Category: UX Engineer

I’ve had a timed coding evaluation for a job opening waiting for almost a week, and I was determined to do it yesterday. But then our AC went out and someone was here working on it all morning. I spent part of the morning on FreeCodeCamp learning more about JavaScript, but by 10am realized I needed to make more progress on my Remote Playtesting of Tabletop Games presentation for tonight. So I worked on that until about 1pm, when the AC guy finished up. I took a break for lunch and went through the coding evaluation. It was pretty easy, technically, compared to the stuff I’ve been learning in FreeCodeCamp. But it can also be tricky to make sure you’re following the instructions correctly, even if you write code that does what you think it should. So, being careful to read and re-read the requirements, it still took me almost all of the 90 minutes available.

After that I had about a 20 minute break before a screening phone call for a UX Design position. (And during that break people showed up to clean our rain gutters!) I spent some time on their website and going over my notes on the position before the call. It seemed to go well, and unless there are other candidates who are far more qualified, I expect to have a second interview.

Karen came home while I was wrapping up that call, and we barely had time for dinner before I attended my first event with React.Indy. They were super friendly and I got a lot of great info about resources for getting into JavaScript development.

(After that we planned meals for next week, I made a grocery list, and ordered groceries online for me and also for my sister. Collapsed in bed around 11pm. Whew.)

Spent too much time yesterday posting on social media to announce my presentation for tomorrow evening. The problem with posting on those media is that it’s very, very hard to do without also getting distracted with what I see on the media. Between crafting the message, tailoring it for each outlet, and the distractions, a lot of the day gets consumed.

I have a coding evaluation I need to perform for a job I applied for, and I hoped to do it yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, by the time I sat down to do it, I didn’t feel like I had enough time to complete it before Karen would come home. (Turns out, I was right.) I took that time instead to make more progress in FreeCodeCamp.org. Not wasted time. It looks like the lessons I’m going over now are applicable to that evaluation, so that’s good. I want to do that evaluation this morning, but remembered people will be here this morning to fix the air conditioning, which will be a distraction. I guess I’ll do more FCC exercises until they leave.

But I also need to finish assembling and polishing my presentation for tomorrow evening. Gonna be a busy day.

I already had some experience with regular expressions years ago, so I thought the lesson on them in FreeCodeCamp.org wouldn’t take me all afternoon. I was wrong: they’re really hard. These were the first exercises where I had to look at the hints.

In my defense, for the first exercise where I looked at the hints, it was because the solution required the use of the parentheses operators, which hadn’t yet been introduced. Grrr.

As for the second exercise where I looked at the hints, well, it was just hard. For me, anyway.

On Thursday I completed the “ES6” lesson for FreeCodeCamp.org’s “JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification”. That’s probably the hardest lesson I’ve gone through so far. A lot of the new syntax doesn’t seem to build well on the existing structures or my previous knowledge, so it doesn’t feel intuitive at all. And several of the exercises seemed to present new language features without providing a very helpful example of when the feature would be useful. I am concerned that I won’t remember this stuff at times when it would be good to use it.

I’m focusing a lot of these lessons and avoiding employer outreach. I shouldn’t really do that. I need to split my time between the two. And improving my branding assets. And helping with UXPA. And taking care of household things that need my immediate attention. And getting a little rest during the day. And not screaming in frustration.

Today I went through all 110 steps in the “Basic JavaScript” section of FreeCodeCamp.org’s “JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures” certification. I even had to write some recursive functions. I feel pretty accomplished.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/javascript-algorithms-and-data-structures/basic-javascript/