Sunday, December 28, 2014

A restorative break.

One week off from Hack Reactor for Christmas provided some welcome respite. Often to sleep early, late to wake up, I was investing in sleep the way a squirrel stockpiles nuts for the long winter. (Boy, do I have a long winter ahead.) My time was well-spent and naturally balanced: friends, family, self, work, I did a little bit of everything.

(And now, a little side break for adorableness…)

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Eureka, the family dog, was something of champion of cuteness. Here she was, lounging on our family room couch in front of the fireplace. Under regular circumstances, dogs have always been prohibited from resting on furniture. She has a good life. 

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She now has a knack for opening presents. Give her a wrapped box and permission to open it, she will work her way into it, much like a kid.

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And, attacking the toy monkey hidden inside:

http://youtu.be/Lx7b-uHd09k

 

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Much of my Christmas break was spent in the family room, planted squarely next to the fireplace. I love fires, had a healthy appreciation built up from my days in Boy Scouts.

I remember one year when an ice storm hit Portland and knocked out the power for a couple days. We navigated rooms with candles. My brother and I were tasked with tending the fire through the night to keep the house a bit warmer. We traded shifts. It was wonderful.

Naturally, one of my favorite activities at home is to do my computer work next to a fire. I would set myself up in the morning, get it going, and then keep that spot as something of a home base for the day's remainder. Sometimes I would do actual work, sometimes I would lie on the couch and gaze at the fire, or at the Christmas tree. The hearth brought a pleasant warmth to the room, though it was hardly necessary thanks to the modern luxuries of HVAC.

Definitely ready to get back to Hack Reactor. The break was welcome and restorative, but now I'm itching to challenge myself yet again. Very soon we will cross into unfamiliar territory, so I'm eager to learn stuff that is absolutely essential and completely unknown (e.g. AJAX).

A fellow cohort member has taken interest in my project visualizing data structures and algorithms. (I wrote a blog post about my project.) He wants to collaborate. While I've enjoyed having this as a pet project, I suspect more will be learned and accomplished by having a hacker in crime. We'll be working mostly in parallel, so it will offer us a valuable opportunity to practice collaborating on the same coding project in a small, low-stakes environment. Project and process management -- my favorite.

The next four weeks will be a relentless onslaught of learning. I'm averaging 85 hrs / week at Hack Reactor -- which includes meals, because those are typically spent talking about code or reflecting upon our work. By the end of it, I'll be building full-blown apps as a full-stack developer. 

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