Song: “Sound The Alarm” by Thievery Corporation
I’m not sure how to classify Thievery Corporation, other than “Awesome!”.
(I do not own this music – just linked it for your listening pleasure)
I do not have COVID-19… I think. I have not been tested. But I did not feel… right… on Thursday or Friday, to the point that I went to bed at about 9:15 on a Friday night. I felt better today. I don’t know what went on: exhaustion? Something that I ate? A bug?
“The Final Hill”
I may have found a solution to paying for Fall ‘On Demand’ classes at WKU. “Big Red” looks intrigued but he – and everyone – are going to have to wait until I’m sure that it works; I don’t want to jinx myself. 😉
‘Alice’
I finished the book ‘Alice’, by Christine Henry, on Friday. It is a dark twist on the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ story: Alice, a mid-20s woman, is in an asylum, with no real memory on how she got there, other than a knife was involved. And a Rabbit. Without spoiling too much of the story, Alice and her next-door cellmate, Hatcher, escape the asylum and go on adventures through the Old City, meeting a few different versions of Lewis Carroll’s famous characters. I didn’t like how some of these adventures ended – little-to-no buildup, with a pretty sudden resolution – but the story overall was interesting and good. I’ll probably get the sequel, on Audiobook, some time before the end of the year – I have quite a list of books ahead of it to read or listen to!
‘Code Louisville’ and ‘General Assembly’
I am in the home stretch of the first 13-week “semester” (I don’t know what else to call it) of ‘Code Louisville’ (CL); all assigned videos are finished, and our weekly meetings with the Mentors is now just answering questions and reviewing topics such as JavaScript Carousels and jQuery. With CL, 2 of our main requirements are: attend at least 2 Tech seminars/meetups/events (where you can network with others) and complete a project where you build a web page, web site, or web app from scratch (meaning you write the HTML code, the CSS style sheet(s), the JavaScripts file, and (if you want) the jQuery code).
One of the tech events was hosted by General Assembly, dealing with becoming a Software Engineer: what to learn, what to do (and not do) during interviews, and general advice – and other things – from a panel of Engineers, Recruiters, and Programmers. It was very interesting! I learned, for example, that degrees and certificates are ok but a Portfolio (GitHub!!) that shows some of your work is much better. Speaking of GitHub….
…. my CL project is nearly finished (due by noon, July 31st)! It is a web site where people who want to march in Winter Guard, SoundSport, or a Drum & Bugle Corps can enter their info and it would be sent to a database, where Directors could view it and contact the performers. This is the potential beginnings of a much larger site; no info will be collected at this stage (since there’s no database or connections to servers or databases). It is currently 4 pages: a Home Page, the Form Page, an Info page (about some of the Circuits in the U.S.), and a Contact/”About Me” page.
Each person’s project has to have certain features on 2 different lists: one list requires at least 3 items to be in the site (from about 15), such as a CSS style sheet (not just CSS code in the HTML; an actual style sheet needs to be linked to the project), while the other lists requires everything from it to be in the project, such as hosting your project on GitHub and using Git to make 5+ “commits” to the project.
It’s been hard work – especially with me struggling to add JavaScript to the project – but CL has been great! It’s been even better with a very good friend, Jessica T., not only in the semester with me, but also in the same weekly class. Good times! Once this semester is over, we meet with the CL Staff about our projects (and if they passed), setting up a LinkedIn accounts, job searches, and job training; we get 3 weeks off, then the 2nd 13-week semester starts, which will focus on programming languages: C#, Python, JavaScript, Ruby (I think), and possibly a couple of server-side languages. I’m probably taking C#: it was much harder than Python, when I took them in school, 5-6 years ago.
“Twitch”?
I have a Twitch account but it’s mainly for mods to World of Warcraft and, when some are released, Darkest Dungeon. One of the panelists for the General Assembly event – actually, the head of the Dallas branch – suggested that I start streaming gameplays on Twitch! I’m seriously thinking about trying LOL. If I do, the first games that I think I would stream would be:
- Doom 2016 (I’m about a 1/3 of the way through it)
- Doom Eternal (when I buy it)
- WoW: Shadowlands (when it is released)
- Prey (I’m about 1/2 finished)
These would depend on school and my current setup. I only have one monitor and don’t really have a “gamer” keyboard (my mouse is fine, however); I would probably need to upgrade them, plus get a new headset or mic, before streaming. With school, HW takes priority over my character dying in front of a virtual audience. Nevertheless, the seed has been planted; we’ll see where Twitch and streaming takes me!
Sportz!
Sports are another thing that’s fallen victim to the Coronavirus. In this area:
- The Louisville Bats (the Triple-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team) will not field a team for the 2020 season, per Major League Baseball; the Reds will play, but not with fans in the stadium
- Lou City FC (soccer team on the USL circuit) will start their season this week, in a brand new stadium; their home games will only hold 27% of it’s capacity, meaning about 4,500 fans will be allowed in
- Racing Louisville FC (the brand new team on the NWSL circuit) will start play in 2021
- The University of Louisville plans on starting the football season on September 3rd, with 50% capacity at Cardinal Stadium (up to 32,000 fans); no word on the rest of the Fall sports; the Men’s basketball team’s practices are on hold, after 2 members tested positive for Covid-19; no word yet on the Women’s basketball team.
At this time, I am not comfortable enough to go to any of the games that will be available this Fall. You can ‘socially distance’ yourself in a stadium but you still will have tens of thousands of people touching a urinal, for example, touching the sinks in the bathroom, touching the rails in the stands, and squeezing in and out of the same entrances and exits. I will watch from the comforts of my apartment or at friends’ places, spread out.
‘On Notice’
The ‘Facebook Posters’ group from the last board are off – for now. 😉
Rob Mansfield is off – MLB and the players finally reached an agreement on the 2020 season.
10. Magni Bronzebeard – stop sending me on wild goose chases!!
9. I-65
8. CIT 456: Systems Analysis and Design I
7. DCA Board of Directors – sam reasons as before
6. I-275 (the Northern Kentucky portion) – too many lane closures, way too many crashes lately!
5. Daniel Cameron (KY Attorney General) – what’s the bigger priority: partisan law suits against the governor (that you promised you wouldn’t make, 6-7 months ago, on Regional TV!) or resolving the Breonna Taylor case? You were a joke candidate and you’ve not wasted much proving that in office!
4. The Right Foot War
3. Alex Yu – I will gut you, when I find you! (Main antagonist of Prey)
2. LMPD (Louisville Metro Police Department)
1. JavaScript – BLASTED CAROUSELS!!
“And Finally…!”
- DoorDash is a pretty good service but some of their drivers need lessons in reading maps of Downtown Louisville
- Buying a loveseat has dropped many notches down the ‘Priority’ list (I wanted one for extra seats when family, and the occasional friend, stopped by). Buying a 2nd monitor and a bigger computer desk have moved up slightly
- Masks are now mandatory in KY; I need to get a few more ‘stylish’ ones, especially the ones with the exhaust valves on the sides
- Darkest Dungeon is a criminally-underrated PC game
The Nexus 