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[theinevitable]

The Girlfriend got me a little bonsai tree for Christmas. We took a journey down to extreme southern Brooklyn to a man's house that he has turned into a makeshift nursery, with shelves and shelves of small bonsai and grow lights. Now I'm home and I can't stop looking at it.

She knows me better than I know myself, because I was kind of like "uh, what?" when she told me what I was getting. But I am already obsessed with this thing. Just hope I do not kill it through stupidity. The good news is, I think I am supposed to let it grow and chill until spring when pruning begins, so i have some time to get used to it before I make a stupid decision.

(update: I have read some articles and this thing will definitely die, there is not enough light in my apartment to grow a small tropical tree)

[theinevitable]

Tomorrow is the holiday potluck at work, so I decided to go out with a bang and make this really good lemon cake recipe. I've made it before and it was delicious. Of course, because I will never ever learn anything, I told my coworkers I was bringing a cake.

But this is 2018, so the cake got entirely burnt on the outside while remaining raw in the middle. Get out of here, year!

Lotta ruined baked goods since moving to NYC. I wonder what is going on there?

[wombat]

Do you have an oven thermometer? could be you have been blessed with many old ovens that aren't holding the temperature right.

[theinevitable]

The temperature is definitely off, but last time I made this cake in this oven I just set the temperature 15 degrees higher than the recipe said and it worked. Hmm. I will get an oven thermometer-- I only have an instant read one.

[theinevitable]

Today I went through my room at my parents' house because they're selling the house. A lotta shit to throw out. A lot of books to donate. Rounding the night out by going through my dad's old matchbox cars. There is one really beat up one with thumbtacks taped to the bottom-- I remember that he told me once this was for racing on some kind of track?

It is really mindblowing to me to look at this car and think "my dad at age 6 or 7 thought this was the coolest and fastest car."

Anyway I'm going to ask him to confirm the racing thing.

Also, astonishing, but as late as 2008 I was cutting articles out of the newspaper and saving them in a box. I found an article I saved from 2008 about how cool Brooklyn is. The rest of the box was anything about a rock band, predictably lots of stuff about George W Bush, John Kerry, and "letters to the editor" that I thought were funny.

[theinevitable]

Today my extended family did an "escape room," split into two teams. We both failed, and I debriefed with my sister and we agreed-- nobody in my entire family knows how to follow directions. I guess good to confirm.

I really think playing with lego sets as a kid set me up for life. You have to make sure you do exactly what it shows or it won't look like it does on the box.

Just arrived back in Brooklyn. My favorite roommate moved out and next week I'm leaving my job. The good news is, my GF is done with school and got a job offer so she can stay in New York. And I'm starting the full-time computer programming training thing in a few weeks.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I have yet to do an escape room, but I read this article with tips, and it suggests having someone act as "project manager" to try to keep the big picture while people work on individual tasks. If your group isn't keen on following directions though, that may be problematic.

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-beat-an-escape-room-1829461321

[Carlos del Vaca]

Modern parenting: texting the oldest "You've burned through three-quarters of our data this month and there's still two weeks to go, why aren't you on the wifi"

[theinevitable]

So I am officially 1 week into the intensive coding thing. It is basically... heaven. I work on whatever I want all day and if I have questions there are tons of very smart people around to answer them. Everyone is really nice and patient with my beginner-ness.

I created a version of Conway's Game of Life the first day, recreated it in javascript the second day, and then spent the rest of the week figuring out how to run it online interactively. The goal is to spend the rest of my time here figuring out an urban planning/data application that I can create and looking for relevant jobs.

(also, "work on whatever I want" = work my way through textbooks)

[theinevitable]

I'm about halfway into my 3-month coding program, and a company that recruits from them just got in touch with me! I am astonished. They're a pretty small team that makes data management software for healthcare providers-- they were intrigued by my experience dealing with confusing government regulations and procedures. When we met at a networking thing I was very open about what I know and what I don't, coding-wise, so I feel like now I can apply with confidence.

[wombat]

Awesome. Seems like a good career track - dealing with confusing government healthcare rules seems like a growing field, unfortunately for the rest of us but maybe good for you.

[theinevitable]

This week at the Coding thing I'm doing, I told someone I was reading a long book about servers. The person said, hm, that's getting in pretty deep... why not just try making a REST API and then building something with it?

(The short version of a REST API-- it's a standard for how to make a simple server that responds to requests. It's not a language or technology, it's more like the convention that when you send a letter the From address is at the top left and the To address is in the middle. When you do something like search for a friend on facebook, your computer is sending an encoded request to a REST server, which finds the results and sends them back.)

I do not remember the last time I learned something that made my eyes bug out with possibility this much. At least, since I learned to make interactive interfaces a month ago. After about a day of working through a tutorial I can create a server that serves it up when requested... which is basically most things I'd ever want to make. Excited to use this until I figure out what its limitations are.

[miles]

I think if you're doing something that makes your eyes bug out with super-interest that it may be a hella worthy path to run down a little ways.

I'm still trying to find that something.

[Carlos del Vaca]

One of my kids' activities is having a friggin' mattress sale as a fundraiser. They are pleading with everyone to come and help - for kids that means stand on a street corner and wave signs, for parents that means drive them to that intersection and make sure they don't do anything stupid.
My kid is out of town this weekend due to another activity. If she were in town, she would be away at another thing being done BY THE FIRST GROUP aside from the mattress sale. Either way, though, if I volunteer for this it means hanging out near a street corner for three hours with not my kids.
I am sorely tempted to write the booster organization and say "If I write you a check for a hundred bucks, will you stop bothering me about this?"

[wombat]

A mattress sale as a fundraiser?? Who is going to buy a mattress from kids standing on the street? What's wrong with a bake sale?