They’re all up here…
Oct 17th, 2009 by Jen
I have thought about making homemade laundry detergent for a long time since reading The Complete Tightwad Gazette. My sister renewed my interest a couple months ago when she suggested making her own so I decided to go for it. Here’s the video and I’ll be sure to post a review on how it works once I’ve tried it.
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube DirektHomemade Laundry Detergent
Jun 26th, 2009 by Jen
Yep. I’ll be there! Loved it last year and looking forward to it this year as well. Hosted by EdgeCase, it’s a conference that presents Ruby and Ruby on Rails as a solution for the enterprise. Held in Columbus, OH, it’s relatively close to home for me, which makes it convenient, and the lineup of speakers is great. See the erubycon site for more information, and better yet, register while you’re there. Early registration ends Monday and is $250, but even at the full price of $299 it’s still well worth attending.
Apr 2nd, 2009 by Jen
I have always considered myself a geek. I’m into the programming, have really enjoyed learning Ruby on Rails, love doing anything on my Mac, get silly over little changes in the iPhone OS, and even though I haven’t used it as much as I want to, I get excited when there is a new iPhone SDK beta. But I did realize something today. I am not nearly as geeky as I want to be, or should be. And that is a bad thing.
My family thinks I am the biggest nerd. When I start talking about what I do at work their eyes glaze over and they kind of nod and look really confused. They’ll never get it. To them I am the epitome that they think about when they think of someone who is geeky. Little do they know that it’s really a farce.
Until recently, I really thought that I had come a long way in terms of learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Every day I was becoming more and more confident and not afraid to suggest better ways of writing the code or taking criticism from others concerning my code. But today I took a step back. I looked at how long I’ve been doing the Rails thing (oh, about a year-and-a-half) and exactly where I’m at, or feel like I’m at (advanced beginner at best). After a year-and-a-half I really think I should be further along than I am. There are times when the simplest things stump me and render me useless. There are also times when I feel like I am a joke, plain stupid and dare I say it, ditzy. Sure, Rails is ever-changing. Yes, we’re trying different things all the time. Alright, although Rails makes everything seem easy, we’re doing a lot of work that is very complex. Excuses. I should be better. I need to be better.
This past year, I took on teaching myself a little iPhone development because not only am I interested in how applications work, I thought it would be interesting to learn something new. I now think I took on too much. Now, I am not required by anyone but myself to put out an application, but it’s been disappointing to me to really get nowhere with it. I see all of the awesome applications that others are making and think “Hey, I can do that,” but the truth is that I’m not doing that. I’m not even sure if I can anymore.
A friend of mine told me today that it’s probably difficult for me to be exactly where I want to be because I am very occupied at the moment with being a mother. I do have two full-time jobs, the one I go to during the day, and the one that I go home to in the evenings. He said that it’s either get rid of the kid and focus on being the geek or keep the kid and be half-mom, half-geek. Well, of course I am not getting rid of my child, but I don’t feel that half-geek is acceptable either. I need to be good at something. I would like that something to be programming.
I by no means intend for this post to be a “feel sorry for me” kind of thing; That is not why I’m laying it all out like this. This is my blog and I needed some therapy. I’m even disabling the comments on this post because I’m not really looking for advice right now, just a means to vent. I guess I have issues. But you know what? It happens. There are times when everyone feels inferior, even people who know what they are doing.
I think this will pass and I’ll eventually be back to my chipper self, but I also believe it was time for me to take inventory and figure out what to do. I think I’m on a new mission now, to really figure out the best way to retain what I learn. Maybe find a new way of thinking. I’m going to continue reading books, writing code, and doing what I can to understand what’s going on around me but hopefully try to gain a new perspective along the way.
Mar 31st, 2009 by Jen
A few months back, when I first joined my gym, I hired on a personal trainer (at the introductory rate) for four sessions to help familiarize myself with the gym and the equipment. I was kind of shocked when he recommended that I didn’t start off on the equipment right away but instead learn to work with my own weight first. Part of me was disappointed, thinking that he was just trying to get more sessions out of me in the future to show me my way around the equipment, but then I realized that he really was looking out for my body’s best interest. He said there is no reason to be able to lift a bunch of dead weight if you can’t even handle the way your own body works and I agree with him.
One of the workouts that I did with him was the Playing Card Workout. When I met with him the morning of the workout he said “Today we’re going to have some fun.” I wasn’t sure what to expect from that considering the past two times I met with him he practically killed me. Seriously. I couldn’t walk for two weeks after he had me do a workout incorporating squats and my lower back hurt so bad after doing reclined sit-ups that I thought I had a hernia.
As it turns out, the Playing Card Workout was indeed fun. It went by so fast and I really felt like I had acomplished something when I was finished. Usually, when I go to the gym, I will alternate running with the card workout because right now I’m really wanting to do cardio to get my weight down. But by doing the card workout I’m also doing some strength training as well, so my body will reap the benefits of that once the weight is gone. There are times when I will do a stability ball workout or lift dumbbells and do squats, but I tend to run and do the card workout regularly.
Because I love this workout so much I figured I would share it with everyone. Here goes.
I’m sure you could mix up your workout accordingly, but to do my workout I need the following:
And now, how to do the workout.
Each suite represents a different fitness move. Here’s what I do:
For the following do one repetition for each number of items on the card. Jacks are 11, Queens are 12, Kings are 13 and Aces are 14.
So there you have it. This workout takes me about 45 minutes to complete, with both some warm-up and cool-down laps, and I generally bun around 350-375 calories. Not a bad way to do it! Try switching things up too and have some fun.
Mar 28th, 2009 by Jen
Below is a short presentation I gave to my team about Nanite and the benefits of using it for background processing. Unfortunately the slide show notes are not available but at least you can get an idea of what I talked about and where I got my information.
The application that I work on, written in Ruby on Rails, was previously using BackgrounDRb for its background processing but we have decided to give Nanite a try because of its flexibility and scalability. I’ve been very pleased so far with the choice.
Grandiose Ideas
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