#phase_0

Sunday

Today was going to be all work. It's the day before Dev Bootcamp, and I still had a couple of projects that I needed to work on. One was for Dev Bootcamp--create a Battleship program. The other was for a family friend of Grace's--revamp his website.

Both of those were going to take a significant chunk of time. I had to be home for the day.

Buuut then some of the dudes were going to get shoes. I didn't really need shoes, but the weather was beautiful and this would probably be my last day to explore. Kind of makes it tough to say no. So, I decided to tag along for the ride.

So, we went. Since I don't really have any extra money to be spending, I told myself that I would be making no purchases. Yet somehow, I walked out of there with a pair of shoes.

Holy hell are shoes expensive. Why are they so expensive? The material Nike uses can't be crazy expensive. Nike isn't paying any huge wages in the factories. The shipping costs are probably pretty low because of how much they ship at once. There's no reason for shoes to be more than fifty bucks! So I was certainly unhappy to pay.

Not unhappy enough not to pay it, though.

Okay, so now I've got a new pair of shoes, but I'm back at the apartment. Time for work. I've never really revamped a website before, and none of the sites I've ever made have looked super professional. This one needs to look great because it's for someone else.

Then Quentin wanted to get some noodles from Japantown. It's only a mile and a half away, so we'll be back soon! I've got plenty of time to work.

So, we walked to Japantown, and I got some beef udon from one of the restaurants there. Boy, did I ride the struggle bus trying to use the chop sticks, though. The waitress in the restaurant actually asked me if i wanted a fork because she saw me struggling when she was refilling our waters.

After my struggle, we explored Japantown a bit. We found a Japanese market and then a Korean market. I didn't recognize most of the food in the shops, so I didn't buy anything.

But ALRIGHT. Now I'm home. Now it's time for work. I actually got some fire under my buns and got to it on the website I was supposed to make. It took a few hours, but I was finally happy enough with my first draft to send it out.

Boom. Time for battleship. This is probably the toughest challenge we've had to date. There are a lot of moving pieces with it. Some of the dudes who have already finished it said they did it in around 300 lines or 500 lines of code. That's around three times more going on than the other challenges we've had in our pre-work.

As I was spinning my wheels on the project, we decided to start the celebration. Quentin had brought French cheeses and champagne. My Aunt Laurine gave me some salami. And we brought some bread from La Boulange on our way home from Japantown.

It was time to eat/drink it all as celebration of finishing the prep phase of Dev Bootcamp.

After that, work wasn't really happening. Everyone just got to talking--about the prep work, about the other boots we'd met, about finding jobs, about what to expect with Dev Bootcamp, and other things I can't really remember at present. Whatever we were talking about, everyone was just kind of off of their computers for a couple of hours, talking.

Then it was ten o'clock, and there was no way that I was going to start the battleship program.

So, all the work didn't get done, but it was still a great day. It's been great living with eight other dudes so far. I'm not great at meeting big groups of people. I like to meet the group incrementally and get to know a few people before I move on to the next few. So it's awesome that I've already met eight of the dudes and know them fairly well. If i had to go into Dev Bootcamp tomorrow having to meet 10+ staff and 20 other people, I would freak out. But I have made friends with eight of them already and met four or five others on Saturday night. I'm going in to meet the Dev Bootcamp group already knowing a large chunk of the people, so that's really helped me to calm down about the first day.

Well, everything is still going well. The weather's still beautiful, and the city is still a lot of fun to explore.

Friday

I need to start taking some notes every night so that I remember most of what happened in a day. I can't really remember what happened on Friday morning and afternoon.

Anyway! My Aunt Laurine, Jim (her man), and Nick (her son) picked me up at around 4 to take me around the city a bit and to dinner.

When they picked me up, they had brought me a care package! I got a sleeping bag, apples, salami, crackers, biscotti, parmesan crisps, and an umbrella (which was great because I forgot to bring one).

We drove down to AT&T Park and walked around McCovey Cove, which is a section of the Bay out beyond right field of the Park. During the games, people will sit out there in boats and kayaks to go after any home runs hit there.

Then we headed to the Wharf. First, we stopped in Ghirardelli Square to get some chocolates.

After that, we walked out onto the Aquatic Park Pier. Holy crap was it beautiful out there. The sun was setting, the Golden Gate Bridge is off in the distance, it was getting a little bit foggy, and it was all just so pretty. I just wish I had stolen Grace's real camera so that I could have done the scene justice.

It baffles me that there's this much in the city. So many restaurants, so many businesses and so many cool buildings. That would be enough for most cities. But no. San Francisco has parks. It has tons of restaurants right on the coast with the freshest seafood for sale. And it has the best views, complete with bridges, fog, and hills.

I don't see what's missing. I don't know what else you could want out here so far. Less traffic and less expensive are the only two I've got so far.

After the drive and walk, it was time for dinner. We went to a place called Hillstone. Just like everywhere else, the food was delicious. I got some clam chowder, tried a bit of artichoke (not a huge fan), and then got a French Dip and some mashed potatoes. I'd not seen Laurine or Nick in probably eight years, and I'd never met Jim, so we had a lot of catching up to do. It made for a lively, very enjoyable dinner. I'm pleased as punch to be able to be meeting with all of this family that I haven't seen in so long.

After dinner, we went back to Pier 39 at the Wharf to see the sea lions and get some cinnamon mini donuts that were awesome. Nick wanted to hop on the carousel, so we all got on. Nick and I got into one of those spinning cup things and started to spin as fast as we could. I got close to seeing my dinner a second time. Thankfully, though, everything stayed down and I was just a bit dizzy.

It turned out to be a great night, and I just did some work once I got home.

Saturday

Not a whole lot happened on Saturday morning.

Except I went to a crazy good French bakery. The place is called La Boulange. It's apparently a chain owned by Starbucks, but Quentin, who's from France, said that people he knew from France went there when they were a bit homesick.

The place was delicious. I got a chocolate croissant and an espresso. I would have taken a picture, but I ate it all before I thought to. I did snag a picture of Stephen's latte as well as Quentin's almond croissant, though.

At about noon, my Uncle Peter picked me up for lunch. I hadn't seen him since Jeff's 8th grade confirmation, which would have been about 12 or so years ago.

It was great to see him and catch up a bit. He took me to the R&G Lounge, which is a Chinese restaurant he used to go to a few times a week back when he worked in the city. But we just kind of caught up with our families. He told me about his job as well as my three cousins. One's working in LA, one's in Nevada studying journalism, and the other's studying music at Academy of Art University. They all sound like they're doing well, and I'm hoping I'll get to see some or all of them while I'm out here.

For lunch, I got some pan-fried chow mein with chicken. The frying crisps up the noodles, and they put it all in a broth. So, by the time you eat it, some of the noodles are soft and some are still crispy, and it was just delicious.

When I got back, some of the guys wanted to walk down to the Wharf again. I hadn't gotten to walk around much during the daytime, so I was on board. Before we left, though, we had a pretty lengthy discussion on education. If I've not talked to you about my views on the topic, they can pretty much be summed up by these four TED videos. I saw Sir Ken Robinson's "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" a couple of years ago, and then watched all of the other videos of him I could find. He's also got a bunch of books out. I've only read one, Finding Your Element, and it was great. More recently, I saw Logan LaPlante's TED talk about his non-traditional schooling experience. That's the type of schooling I'll want for my children.

I encourage you to watch all of the videos if you haven't already seen them.

Sir Ken Robinson:

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Bring on the Learning Revolution!

How to Escape Education's Death Valley(three videos there that you should check out)

Logan LaPlante: Hackschooling Makes Me Happy

While we were having the conversation, I noticed that I'm surrounded by a bunch of smart dudes, all of whom had interesting things to add to the education discussion. I'm going to be going into Dev Bootcamp, surrounded by 21 other boots and whoknowshowmany teachers. All of them are going to be smart. All of them are going to be helpful. All of them are going to teach me. And all of them have something to add to the conversations. The thought just made me feel that I'm in such a great position to learn so much.

Anyway, we went to the Wharf, and I saw about a zillion sea lions.

Later on, I got to meet some more of my fellow boots. We went to Jones Lounge to hang out and meet in person. Not everyone came, but I think it was about 13 boots in total.

After hanging out there for a couple of hours, we went to get some Indian food at Chutney. Now, I'd never really had Indian food before. I didn't get anything wild-- a seekh kabab (a beef log), a lamb seekh kabab (a lamb log), tandoori chicken, and paneer naan (cheesy bread). It was all delicious, but I'm not a spicy food guy. Everyone told me that what I was getting was very mild in terms of Indian food, buuuuut I was still getting sweaty.