mycomponents

This website made my day!

The struggle of being a programmer is due to the costant need to have the answer, and to have it right now. I was talking to one of my fellow students and the fear of not knowing or not feeling close to the answer can cause serious damage.

One of the first subjects we went over the first day with the instructors was about this topic. Programmers know that 80% of the time spent in building code and applications will be spent looking for answers, crashing their own code and finding new ways to complete whatever it is that they’re working on.

But what if we approach the problem in a completely different way. Let’s call it Zen Programming. The best thing you can do is to focus on the process itself, tracking your progresses, motivating yourself with your goals and having fun with it (whatever that means to you, what I love to do while I code is getting into my personal bubble listening to music and sing like I was in a music video).

It can be hard to break the habits, especially because of the work culture we belong to, where most of the time you hate your job and the best thing you can hope for is knowing everything from the beginning, solving all the problems and getting over it as soon as possible.

Being a programmer though, requires so much of your effort that either you love it or you love it. The process of finding the answers, the challenge of creating new applications is what you should wake up in the morning for.

It’s official. I made it into the best bootcamp that San Francisco has to offer.

Galvanize has created the perfect environment where to mix aspirant programmers with experienced ones, a place where you can learn, build connections or just chill and relax with friends. This is the future of the education, in the same way companies like Google or Facebook revolutionized the office environment, Galvanize revolutionized the classroom environment.

They are very attentive to your needs and make anything they can to make you feel comfortable. There are pool and ping pong tables, kitchens, couches, an amazing rooftop as well as comfortable class rooms, accessories for your computer, huge tv flat screens where to follow the lesson on and great, professional and motivated teachers.

Only a week has gone by and so far the amount of work and stress hasn’t been bad at all. I’m always waiting for the point when I’ll start crying and screaming, but all good for now! We played around with terminal commands, git and github, an introduction to javascript that led to functions.

This is the first time in my life that I do something that I really love and I’m gonna invest everything I have in it.

And so I had my first breakdown after about a hour that I arrived in San Francisco.

The city is beautiful, I love the community, the public transportation and so far the weather (it has been sunny and clear since I got here four days ago).

The world started falling apart when I got into the place I’m renting for the next six months. As I mentioned earlier I decided to go for Latitude 38 a company that rents beds either long or short-term for students & business.

They have many locations around San Francisco but only one was available at the time of my request- the Albion Hotel. This, of course, was a hotel which has been renovated and adapted to L38′s concept. The building is ok, fairly clean and pretty well maintained. The kitchen is T I N Y, you can’t even stand in there if there’s another person with you. I have to share a mini closet and a mini fridge with three other guys. One of the guys is a very big guy who never leaves the room (NEVER) and stinks very, very, very bad. He would spend his days playing video games on his computer, or brushing his long hair in a very creepy way (almost like he was touching himself). On top of everything I find out that I don’t even have a real mattress, let’s call it a large cushion, as thin as a cracker.

You can understand why my first night here ended up in tears (mini tears, didn’t have too much room for those either). I talked to the management which is gonna transfer me to the building they have on Folsom St from June. At this point I have to hang in there for a month. Paying only $550 I can understand that either you end up with troubled people or students, but between the two I was hoping to end up with the second one. Folsom seems to be more student-oriented so, wish me luck.

On a side note tomorrow’s my first day at gSchool and I’m very excited about it. I found out last minute that I had two assignments to do for my first day: an IMDB clone and a personal two-page website to present myself with, so I spent the last two days at Starbucks coding like a champ. Or maybe just coding.

Regardless my living situation, San Francisco is a beautiful city which gives me a strong sense of community. Walking in Castro today and seeing all these different groups of friends made by completely different kind of people, I felt like in a big extended family and I loved it!

Time to avoid eye contact with my big roommate who decided to, guess what, give himself one last brush before going to bed. 

L'emozione di una partenza voi, l'avete mai provata? Quella sensazione di felicità e di paura, quella piacevole morsa allo stomaco che però quasi ti uccide. Non è descrivibile e non è classificabile non lo riesco a capire io che mi trovo all'ennesima delle mie partenze, all'ennesimo inzio di una vita che sembra non iniziare mai. E' un treno che forse non si è ancora davvero fermato, ha solo rallentato ogni tanto per poi ripartire ancora più veloce di prima. E' solo che ogni tanto vorrei portare alcune cose con me, vorrei custodire alcune di quelle emozioni che però appesantiscono solamente il mio bagaglio, e mi sento egoista. Dove sto andando, dove mi sto portando? Cosa cerco, di cosa ho bisogno di più di quello che ho già, o che a questo punto avevo già.

L'emozione di una partenza è quella che ti fa sentire vivo e ti fa sentire morto, è una condanna forse ed è la vita che ti scorre dentro.

Voglio pensare che esiste una destinazione anche per me, voglio pensare che un giorno guarderò indietro per contare tutti i chilometri percorsi e ad ogni chilometro sarò un po' più orgoglioso di me stesso. Forse è questa l'emozione di una partenza, il timore e il bisogno di dimostrare a te stesso che c'è qualcosa di meglio per te la fuori e che non hai paura di andare ad afferrarlo, ti guardi intorno e lo stai già facendo.

Lately I’ve been busy selling my whole life.

Having to put together some money for school and for my new adventure I thought I could sell everything I owned, that included:

bed, couch, kitchen table, kitchen stuff, rug, tv, woodworking tools, computer, car. Some of them have been easy to sell, some other took me a while.

I feel back to square one, right in that spot where I had nothing and had to figure out the basics. The question is: “is there such a game where you have to go back one in order to go forward two?”

My experience in selling stuff online was very good and very bad. One thing is for sure: you’ve got to have time and patience. People would ask one thousand questions about your item and then disappear. Then they would email you back after two weeks asking if the item is still available.

Lot of low-ballers, but not surprise in that.

I sold most of my items on craigslist. I tried eBay (where I actually first sold my computer) but then they sent me an invoice of $155 because they keep 10% of what you’re getting. I kindly sent them to hell and sold my computer somewhere else. eBay has been really disappointing, not only for the high percentage retained but also for all the scam hiding on their platform (watch out for the Nigerian Fraud, where the buyer is in a lot of rush to get the item for his sister, mother or whoever and wants you to send it to Nigeria). Needless to say that they don’t do much about it and it’s really hard to have the customer service helping you. Almost impossible. 

I also just sold my cute little Fiat 500 Sport which I was really attached to, but I had to let her go. She will be missed.

If you need to sell your things, craigslist is and always will be the best option, you just need to put time in it and be patient.   

At this point I’m about 100 pounds lighter with a little extra cash in my pocket and ready to leave.

-2

After getting accepted into gSchool for the Full Stack Immersive program and after getting the student loan from Earnest I’ve started looking for a place to stay in San Francisco. Easy, not. 

I’ve been checking Craigslist in search of a shared room, which I though it was going to be the less expensive option. Ah, funny me. I come from LA where the rents are already pretty high, but once compared to Frisco’s, oh boy!

I then started looking for hostels (the very most affordable option). True, I get to share my room with 3 other people but I’ll barely be there anyway, between school and the time spent at coffeeshops studying. The challenge was to find a place that allows long term stay. Most of them don’t let you stay for more than four weeks. This ‘upgraded’ version is called student housing which surprisingly is not very common in San Francisco. I’m pretty confident that in a year or so, with the booming of bootcamps for programmers, there will be more options, but as of now April 2015 I found only two:

Latitude 38 Group

Summer of Love Residences

I was reluctant to rent a bed with Summer Of Love cause I read very bad reviews online and seen very ugly pictures. I still gave it a shot and I didn’t really like their approach. They answered pretty quickly but they left me confused on so many levels. The location wasn’t too far from school and very well served by public transportation. They claim to be the best and most affordable option in SF, but they’re not. I didn’t want to accept their 6-month binding lease not being able to check out the place and reading those reviews.

So I tried Latitude 38 which is a little less pricy and has ok reviews. They have many locations and I was interested in the one on Folsom. Their communication was also very poor at first (probably even worse). I had to follow up constantly in order to know if there was any spot available. Finally someone else started taking care of my case (Maria) and the situation got more clear. Turns out they don’t have a spot available on Folsom until June, so I’m just gonna move a little down further south for the first two months. The pictures look good and Mike the RA seems pretty nice. Thanks to him I’ll be able to do a pretty late check in which means that I don’t have to sleep on the street for my first night in SF. YAY. They require a deposit together with the first month. It’s a six-month lease that you can break only after the 3rd month by giving a month notice (for a minimum of 4 months). They have quads, doubles or singles and every room has a small kitchen in it.

Yelp reviews are always tricky. You know there’s no such thing as 100% positive reviews because sometimes people just wanna bitch about things, and yet you tend to look for the bad reviews only.

I’ll be leaving from Santa Monica the 22nd at 11.30am - One of the best option for traveling from LA to SF (or vice versa) is the California shuttle bus.  I booked my ticket one month in advance and it costed me only $15. I then booked the sit next to mine as well to have more room and it costed only $10 extra. They have outlets for your computer/phone and free wifi (YASSS!).