A Yankee in Texas

Here are a couple of photos I took at a pond near my house in October of 2009. You can view the whole set here.

As the old saying goes “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”. A few weeks ago life handed me a big bag of lemons in the form of being let go from Jaduka. I’m not going to lie it was a bit scary and nerve racking the first few days, but I tried to look at it as an opportunity not a set back.

Last week I started a 2 month contract to work on a really cool project. Unfortunately I cannot talk about what I am working on just yet ( I signed an Non-Disclosure Agreement ), but as soon as I can y’all will be the first to hear about it.

I am enjoying the project I am working on and I’m still looking for a permanent position, but so far the lemons are making some tasty lemonade. Cheers!

– Jeremy

I just want to start off by saying I apologize for slacking off and not updating. Ok on to the recap.

Day 3: Today was marked by limited success. I wanted to try to see if I could slap one of my app ideas together with the knowledge I’ve gathered so far and I succeeded. It’s not how I want it to look and only has basic functionality, but damn it it works.

Day 4: I am feeling the post slap dash application blues. This tends to happen to me when I realize how much crap my whipped together project. Much self doubt.  Nicole arrived back in Austin from visiting family in NY so we hung out all day. Tried to not think about programming for a change.

Day 5: I had lunch with Kevin today he reminded me that it takes time to learn a new language. Coming from him it really hit home what I was already thinking which is that it’s going to take me a month or more to really get up to speed on this stuff. I watched the third lesson from the Stanford video series. Dare I say things are starting to make more sense.

– Jeremy

I spent the majority of my study time today trying to wrap my head around the code I copied from the iPhone Application Development for Dummies book yesterday. I also started watching the videos from the Stanford CS 193P iPhone Application Programming class which are free to download.

Jumping right in to learning iPhone development without knowing how to program in Objective-C is like if you tried to learn PHP from a book on Zend or Cake Framework. It’s taking longer than I anticipated, but I am starting to feel like I am getting it. I am sure my arrogance will be punished tomorrow.

– Jeremy

I am working my way through iPhone Application Development for Dummies it’s a pretty decent book. The truth of the matter is that there are some pretty heavy concepts you need to wrap your mind around before you can start to truly think like an iPhone Developer. For someone like myself who spent most of the past 10 years programming in a non-compiled, non-object oriented language the concepts are even more mind boggling.

On the other hand I find great comfort in the fact that for me there is no failure in this endeavor. If it takes months for me to learn how to write iPhone apps the so be it. There’s no pressure to succeed right away so I can learn at my own pace.

Tomorrow the plan is to keep plugging away at the examples in iPhone Application Development for Dummies. I am going to keep reading and coding until things start to click for me.

– Jeremy

I am ashamed to admit it, but I hadn’t upgraded Wordpress since I set up this blog 2 years ago. I am not sure why but this morning decided I should finally get around to upgrading the latest version of Wordpress.  I still have some work to do to get everything back to the way it originally looked, which I will finish tonight, but everything should be working properly.

You really shouldn’t notice any changes to the blog as a majority of the enhancements to Wordpress are on the administration side.

I am very excited!

– Jeremy

On Saturday I spent about an hour cleaning up the patio. Today Nicole picked up these lights and we hung them this afternoon.

I am pretty impressed with how inviting they make the balcony.  I am thinking about putting on a pot of Green Tea (Dragonwell) and heading out there.

BTW those aren’t real candles they are battery powered. They look very real, but shut off automatically after 5 hours.

– Jeremy

I have been flirting  with a Raw Food diet, but I’ve yet to really apply myself to the task. This week all that changes. I am going to try and go the whole week almost 100% raw.

I went grocery shopping today and here are some pictures of what I bought:

Yep that is a lot of bananas. I love bananas. They are highly nutritious and cheap!

Counter clockwise from the bottom right: 2 bunches of celery, (below the celery) 6 Red Bell Peppers, 10 pounds Organic Carrots, 6 heads Romaine, 6 Red Bell Peppers, Organic Spinach.

For a full list of what I bought with prices check out this spreadsheet.

– Jeremy