Author: rubyalesi10

For years Dove has been wanting to travel on a plane and for years I have promised Dove that take her on one. I am now in a position where I can travel with her. We just got back from San Diego. I chose San Diego because I wanted her first flight to be quick. This is how it went.

The hotel I chose was in Old Town, a historic area of San Diego. Old Town San Diego is called the birthplace of California because in 1769 Father Junipero Serra, along with a group of Spanish soldiers, established the first permanent European settlements in California. It is a tourist area but I didn’t care. I enjoyed the museums and learning about the history of the area. Some of the museums were free. There is a free museum where we learned about the first newspaper of San Diego and how the printing press worked and then there was one about stagecoaches and mail delivery. We also toured the Whaley house (paid museum tour) which is “The most haunted house in the world”. It was built on land that was used for executions, one being that of the famous hanging of Yankee Jim Robinson. Yankee Jim as he was locally known was found guilty of grand larceny. The house itself belonged to Thomas Whaley. Thomas Whaley moved to San Francisco from New York where he lost his business in the 1858 historic San Francisco fire. The first death in the Whaley house was that of their 18-month-old son who died from Scarlett fever. Later their daughter Violet died by suicide because of a failed marriage. Thomas, his wife Anna, and the rest of the children lived out their lives and died in the house. I’m sad to report that there was no paranormal activity when we visited.

We also went to Sea World. The line to get in was long but luckily it moved somewhat fast. It looked like it was gonna take at least an hour to get it but it only took 30 minutes. We visited the Garra Rufa pool (the fish that eat dead skin) first. They vibrate their jaw to work off the dead skin and bacteria for them to eat. It felt really cool and kind of tickles. Next, I rode the new ride the Emporer. There was NO line (lucky me). I rode in the back because the back goes the fastest. I wouldn’t recommend this if you want to experience the dangle because when the ride got to the part where it dangles before the drop, it just seems like you are stopped at the top. The drop was somewhat long though and fun. Other than that I would say Emporer is fun but only OK. Next, I took Dove on Manta. Dove is facing her fears of roller coasters and I am so proud of her. This is a great midsize coaster with no drops. It does go quite fast though. She did not like it at first which I could tell by her uncomfortable scream in the beginning. But, as the ride continued she said she liked it and we went on a second time. I thought Manta was more fun than Emporer. But then again maybe I just need to experience the dangling from the front row.

The hotel we stayed at had a pool and Dove learned to swim. I wouldn’t call her a strong swimmer but at least she was able to go from one side of the pool to the other. All in all it was a good first trip. I didn’t get to drink my margaritas the way that I wanted to but that’s ok I still had some. I would definitely recommend going to Old Town if you are into history and don’t mind it being a tourist attraction.

In my last post, I talked about how I wanted to do something that would feel meaningful as a career. I didn’t just want to work for some big company staring at a codebase all day and looking for bugs. I thought about maybe getting into robotics but didn’t really start going that route, (though I may tinker with it in my spare time). I still want to program and make things because it is fun for me but at this moment I am thinking about a different route for a career. I started this website to showcase my programming but now I think it is just going to be a regular website about me and my life’s journey.

Maybe as I document my life, someone, somewhere will benefit from what I have to say. Maybe my blog will someday have some substance and information that is helpful for someone. I’m not sure how it will evolve at this moment but for now, it is going to be just my online rambling. Heck, it might always be that in some respect but as I learn, about life, gain new skills, and things like that I want to be able to share my knowledge with the world or at least whoever may happen to stumble onto my blog. Ever since I graduated in August 2019 things have slowed down for me but now 2 and a halfyears later I think things might start to pick up. I’m excited to be busy again because I don’t like wasting time, especially being a mom, I have so much at stake. I’m excited to be taking Calculus this semester and for my little tutoring gig. Can’t wait to learn, teach and grow as an individual and professional.

It has been a minute since my last post. The reason for that being is that a lot has changed. The direction that I want to go has changed. I’ve decided to go back to school full time and pursue a second degree. I’m actually pretty excited about my new journey and although I wish I never got my first degree (Ethnic Studies) I try to remind myself that my daughter wouldn’t be in the great school that she is in currently….(it’s a long story…) if it weren’t for that degree. I have also decided to focus more on learning C++ instead of Java. I still want to do Android Development as a side project but I honestly think I’m more interested in Embedded software or systems(which is done in C I know). Making Apps is still really fun but I would like to get into Robotics or something similar. The reason for this being is that I would like to one day be a apart of a company that is helping to make lives easier for people. I also just like C++ better than Java and find it easier to understand and code. One really cool thing that happened was that I applied to a Tik Tok internship and they actually asked me to test. I honestly just did this on a whim with the expectation of having my application getting passed over. I knew I wasn’t ready and wouldn’t pass but I decided to test anyway just to get over my fear of the algorithm test and to see what it is like. As expected I did horrible but now I know what to expect and will reapply next year which by then I should know how to solve algorithms better. For now I will just focus on school, keep building some C++ projects to keep my GitHub as lit up as possible as well as showcase my work, and practice my algorithm skills on HackerRank. Also, I have an embedded software C++ course from Udemy that I’m itching to check out. So much to do and so little time.

The technical interview. The dreaded technical interview. There’s no way around it (at least not that I know of) if you want to get a job as a software engineer of any sort! So with that being said I decided to take a few classes to help me tackle mastering the algorithm. Of course there are free resources out there that can help teach you but for me personally, the classroom setting works best. I like that I can get feedback via grades. This lets me know If I’m understanding the material. I know that someone will look at my work and be able to give me feedback. I’m also gaining experience in stuff that I never hear online software engineers talk about, for example, the design document. Well I’ve heard one person mention it but they never mentioned it again. They did however say that knowing how to write a good one was a very important skill to have. Everyone has tutorials on how to build stuff but no one talks about the other aspects of the job. From my understanding you don’t even spend that much time creating your own code when you have a job as a software engineer. You’re more likely to be going over someone else’s code and maintaining it. This is something that is lacking in the online teaching community. There’s a mental aspect that happens before you even start writing your code. There are steps that are taken before you open your IDE. There’s never any mention of design tools such as hierarchy charts, flowcharts and psuedocode to create a model of the program.

The flowchart is suppose to be a diagram that shows the logical flow of a program and is useful for planning each operation a program performs and in which order. A hierarchy chart begins with the overall task and then refines it into smaller sub task and those sub tasks are refined into even smaller tasks and so on as need be. I could be wrong about this but wouldn’t it be nice to go into a job with some familiarity of these things? Also I wouldn’t have known about any of these tools if I hadn’t taken this class. Even though this class is in C++ and I plan to do my interview in Java (seeing as to how I want to be an Android developer and you get to choose what language you want to do your interview in) C++ and Java are somewhat similar as well as It’s supposedly easier to learn to Java if you already know C or C++. My reason for using Java and not Kotlin for my interview language of choice is because the book “Cracking the interview Code” is written for Java and It’s supposedly a really good book to help mater those technical interview.

And one quick word about bootcamps…..they don’t teach you how to perform algorithms….I’ve heard several YouTube software engineer tutorials page say this. So if you’re considering a bootcamp…..Community College is cheaper…..

So my new computer is here and WOW! I am so happy I returned that refurbished piece of junk and got my beautiful Lenovo. I’m going to go into the specs momentarily but first let me tell you which one I bought. I bought the 2021 Lenovo IdeaPad and I’m honestly in love. I’m in love for a few reasons. Being the hardware nerd that I am I’m excited about the deal that I got. It was a little under 1K for a Ryzen 7 4700U 8-Core Processor, 20 GB RAM and 512 GB PCIe SSD. I wanted a Ryzen because I didn’t want to worry about HAXM for Android Studio. Silly I know because It’s not like it’s that much extra configuration but what can I say. I’m lazy. However, Its a good thing I decided to go with Ryzen 7 over intel 7 for reasons that I am about to get into.

Ryzen 7 has double the amount of threads to cores. Ryzen has 8/16 whereas Intel has 8/8. The reason this matters to me is because the more cores your CPU has the more programs you can run at once. Being someone who has Android Studio, plus the emulator, plus YouTube, …(you get the idea)….running, I wanted something that wouldn’t crash or be slow. Clock Speed however goes to intel with its 4.4GHZ/4.5GHz as oppose to Ryzen 7’s 3.6GHz/3.9GHz. I think this might only be meaningful if you are a gamer though. Which I am not so, this doesn’t matter too much to me. Ryzen 7 has a bigger cache memory size and therefore most frequently used commands can be loaded faster. I think most importantly for me though is the multitasking capabilities in which case Ryzen has intel beat. What the heck is a PCIe SSD? Well I knew SSD meant Solid Sate Drive but I had to google PCIe. Come to find out it stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect Express. Without getting too technical, it basically makes the data transfer between a server and storage faster. With a display screen at 17.3 inches, it is bigger than I expected. However it isn’t bothering me and it even prompted me to buy a new desk. With a new desk comes a new massage gaming chair but who’s boasting?

Happy Friday and Cheers to the weekend ❤

Google has finally released its new operating system “Fuchsia” starting with their Nest Hub device. Nest Hub partners with companies such as Netflix, Sling, Hulu and Disney+, Pandora, even Apple Music and more. I guess you could think of it as their version of Amazon’s Echo but with a display that is not only voice controlled but motion controlled too. According to Google they have a 5 year plan to completely replace the Android operating system which runs on Linux Cast OS. I’m not going to lie when I first read this I kind of panicked. I wondered what the future of Android developers would be. Because if you go to the https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development. The languages that are supported are C/C++, Dart, Python, FIDL, Go and Rust. I began to question if I was wasting my time trying to learn Kotlin. Should I switch to trying to develop using Flutter and learning Dart?

After stressing myself out and going through analysis paralysis, I came to the conclusion that No, I was not wasting my time. Android Studio is pretty well established and It would be kind of a wasted investment for Google to just abandon it abruptly. Technology just doesn’t move that quickly and to prove my point, Mac still operates under python 2.7. Feeling better and more grounded about the situation, I’ve been continuing my pursuit to learn Kotlin syntax. I’ve especially been practicing my Kotlin as I wait for my refund for a refurbished computer I bought off of Amazon to get returned to me.

I usually never buy refurbished because I’ve always had bad luck with them. However, I wasn’t paying attention and click, made the purchase. I considered returning it right away but then on second thought, would give Amazon renewed a chance. Well at first it didn’t charge to 100% but it did charge to 99 and I thought well maybe I shouldn’t be so nit picky. I also noticed the mouse would select stuff without me clicking anything and then also it just plain wouldn’t update. Eventually the screen went black and I panicked. I quickly called customer service who was only vaguely helpful in helping me reset the computer back to factory settings. I ended up just figuring it out by myself in the end. But as soon as my refund is on its way I will be ordering a brand new laptop to work on my Women’s healthApp. I should also have some future info on a Hackathon I entered. I was going to do it solo but will try to work on a team again since when you’re programming you’re working on a team and I want to demonstrate to future employers that I am a team player. Happy Friday *cheers<3

This is my first post on the documentation of my Android development journey. I’m currently working on a women’s health app and I started documenting my process in my notepad on my computer. My initial thought was that I was hoping it would demonstrate my problem solving capabilities. Below are a couple of days worth of problems I ran into. I will try to make my future posts more lengthy.

Issues I ran into while building ProdigyHealth app. Somehow the app was defaulted to wearable in Manifest file. I googled the error and saw on stackoverflow how to fix this error . The app still wasn’t launching the homescreen. So I continued into the Manifest file and noticed this….

<code missing from notepad on my old computer, not sure how>

I knew that launcher meant the launching page so I took a chance and changed it.

I then had to change

back to this….

<code was missing from notepad on my old computer, not sure how>

<activity android:name=".vaginalHealth" />
    <activity android:name=".periodLog" />
    <activity android:name=".healthAndFitness" />
    <activity android:name=".userProfile">

It solved my problem and I was able to make my MainActivity.java the launcher page again and all of the buttons lead to the pages they were meant to. I had no idea if this would work but it made sense intuitively especially since I remembered the purpose of the launcher page and seeing all of the other pages I made lined up together made me think this must be of some significance.

5/3/2021
Now that I am able to have the buttons go to the page I want them to go to. I am now going to tackle adding the breast exam video. Because I will need to use an API, security is my number one priority at the moment. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t create a .gitignore file but it turns out android studio creates one for you (convenient) but you have to be in project view in order to see it. I was in android view and couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. Long story short, I was able to embed the video using a library I found.

5/8/21
right now I’m trying to figure out how to implement the period tracking calendar. I wanted to use google calendar API but I can’t figure out how to do that. I can’t find any information on line and the documentation isn’t too helpful. The tutorials that ARE online are completely useless and it ended up messing up my whole project. I couldn’t find a solution so I just reverted my project back to the previous commit. Thank god for version control. Now I’m thinking I’m just gonna put a calendar view and see if I can connect it to firestore. Is that even possible? I honestly have no idea what I’m doing. But I will figure it out.

5/13/21
I couldn’t figure out for the longest how to use the google calendar API. I followed a tutorial that uses the Intent method but it wouldn’t work for me. My app kept crashing or returning to the home screen. I decided to just have a hyper link that goes to google calendars. Another issue I stumbled upon however is the YouTube library I was using uses jcenter() which is at the end of its life span. So I’m going to have to figure out a different way to embed my YouTube video.