Be Still My Beating Heart

This morning my mind was blown.  I read a chapter about J Query and understood it!  I also understood how to combine "unobtrusive" with "J Query" and so one of my big goals now is to eradicate regular JavaScript from my own page (not from my portfolio pieces) while maintaining separate JavaScript, HTML, and CSS files.  I realized I am beginning a love affair with J Query because while I was brushing my teeth because I kept fantasizing about all the wonderful things J Query and I will do together this summer.  Me and J Query getting Ajax.  Me and J Query listening for events.  Me and J Query creating children (and appending them!).  Gee, I hope J Query likes the way I fixed my hair today...

One day, my dream is to use PHP to do cool stuff, which will probably start with making user names and passwords.  The great thing (warning: sarcasm ahead) about this is that I can also use REGULAR EXPRESSIONS.  I don't know why they called them that, but the abbreviated Regex (read: Rejects) is much more apt.  It's not that I don't love REGULAR EXPRESSIONS (who continue to insist that I write them all in CAPS in addition to personifying them), it's just that they make me so depressed I actually want to tear the pink keyboard cover from my computer.  And that is saying something. 

Another challenge I actually am excited about is the magic wand of HTTP Special Chars.  If you're not sure what that means, I will tell you.  Generation Y people think they're really special because their guilt-ridden divorced parents continually told them so.  HTTP Chars actually are Special because they will encrypt your s**t.  While I may not be the Marines of web security, I think I could at least pass for a mall cop because in addition to those Chars that are Special, I have some other tricks up my sleeve.  And those tricks involve many acronyms that I can't remember right now. 

Well, I'm off to go spend the afternoon on the couch (and the dining room table, and the kitchen, and my desk) with J Query.  Please hold my calls.

Rainy Day Web Hosting

Yesterday was dictated by the rain.  Yes, an entirely rainy day in late June. 

After a quick survey of painting supplies in the basement, I took Annie for an hour-long walk in Magnolia, during which time it was sprinkling yet warm.  Lucky Annie didn't even need her coat. 

After lunch, I drove to Ballard (I know, a risky thing to do any time, any day) to stop at my favorite coffee shop from the old days when I lived by the locks.  I found an awesome parking spot (for free!) less than a block from the coffee shop.  I'm not going to tell you where it was, however, because the fewer people I have to compete with, the better my own parking chances.  If you're looking for parking in Ballard, I heard that there are quite a few convenient bus lines you might have better chances with. 

At the coffee shop I decided to sign up for web hosting and thereby create my own actual website!  Now jessicawicksnin.com is mine, all mine!  I know there was a lot of demand for it because I got it for free AND it was immediately available.  I'm looking forward to creating lots of subdomains like jessicawicksnin.annie.com!  And of course, I have my own email: jessica@jessicawicksnin.com.  Mwah ha ha!  It may appear to be the height of egoism, and it is.  Annie only gets her own website when she learns to type (which isn't too far off, actually).  If you visit the website now, it (hopefully) doesn't show anything, but a day not too far off it will!  It really will!  Am I allowed one more Mwah ha ha here?

My next steps are to get the site to look less like total crap (halfway crappy would be ok) and start putting some of the stuff from my web development class online to make a "portfolio" (if this were HTML I would use <em> tags on the "quote marks" because the truth is, I have no idea what the heck I'm doing with this whole portfolio thing, but frankly, "trying stuff" has got me this far, so why stop now?)
 

Staycation 2013 - New and Improved!

I have blogged about many things over the years: coffee, getting a dog, taking the bus, San Francisco, pies, teaching, boyfriends, babies, and more pies.  However, I am moving on.  No more will I spend my Staycation happily cleaning my house and going to the dog park while exhausting the local branch of the public library.  No, instead I have found a purpose (in addition to going to the dog park).  I am making a website and improving my programming skills this summer.

So today, I spent a few hours in the morning taking the practice exam for my programming course (final exam in two days!).  Let's just say that PHP can go implode its own arrays but I definitely got the ID of Javascript!  Mwah ha ha does anyone else like these jokes?

Before lunch, Annie and I took a nice long walk where it started raining, so we hid under some pine trees until the shower passed over.  During the rest of the year we wouldn't have blinked an eye, but now it's June and has been so sunny that we are starting to think we might melt if we get wet (probably how the rest of the country feels all year round).

On the way home, saw a lunch time open house, so I had to go!  Never had the opportunity to go to a lunchtime open house, it was a rare opportunity that I and apparently no one else took advantage of. 

Finally, I hunkered down and produced this masterpiece:

A website that may have been made by me

If you're jealous of my mad border-radius skills, you should be.  Not just anyone can make curved edges on a website.  What this screen shot doesn't capture is that if you hover over one of the options, it turns green, which not only shows that I am awesome at CSS but also that I am familiar with complementary color schemes (thanks, Kuler).  

Goals for tomorrow: whip up some Javascript to make random user reviews of my website appear (oh, and show my resume, which after all is kinda the point of this whole thing).