Back on line!

Apologies to those who were keeping up with me for disappearing for two months.  I managed to finish up my 30 days of programming just fine.  I loved it, but haven't done anything since then. 

I got in the car with the dog and drove from San Francisco to Michigan.  It was a long trip and I spent more than a month away from home.  Ada went on her first ever plane ride and I painted a bunch of rooms in the house (the guest bedroom no longer looks scary and has no pipes in it!)  I am not quite ready to start my next 30 day challenge, but I will be starting another challenge for myself.

My task for today is to write a bucket list!  Things I want to do before I die and some of them I have already done.

( ) Cook my own Thanksgiving Dinner
( ) Cook my own Christmas Dinner
(X) Cook a perfect Soufflé
(X) Cook a perfect Ommlett
(X) Stay in a WigWam
(X) Eat Fry bread
(X) See the Grand Canyon
( ) Visit to Mexico
(X) Visit Canada
( ) Roller Skate on the Venice Beach Boardwalk
(X) Skate as a Jammer and Score points for my team
( ) Have a flat stomach
(X) Run on a Beach
( ) Run a Half Marathon (maybe a marathon)
( ) Visit India
( ) Visit Thailand
( ) Visit Egypt
( ) Go on a Safari
(X) See ancient writings in their natural habitat
(X) See the Painted Dessert and the Petrified Forest
( ) Go deep sea fishing
(X) See dolphins in the wild
( ) Visit Alaska
( ) Go to Octoberfest
( ) Visit Paris
( ) Jump out of an airplane
( ) Try surfing
(X) Try Roller Derby
(X) Live in New Orleans
( ) Knit a sweater
(X) Ride a Motorcyle
( ) Go to Disneyworld
(X) Can my own food
( ) Make my own cheese
(X) Fall in Love
(X) Get in a fight
(X) Read in a park
( ) Go snorkeling or scuba diving
( ) Visit Austrailia
( ) Go backpacking
( ) Get married to the man I love
(X) Go camping
(X) Gallop a horse
( ) Grow my own garden
( ) Bake a fancy cake (has to look pretty and taste great)
( ) Take glamorous Boudoir pictures
(X) Act on a stage
(X) Sing in front of a crowd
(X) Go dancing with friends
(X) See Cirque Du Soleil in Las Vegas
( ) Graduate from Collage
( ) Play a video game and finish it
(X) Fly on an airplane
(X) Own a dog
(X) Hug a bear
(X) Climb up a mountain
( ) Go Skiing
(X) Try Marijuana (in a legal place)
(X) Pet a whale
(X) Go skinny dipping in a lake
( ) Go ice fishing
( ) Stand on a glacier
(X) Work for myself
(X) Gamble
(X) Get a tattoo
(X) Get s piercing
(X) Read a chapter book (I remember that milestone!)
( ) Go white water rafting
(X) Build a snow fort
( ) See a rain-forest
(X) Be kissed till my knees give out
( ) Help sail a boat
(X) Go on a roller coaster that goes upside down
( ) Go to Octoberfest

It's not on the list, because it's not something that can just be checked off, but I will also never turn down any food that is offered to me.  I want to taste the world!

I hope to update again in a week or so and by that time I'll probably know what my next challenge will be.  ^__^ I'm excited to be back!

25/30- 28/30 Coding!

 So I've kept up slowly with my coding.  I think I'll keep trying to get it even past my 30 days.  I like learning this and it is rather fun to go through it with my boyfriend on occasion.  He's a better teacher than the internet and makes me work through things properly so that I actually understand them.  I don't often have the courage to ask for help.  Since I only make baby steps it's rather embarrassing to show how far I've come day by day.

 I've had my birthday and have gotten old! I got to take the Ada-dog to Macy's and we took a picture with Santa Claus.  ^__^ She was so polite and sweet.  I got flowers and was taken to German dinner.  It was nice!

I have also spent time creating Christmas Cards! (Or holiday cards for the non religious.)  It was fun and took forever.  I made embossed snowflake cards on nice midnight blue paper! It costs more than I like to do that sort of thing, but it was fun.

This is my latest code.  Only works because I knew it was wrong and my boyfriend helped me work though it line by line.  He actually wrote a tiny bit of it.  I made it run.  With a lot of hand-holding.

def fizzCount(x):
    c = 0 #set c to = 0 in the function
    for i in x:
        if i == "fizz":
            c += 1
    return c
   
somelist = ["a","b","fizz","not_fizz","fizz"]
someotherlist = ["fizz", None]
athirdlist = [None, "not_fizz", "abcde", "fizz"]

listoflists = [somelist, someotherlist, athirdlist]
for l in listoflists:
    print fizzCount(l)





For i in x:
for statements run though the x and look for i's. Confusing, but useful.

24/30: Coding

So I haven't quit coding.  Except for one day (when I forgot to code till after I was laying bed and my boyfriend had said we had to sleep) I have been working on this every day.  I just don't feel like I'm learning as quickly as I could be if I focused a little better.  I'll be coding an extra day because of that (that's two extra days now!) I know it's not awesome. I should blog a little better.  I will give you a real update tomorrow.  A nice one that will tell you about my Thanksgiving!

12/30-17/30: Coding

I've had a huge mental block with my coding.  I haven't been able to figure out what I'm doing wrong and that means some days I've only spent 5 or 10 minutes on it.

Yesterday my boyfriend had a friend over.  They both worked together at the UofM, Domino's and when we moved out here, D was able to convince J to move here as well.  ^_^  After they were  both out here they managed to convince two members of their UofM team to come out for interviews too.  It's a movement!

I don't like to bother my boy too much with all this programing stuff, but I was so stuck that after our wandering I was sitting on the couch and eventually asked them for help.  Having two insanely smart SRE's available to trouble shoot my baby code was quite nice.  They also explained the difference between defining my code and calling it.  Now I know what was going wrong!  It's so awesome when you finally stop seeing the error code!





The site was not working one of the days, so I'm adding an extra day of coding onto the end of this 30 period.  I still feel bad for not trying harder to work that day, but it happens. As soon as I finish this post I'm gonna take some real time to get into my next coding assignment.  Functions are interesting.

The dog has been driving me crazy.  She's barking at everything.  I need to download all the episodes of "It's Me or the Dog" because I feel Victoria Stillwell's method of training is wonderful and will work really well with Ada.

List of things I want my dog to stop doing
     - barking and lunging at other dogs (this seems to be an on and off behavior)
     - barking and lunging at skateboards
     - lunging at runners or other fast things that surprise her
     - eating everything off the sidewalk
     - nosing at people walking by us
     - barking at homeless people
     - chasing pigeons, ducks, squirrels, or anything really

Looking at it in print the list is longer than I would like.  Poop! I hope I can manage to train her out of these.  I'm not that consistent either.  This is gonna be hard and take some time. I also need to buy a new clicker and a real reward pouch.

9/30-11/30: Coding

It's been a rough couple of days.  I can't talk about it much at the moment.

I have been coding, but I seem to have hit a bit of a block.  I'm not sure where I'm going wrong and my personal consultant (aka my boyfriend) is unavailable.  I was really hoping I would understand this better.  Also the Q&A forums aren't giving me any answers.

So since I don't have too many to talk about here is a picture of the bathroom.  I like it.

Swirly twirly circles and gray.

Ada and I also spent the night at my girls house.  We chased goats, and ate chicken and knitted things.  It was awesome.  While she was picking up the goats from the goat spa I woke up and took her dog, Iggy, and the Ada-dog to the beach. Ada kept trying to get close to a pair of dead seagulls.  There was also tons of seaweed with dead starfish and crabs in it.  We moved over one beach because I was tired to trying to convince her that it was a bad idea.

So Iggy is the most relaxed dude.  Stays close by and comes as soon as you ask him. Seriously chill.  Ada on the other hand, races as fast as she can up the beach, races back, skids to a stop in front of me (just to check in real fast mom!) and then races off again as fast as possible.  They both got some love from a set of kids with parents who were completely unworried about the fact that Ada was a Doberman Pincher.  Woo! They chased her all up and down the beach. Iggy did some exploring. Tons of petting and lots of fun.  Lucy Lui (the dog, not the actress) came onto the beach and she and Iggy did their butt sniffs.  Ada decided that she had to protect him and barked her head off.  ^__^ She was jealous!

7/30 & 8/30: Coding

 I got only 5 minutes of coding done on the 7th day of coding.  Today on the other hand!  This is what I did! ^_^ So awesome!!  It turns any word into pyg-latin.  I threw in lots of filler since I was hearing the voice of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz in my head.  His -Inator's are very inspiring. 

 I wonder if I can actually embed it into the blog so you can use it. Okay I can't figure out how to do it.  But you can paste it into this which is where I've been practicing my python.

^_^ My code! *preens* It's so pretty!! *giddy*

print "BEHOLD! My Pig-Latin-Translator-Inator!!"
print "*voice of Doctor Doofenshmirtz*"
pyg = 'ay'
original = raw_input('Go ahead! Give me a word. I dare you!')
word=original.lower()
first=word[0]
vowel_word=word+pyg
new_word=word[1:]+first+pyg  
if len(original) > 0 and original.isalpha():
    if first=="a" or first=="e" or first=="i" or first=="o" or first=="u" or first=="A" or first=="E" or first=="I" or first=="O" or first=="U":
        print vowel_word
    else:
        print new_word
    print "Oh. I thought it was going to turn everything into pig noises or something like that... I could probably fix it, but this'll work. Well? Impressive isn't it.  With it I shall control the ENTIRE TRI STATE AREA!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA *chokes on a swallowed fly*"
else:
    print "Well it looks like SOMEONE can't follow directions."

#word[0] means it starts at the 0 position of the word
#word[1:] means it starts in the 1 position and goes to the end

6/30: Coding

Not much to say! I didn't spend that much time coding, but I do understand what I was doing a little bit better.  Throwing the raw (and inelegant) code in to make sure I understand it later when I've slept and forgotten a bunch of things.  This is after figuring it out twice, and it took me 20 minutes the second time as well since I didn't really understand it the first time around.  And that was with the Q&A to guide me! The if, else, elif statements are rather mind bending.  I am glad I spent the extra time with them.  Even if it is 5 in the morning! But I get why the bottom code works! (I think.)

I'm noticing a few similarities between python and ruby.  I think the Ruby platform I was working with was a little easier to understand, and it felt like I was learning faster.  It wouldn't really let me go off script though.  The python platform is giving me a much deeper understanding, even though it isn't as simple to understand.  It's also a lot more willing to let me tamper with the code and the format they set up.  So I can screw up! But the problem is I can screw up!  So yeah.  I think I'll be able to use Python better when I'm done simply because I'm spending so much more time on it.

I see how the old "Hitchhikers Guide" video game was set up.  I could probably write something like that now.  It would take me a while, but I think I could do it if I really wanted to have 100 diff options for every question and hated my free time.  Hell I manged to ask a question, give several options, and depending on the answer, offer different responses!

Didn't do too much today.  Made a yummy chicken salad.  Skipped my coffee, but down diet Pepsi like it was full of crack.  Had a "Psych" marathon! Recovered from all the election nerves of yesterday.  Stayed in the house, all day. Feel a tiny bit guilty for that, but that's part of not working and not having a reason to leave the house.

Here is an awesome kickstarter project for time travel underpants!  I really want some.  If nothing else these should be made.  Not my favorite DW swag, but cute.  This idea comes from JRose at the cheeseblarg!  She does some really fun things throughout the year and I love her scavenger hunts.

It's almost 6 am.  I should take Ada dog out and get some sleep.


Notes:
#Starting code! Use # to get used to it. Must return true.  Does not need to print.
def the_flying_circus():  #<- is the function.
    if True or False:           #Everything after function must be indented.
        return True
    elif 7+8>7**2:         #elif statement comes before my else!
        return False        #return or print statements need a tab as well
    else:                          #else statement is left blank
           return True
   

Spelling is VITAL!!  Get better at it. The below code is because I watched "the Wiz" earlier this year for the first time and have seen a billion "Sexy Dorathy!" costumes. Almost worked in my awesome Elphaba into the mention, but just didn't have the energy to be that witty.

def oz():
    print "Welcome to Munchkin land!"      #no extra tab yet since it's the A statement
    print "Where are you from? Kansas or New York City?"
    answer = raw_in
put("Type Kansas or New York City and press 'Enter'.")
    if answer == "Kansas" or answer == "kansas":
        print "White Dorathy! Great now we'll be seeing sexy halloween costumes for 50 years!"  #this is a B statement, the return or print needs the extra indent like in the simple above code
    elif answer == "New York City" or answer == "new york city" or answer == "NYC" or answer == "nyc":
        print "Black Dorathy! Great, now we get our own Disco Diva!"
    else:
        print "Can't make up your mind? I guess you're from the Matrix!"
        oz()      #I'm assuming this is to define the end of the function

oz()       #I'm assuming this is to actually run the function. I can have another function after that and it will run as long as it's been defined before hand.
clinic()  #for example, not sure how it would run if I had a diff function for each answer.  I bet I would have to attach the new function to the answer of the previous one.