04/25/2022
222. Alignment.
you are in the right place, at the right time.
So my last blog post was exactly a month ago, and the one before that was exactly a month before that. There's something really telling about a person's biological clock and what the mind subliminally/subconsciously knows. Anyways... what's been going on? 😄
100Devs & Coding
Last blog post, I mentioned pairing FreeCodeCamp (FCC) and CodeCademy (CC) with 100Devs, and I am still being persistent with doing just that. If I feel like I need more elaboration and practice on topics that possibly just weren't explained thoroughly enough, I get sufficient solutions from FCC and CC. Though it is 3x the amount of time I should be spending on material, supplementing the 100Devs classes with those programs, plus studying my anki cards, has really helped me understand concepts in depth. I'm one of those people who can't just memorize information; I need to know exactly what something means, how things work, why things do what they do and why they do it successfully.
I have been being more active and social with my friends from 100Devs. The cohort recently took a break from classes during the week of 04/18 - 04/24, so we did not have classes on Tuesday and Thursday, nor office hours on Sunday. My group decided to do social coding nights on the usual class nights so that we could get work done while being able to ask questions and have some fun. On Tuesday, we all worked on different personal projects, like API projects and building our resume's. On Thursday, we did a coding night (allegedly with some alcohol involved) where we had to "blind" code a project. Basically, we took the restaurant layout project from ~class 9/class 10 and we tried to write the CSS for it while only looking at the HTML (not allowed to look at the DOM/browser). After the 30 minute timer finished, we all revealed our DOM's to see how our blind CSS coding actually looked. The results were actually not that bad!..........
Okay, Jacob's (@asper_jacob) wasn't that great. But it made for a good laugh 😅
It's been great having close friends in the cohort to relate to, ask for advice, and talk about programming with. It is known that sometimes students can be better teachers than teachers themselves, as they offer the new, unique perspective that a teacher simply cannot. Whenever I'm confused by something, my friends have no problem jumping in to explain or offering a solution. Though I haven't been as open to replying to engineers already in the tech industry, as I should probably be doing, I'm really glad I spend my time bonding with my fellow cohort devs.
Aside from FCC, CC, anki, and socializing with fellow cohort students, I've been trying to keep up with codewars, as well as building my client's site.
Yup! I have a client. 🎉🎊🎉🎉🎊
In the last blog, I mentioned that I was going over a proposal with an old friend from middle school who started a small financial coaching business. Well the proposal and then the contract went great! However, the first two weeks of building the site... not so great.
Basically, my client bought a domain through wordpress.COM. I had never worked with wordpress before, so I began researching and building his site through that... wow. It was HARD. It's not click and drag, and everything was really confusing to use. I couldn't even figure out how to add a section to a page or center a text. Then I kept seeing something about plug-in's and a plug-in called Elementor. So as I'm looking through wordpress.COM I realize, oh no you have to pay for a business plan to get access to plug-ins ): The business plan was $300 a year. I talked to my client, he was okay to pay that, but I didn't think that was right... I had heard wordpress was completely free to use so I was seriously confused on how small businesses were coughing up $300+ for a one-page static website.
After HOURS of research, building, breaking, and just utter confusion, I was watching a tutorial when I realized "wait a minute... his interface looks slightly different to mine..." and then it hit me. There is such a thing in existence called wordpress.ORG
WHY, OH WHY, GOOD GODS AND ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT IS HOLY AND DIVINE WOULD THERE BE A WORDPRESS.COM AND A WORDPRESS.ORG
So much time was wasted... so much confusion for me AND my poor client.
After getting a refund from wordpress.COM for the business plan, I was told it was past the refund window to get the $18 back on the domain name. So we took that L. I then set up his website hosting through HostGator and integrated it with wordpress.ORG. But do not let this small amount of anger and explanation let you believe that this wasn't much of a struggle... that whole mess to clean up was a MONSTER. I still feel the stress and frustration of the situation while I'm just sitting here typing about it.
But since I began using Elementor on wordpress.ORG, building has been mostly easy. Thanking all of the wonderful creators on youtube 🖤
Wrapping up my coding journey this past month, I've just been kicking out the projects that Leon has been working on in classes. I've been playing with API's and doing my codewars. I updated my github readme, and I actually changed my name across all platforms that are involved with my dev career. alexisxdawn is now alexisintech !
Honestly, I had a lot of ~men~ contacting me through my instagram and even on my snapchat (because my name was the same across all platforms) and it was not for professional purposes. So I've decided to change my name across my dev platforms, and minimize the accessibility that ~people without boundaries~ have to my personal social medias.
That's all that catching up I have in me for tonight.
And of course, as a mental health advocate and enthusiast for starting difficult conversations, I have a mental health post coming up soon. I usually write my blogs in two parts: 100Devs and Coding, and Personal. But I decided to split these blogs up this time, as I've had a lot on my plate and I wanted to keep today's blog lighter and focused more toward my professional journey!
Until next time 🌹
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