite the fact that an Ember/Electron app has not really been done before, they went together like peas and carrots.

The first four hours of starting this project consisted of me trying to get my environment set up which made me feel like the ultimate n00b. I decided to put the pedal to the metal and install bootstrap and all this other jazz which ultimately, ended up breaking my app so that I couldn’t even open it in Electron. After some dicey at best Stack Overflow answers on how to fix this, I eventually ended up uninstalling npm, bootstrap, broccoli something (still unsure on this), and many others and starting the installation process from scratch. I adviser you to take baby steps in the beginning of creating an app like this or you could end up in a command line monstrocity or worse - a gitastrophe.

You might think that Ember is paying me to play it up over my love for components, but what a great way to break out functionality! I will be the first to admit that refactoring is not my forte, but components make it so easy even a developer could do it! Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I must say that as a very methodical person, following ‘ember g component’ gave me a work flow that kept the project moving. For all my Rails peeps out there - give Ember a try!

Even looking back just from this week, I am so excited to explore other frameworks and to improve on the knowledge I already have of Ember and Electron. I would like to go back and rework some more interactive features and styling with Ember, and see how I can personalize Electron more for my application. However, even despite the setup issues, I am sold. Who knows, maybe I will end up in an Ember job after all!

Cheers.

#electron #ember.js

Ember Components are like Rails's Partials on steroids

THE Steve Kinney (look him up, you won’t be disappointed)

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