A wise person once told me that you get the most out of writing [blogs] when you write just before going to bed. As a child & a teen, i used to practice this with journaling, but tonight, mostly due to poor time-management skills during the day, I’ve decided to give it a shot.
Today, unfortunately, was not what I would consider a productive coding day. First, i was very tired. Both Leo & Rex have woken me & kept me up multiple times throughout each night for the past several night, and in fact, at this very moment, I’m hoping Leo stays asleep through my typing. Leo has been waking up nearly hourly since Saturday or Sunday and won’t go back to sleep on his own, and Rex stands outside my room and just cries for me until he finds me and either demands immediate milk & squares or tells me that he wants to sleep with me. Then he wants to snuggle, but regardless (and I’m not hating on this completely, becausei know I will cherish these moments in the future), this leaves me with about 6” of sleep space for myself while scrunched up between the two of them—both of which roll & kick [me in the face] as they sleep.
Regardless, I got up this morning, took them to school after admiring 3 cement mixers pouring cement in our neighbors’ yard with Rex & then the skid steer across the street from school, and got to work.
I began the day with editing my post from yesterday—the personal posts, I find that I tend to sit on them for a day before pushing, just so I can re-read/revise them in the morning with fresh eyes. Then I sat in the stand up meeting where I was officially welcomed to CCs, which was awesome! Then, after i ordered myself a new pair of glasses by means of using my ‘eye’-phone to look through my glasses while paired with my computer to determine my current prescription, I got to work on my presentation for the SRP. My example for OCP & DIP doesn’t really work here without implying a god-like attribute, so I stopped to allow myself to think of a better example and then moved on to work on my coin-change kata.
My time-management skills suck even when I’m trying to manage them. I told myself.I would try to solve the kata for 15 minutes, and so i set an alarm for that time period. When it went off, i felt like i was super close to getting it done, so I set another alarm. When that one went off, I was that much closer, so I repeated, and again. An hour later, I decided it was time to call it on the kata…
I should say that i solved it several times, but i broke the rules of TDD every time—that is such a focused practice that is so easy to get off track from. I kept trying to refactor & do too much to early. I could solve through the nickel while staying true to TDD, then when it was time to do the dime, I would fall into the trap of wanting to make it right too soon.
Finally, i googled it, and low and behold, i found my brother’s coin-changer kata. I watched about 2 minutes of it before I suddenly realized where I was going wrong. I attempted it again and somehow still got trapped. Granted, when i say trapped, I’ve already solved it, but then i try to refactor the entire function into a map instead of a loop, which is a little complicated.
I finally decided to stop, more than an hour after I’d originally said I would stop (15 minutes, remember? But i was so close… {eyes roll}, and began to work on ttt.
That proved to be difficult too. I got stuck because I’m not sure who is supposed to call the functions of the GUI. I feel like main is supposed to control everything, but at least the way that quil is set up, it seems that it is controlling everything. How do i get the values back to main to run the game?
Ironically, every time i spend way more time on a problem than i should, when i finally stop for external reasons, I am typically able to figure out a method for solving my problem while away from the computer. Hence, I should probably stick to my time-management alarms to allow myself time away from a problem so i don’t get stuck digging a hole to nowhere with no way out as I so often do.
Rex:
Rex made a mess with his ‘pizza’ cookies [my method of giving him half a cookie but allowing him to believe he has two way more fun cookies than a single whole cookie). He looked at the mess and said, “Mommy, i made a mess. Please clean it up. Pwease, pwease?”
Leo:
I don’t know if he’s trying to say hi or simply just reaching for me, but when ever Leo is happy to see someone, he puts his arm way up and out in front of him with an open hand and a massive smile on his face. It’s very cute, and his teacher always expresses her love for his happiness & excitement. And he’s stirring now, just in time, so i better put this away.
Good night!