Month: February 2020

Tools

What I use.

Tools..Tools..Tools.. What tools do you use in your daily job? There are many that make my life easier. I’m a Windows guy. There are several reasons I haven’t jumped ship to Ubuntu or *gasp* Mac. If I had it my way, I would be using a Linux machine. There are several projects that I work on that require Microsoft. A Linux machine running a Windows VM would be nice, but I don’t think I want to risk it

Some of the tools I use daily are:

  • Visual Studio Code – Source Code Editor. This is where I do my NODE and PHP work.
  • Chrome – My favorite editor, even with all the headlines I see on web. The Developer Tools are my favorite.
  • Draw.IO – Best place to draw up diagrams.
  • Notepad++ – Quick and dirty editor that is full of features and plugin that allow you to get the job done.
  • DBeaver – My favorite DB tool. I use to be a MySql Workbench fan until I accidentally installed the new one that wasn’t supported in Windows 7!
  • Filezilla – Best way to FTP. No one has time for the command line FTP! 🙂

I will try and explain why I love each one of these tools. I’m not here to try and convince you to switch, just let you know what is in my tool belt.

Visual Studio Code (VSCODE)

This is by far my favorite code editor. I have a subscription for Webtorm, and it is a great editor with a lot of features. The plugins for VSCode are what make it so great. The community is developing powerful pluginns that are very useful. They have done a great job at making it easy to push/pull/commit changes to Github/Gitlab. VSCode makes it easy to debug your code too.

If you get a chance, I would suggest looking into the Live Share plugins. It makes pair programming so much easier. If your coworker is in the other room or in another city, this is very useful!

Chrome

Chrome is my browser of choice and it’s been hard to break the addiction. There are several alternatives, but when it comes to debugging code, Chrome is by far my favorite. The developer tools are the best! There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not in there tracing calls to my APIs and figuring out what is going on. Debugging CSS is the other thing I’m doing in the DEV tools a lot. I cannot make things look pretty, so it is nice to be able to go in and tweak the CSS and see what it does.

Like every tool it isn’t without problems. Most of the problems I have with it are with my machine. I have 3 monitors at work and one is having a driver issue, so when I try and do PIP on that screen using the Google PIP Plugin. That is my machines problem.

DRAW.IO

In my college years, I spent many hours documenting my code and drawing UML diagrams. EER diagrams by hand or using old WordPerfect tools or Microsoft Tools. That is what we had at the time. There were no free apps as cool as this, that I can remember. I’m very thankful for the free tools that we have now.

DRAW.IO makes it easier to create flowcharts, user stories, EER diagrams (there are other tools for this. See DBeaver), and many other tools. I use it through Google Drive integration. The downside to this is when you want to share a drawing with someone, they usually need a GMAIL account if you want them to be able to edit it. (as far as I can tell).

Notepad++

This is definitely my go to application for quick editing for random files. I’m sad when i’m using Linux and I don’t have access to it :(. It has syntax highlighting, so you can see reserved words easily. When I need to manipulate data, I can pull it into here and use Regular Expressions to format the document fast. There are even tools to format XML and JSON files so it is easier to read. The code folding is also a valuable feature that gets used daily!

My only problem with this tool is when I have to edit a super duper large file! I’ve run into this several times and I have to split the file up or find another editor.

DBeaver

When it comes to viewing tables and running queries, it doesn’t get any better than DBeaver! If your references are setup correctly it is so easy to get an ER Diagram from your tables. There is always some client or manager that wants to see what your tables look like, and this makes it easy!

My biggest gripe with this tool is the way it manages files, but it could be a problem with me. I create new script files and then forget to give them a name, so it makes it harder to find my “scratch” pad of queries.

Overall it is my favorite query tool for MySQL and PostgreSQL. I still find myself going to Workbench for somethings that I’m use to using. I use Microsoft for MsSQL Databases, but that is because I’m lazy!

Filezilla

I love Linux and the terminal, but when it comes to FTP, I prefer to use a GUI. Filezilla is my favorite quick tool to go to. I’m usually downloading a DB that has been backed up or something. It also makes it easy to forget my FTP password, because I’ve saved it in the settings. SFTP via WinSCP is my alternative. Another super easy tool to use.

To wrap up..

I’m very open minded and not the type of person who lives by the “Do it my way or it’s the highway” and I love learning about tools that make my job easier. I use to use WebStorm code, but my co-worker started using VSCode and loved it! I’m also a creature of habit, so it took me about 2 weeks to make the switch to VSCode. With daily use and persistence, I was able to make the switch. Who knows which one is the best, but I’m really enjoying VSCode more than WebStorm.

Android Studio did redesign their editor using the same editor as what WebStorm was built from, by JetBrains. They did a great job at making it easy to use.

Take all of this with a grain of salt or take a look at them if you have never heard of them. I love finding new tools to use, so please leave a comment with any tools you’d like to share.

Week Activities

Last week was pretty busy around here. I thought I would just recap how it went, if I can remember.

Monday

Nothing spectacular happened today, but the moon was so amazing this morning while driving my boy to school. Check out this photo.

Moon in the sky

You can see the moon just above the sign. It doesn’t do it justice, but it was an amazing sight! Never mind the cracked windshield. It has been the last thing I want to get fixed, since it isn’t a requirement and I can still see through the windshield. Cops…Please weigh in below. 🙂

Tuesday

My boys school is always running fund raisers at certain restaurants around the valley and we try and support them when we can. Tuesday, it was at Zupas. I have big problems with this place. Zupas is always busy and you pay an insane amount of money for a salad. Am I the only one that looks for quantity over quality? Maybe that is why I’m overweight? The place was packed with parents and kids, and it took us 40 minutes to get food.

THAI STEAK With Thai Basil Vinaigrette Salad. It was super yummy. Where’s the beef? Good question.

Wednesday

I don’t get out of the house much, so it’s fun when I can get a night out with some friends. Mike, Richard, and I went out to dinner and to play some pool. We had a lot of fun catching up and driving Richard’s VW Bus. The BAD is he took out his heat exchange to improve the performance, which means there is no heat in the bus. Driving 75 on the freeway with no heat in 37 degree weather can make anyone wish they had worn a bigger coat. It was super cold, but we had a blast!

Thursday

We experienced something new today that as very interesting. Our boy doesn’t get sick much, which is a blessing! He woke up in the morning and had a bad case of diarrhea, which was heart breaking. We had to keep him home from school, which tore him up. He stayed home terrorizing the wife, Jen, and plugging the toilet, because he hasn’t learned how to use toilet paper yet. We are learning a new skill around here when it comes to TP and stuff. It’s a never ending battle. I’m not going to include any photos, but he recovered on Friday and was able to go back to school! Yahoo!

Friday

Valentines day! It’s a fun day, and it’s nice to spoil the ones you love. Going out to dinner is a joke on this night, so we have started a little tradition around here. We get the Heart Shaped Pizza from Papa Murphy’s and have a candle light dinner while we eat. Jacob loves it! We had a great night and grandma brought over a ton of candy for Jacob, so he was jacked up on sugar as usual.

The unfortunate thing is, Jen is diabetic and was having issues with her blood sugar. She was getting sick later that night, so it pretty much ended the fun. She ended up being sick into Saturday, which sucked. I think she had Diabetic ketoacidosis. It’s pretty scary and she just wants to sleep, so it’s hard to help her.

Saturday – Sunday – Monday

Jen slept all day and Jacob and I relaxed on Saturday. We had plans to go to dinner with Friends and start a little stay-cation. We couldn’t make any plans during the week, due to the illness that was going on. Jen woke up at 5pm and was feeling better, so we decided to execute the first part of the stay-cation, which was go to dinner with the friends. We had a blast at our favorite spot, Charlie Chows, and stayed there until they closed. They need a new website and If my design skills were good, I’d offer them up.

Sunday we stayed up in SLC at a hotel with a swimming pool and water slide that was pretty fun to play in. The boys had a blast swimming and hanging out for a couple days. We had a blast!

We drove home today after we finished swimming and just tried to recover! Tomorrow, Tuesday, we have to get back to reality. Jacob’s school wanted to make up a snow day today. I think it is ridiculous that you try and make up a snow day on a Holiday that families plan mini vacations around. I’m assuming it wasn’t well attended today. So sad.

Inspiring story

Geralt @ Pixabay

Scotty Cranmer

I recently found a YouTuber, Scotty Cranmer, who has been vlogging his life. He is a professional BMX rider that crashed on his bike.  It was a pretty serious accident.   

“He was shooting a film session with his Monster Energy teammates in Las Vegas on the evening of October 12th and caught his front wheel in a hole that catapulted him into a face plant without time to get his hands in front of him, causing him to suffer several facial fractures, cerebral hemorrhage and damage to his C4 and C5 vertebrae “ 

Wikipedia

The accident changed his life forever!   Scotty has been blogging his recovery and documenting his life and the road to recovery. He has not given up on life, which is very inspiring to me and probably many others.  Scotty could have easily just have given up and spent his life in a wheelchair. 

Experience

The last video hit me pretty hard and I could totally relate to some of his experiences.   I wanted to write about why I can relate. 

A little story

On November 28th 1993, I woke up with the flu and my body was hurting and my joints were aching.  The flu got worse and it wasn’t going away, so my mother took me to the doctor on the 29th. The doctor told me I was dehydrated and to get fluids and to come back if the symptoms got worse. Tuesday, November 30th 1993, I was in bad shape. I couldn’t walk and I was a bit incoherent. She rushed me back to the doctor. They called the ambulance and rushed me to the hospital where I was given a spinal tap and they found out that I had Spinal Meningitis. I can’t remember at what point, before or after the spinal tap, but I aspirated, which caused me to stop breathing and life saving techniques were used to bring me back to life.  

My memory is a little foggy of that time, but I wrote a journal about it after and through my recovery.  I have since converted this to electronic format.  It is interesting to read and it was part of my recovery.  The next 5 days, were spent on life support, which included hallucinations and lots of anger.   I was given very little chance to survive my ordeal.  The diagnosis kept changing from never surviving, to being quadriplegic, to being limited use on my left side to a full recovery.  Using a walker, I walked out of the hospital on December 24th, 1993.   Great Christmas gift, right?  The emotions of that day were crazy as I got back to my own bed and my next chapter of life was about to begin.  

Never give up

My drive was similar to Scotty’s, where I didn’t want to give up.   Learning how to walk again and use my body again was rough, but giving up was never an option for me. A visit with the Dr. early in my recovery, I remember asking “You aren’t going to tell me, I can’t be a programmer when I get older, are you?”   The concern of not being able to be a developer was my biggest fear.   This dream was never going to slip through my grasp. 

I could go on for much, much longer, and go into great detail.  My recovery was a very crazy experience. I’m glad I went through it, and it gave me an understanding of some of the struggles he’s going through.   I went through this over 25 years ago, so my story won’t help many. It’s good to see his journey and I hope it inspires many people to keep fighting and know they can do anything they set their minds to. I can’t wait to see the video of Scotty running some day! 

Out of my shell

I just want to preface this post with: I am not looking for a new job and I really love who I work with and what I do.   If it weren’t for the people, I’d be jumping ship, but the group of guys I work with are awesome.   

When I grew up, I was always pretty shy.  Talking to strangers has always been hard for me, so making new friends was also hard.  It was especially hard if the target of my conversation was a female.  At some point in my life I started changing.  A blind date, and 2.5 years later, my wife and I were married.  If I were telling this story it would be 2 minutes long, but if you hear my wife’s side of story, you better bring chips.  I’m not as shy now as I was when I was younger and I find people more interesting and curious now a days (as I’ve mentioned in the past).   

Meet Ups 

For the last several years, I have been attending several meetups.  I have been attending the Google Developers Group (GDG) for about 7 years now (A little break here and there due to guitar lessons).  I also try and attend the UtahJS or .NET Group.  They are all pretty interesting and have unique attendees. The GDG is by far my favorite, because of the people and their interests.   Personally, I like going to learn new technology and to get out of my comfort zone by meeting new people.   You have to not take it personally when the introvert sitting next to you doesn’t want to talk. 

HackerX 

I think I received an invite in my email or found a link to an invite and signed up.  I thought it was something completely different, because I didn’t go research it.  It sounds like a bunch of people hacking away on computer stuff.  Fun right?  I didn’t find out what I was in for until a few days before the event.  Like it says it is a “Networking and recruiting event”.  It’s the perfect place for someone looking for a job!   The two events I’ve been to have had about 15 companies there looking for candidates. 

How it works

The companies are setup in 4 rows with about 4 to 5 companies in each row.   The candidates line up on one side and work their way down through each company.  “Speed” Interviews take place at each table with each company for 5 minutes.   It takes 20-25 minutes to go through each line and it is a 2-hour event, so you do a lot of waiting and you have to scramble at the end to talk to companies you missed out on.  The companies are just as tired as you are and they sometimes get a little grouchy if you are just trying to find out about the company and not looking for a job. haha 

Networking

If you are shy or came by yourself, you are going to be pretty bored waiting in line, especially if you didn’t rush to the front of the line.  You can do the math, and figure out how long you have to wait to see the first company if you are slow.  The best part of this event is networking with the introverts (“nerds”) in line with you.  

I’ve met some pretty awesome people in line.  There are all sorts of people in these lines.  Programmers find their jobs pretty interesting, and when we try and tell others about what we are doing, most audiences are bored.  For instance, if I tell my wife how I coded up a bunch of unit tests to test my code, she tries to act interested, but I can see her eyes glossing over.  When you talk to other nerds, they usually get it, or are truly interested.  It’s awesome and that is what makes it fun to talk to some of these people.   I also find it interesting to find out about them personally.   

Companies

This time around, I got inline and only had to wait 25 minutes before my first interview.  The company hosting the event had a guy going through the line talking to the candidates and taking resumes.  Of course, I didn’t bring any but we chatted for a bit. 

I went through the line and talked some pretty cool companies.  They have swag and various things to hand out.   It’s fun to learn about the companies and what they do.    I made it through another line of companies and talked to a few others at the end. 

I survived

It was a great experience.  The fear wasn’t as great this time, but I also had nothing to lose.  It would be a lot different if I was looking for a job.    I could write more about the people I met. I will post the most interesting individual I met here. Is name is Admiral Potato. I’m glad I talked to him. He has a lot of interesting interests. He can be found here on tumblr.com and on twitter.

A few companies that I think would be great to work for are: 

https://degreed.com/ – They allow you to work remote and work in C# and Javascript 

HireVue –  They use some interesting technology. They help companies make better hiring decisions. Video Conferencing Interviews? They use AI to predict information about the candidates going through the interview process.

Parakeet – Vacation Rental Home Automation. I’m interested in home automation. They work in Python, which is interesting. I’ve used it in a few projects and on some pet projects. It’s fun.