Digging out.
2018-02-26 05:41![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asher553Whoa, two weeks since my last journal entry. It's been a little bit rough: we were having a very mild winter up until mid-February, and then BAM! Since Valentine's day it's been snow, and more snow, and more snow, with occasional rounds of freezing rain.
It's not like in Portland, where you get a couple of inches and wait for the city to scare up a sand truck or a snow plow, and your biggest danger is other drivers who don't know how to drive in the snow. Here, people own 4x4s and snowplows, and even then the smart ones stay indoors when the roads get bad. Both of my co-workers (the two women who work in the office downstairs) missed a couple of days of work, and then both got stuck when they did come in.
I live on the grounds (lucky me), so for me it isn't a matter of not being able to get to work, it's a matter of not being able to get away.
But I've been making the most of my downtime, and when I'm not busy shoveling snow for Mr. Boss or helping Mrs. Boss with the housework, I'm busy learning the basics of Windows and Android development in Visual Studio and Android Studio.
Yesterday evening I had a big moment of success when I got an application to run on my Android phone. (It was a matter of learning how to enable developer mode, so that the phone could be accessed through the USB connection.) There was something very satisfying about seeing my very simple app appear on the screen of the Samsung.
I'm already pretty comfortable with the elements of "programming", as in, if-statements, loops, strings, number types, and so on. Mainly I need to master the practical, nuts-and-bolts skills of using the IDE, building a well-designed UI, debugging, and deploying the app - and of course collaborating with other developers. My goal for the end of this year is to have gone from 'programming as a hobby' to 'development as a marketable job skill'.
We've got about another week of crappy weather ahead of us, according to the forecast. With luck, I may be able to get down to Scappoose, or (dare I hope) even Portland next Sunday. If not, at least by two weeks from now we should finally be done with this mess.
It's not like in Portland, where you get a couple of inches and wait for the city to scare up a sand truck or a snow plow, and your biggest danger is other drivers who don't know how to drive in the snow. Here, people own 4x4s and snowplows, and even then the smart ones stay indoors when the roads get bad. Both of my co-workers (the two women who work in the office downstairs) missed a couple of days of work, and then both got stuck when they did come in.
I live on the grounds (lucky me), so for me it isn't a matter of not being able to get to work, it's a matter of not being able to get away.
But I've been making the most of my downtime, and when I'm not busy shoveling snow for Mr. Boss or helping Mrs. Boss with the housework, I'm busy learning the basics of Windows and Android development in Visual Studio and Android Studio.
Yesterday evening I had a big moment of success when I got an application to run on my Android phone. (It was a matter of learning how to enable developer mode, so that the phone could be accessed through the USB connection.) There was something very satisfying about seeing my very simple app appear on the screen of the Samsung.
I'm already pretty comfortable with the elements of "programming", as in, if-statements, loops, strings, number types, and so on. Mainly I need to master the practical, nuts-and-bolts skills of using the IDE, building a well-designed UI, debugging, and deploying the app - and of course collaborating with other developers. My goal for the end of this year is to have gone from 'programming as a hobby' to 'development as a marketable job skill'.
We've got about another week of crappy weather ahead of us, according to the forecast. With luck, I may be able to get down to Scappoose, or (dare I hope) even Portland next Sunday. If not, at least by two weeks from now we should finally be done with this mess.
