Week 10

Four score and four weeks ago,

:crystal_ball: I used my magical abilities to predict the future. How accurate my prediction was is probably telling of how powerful a sourcerer I am. Long story short–I don’t think I’ll be giving Harry Potter a run for his money anytime soon :joy:.

Timing is Everything. :leaves:

Exactly one hour before Gil Yehuda’s presentation on How to make money by contributing to Open Source projects, I received news that the summer internship that I was enthusiastically looking forward to, was cancelled over concerns about a second wave of COVID-19.

In a nutshell, I understood. Heck, I’d say some small part of me even expected it. But I was still holding out, hoping that I was wrong. It’s a material thing, really–an internship. In many ways a small price to pay, if I price was demanded. Knowing that though, didn’t stop the disappointment from creeping in nor the stress about summer unemployment from growing. I remembered feeling so surprised and lucky when I initially got the offer 7 weeks ago. It was the first real competitive offer that I had ever gotten. In a sea of rejections, that one acceptance was like finding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket :chocolate_bar:. In many ways it was more than an offer or an opportunity to grow. It was validation. Validation that I could actually pursue a CS career and thrive. Despite my initial disappointment, I do believe that this is for the best. We are still very close to the peak of COVID-19 cases, and the fear over new infections still exist. Access to hand sanitizers and disinfectant products are still in low supply, and more stores continue to increase social distancing precautions. I don’t see myself leaving the house anytime soon, save that for getting the essentials.

In my newfound vacancy of the summer, Gil Yehuda’s, perhaps provacative and brazen, talk about Open Source and portfolio building was just the thing I needed to get the creative :art: juices flowing again. I particularly found his advice on contributing to Open Source projects that were associated with companies you wanted to work at to be interesting. In fact, I started looking at the FOSS projects associated to the companies that I was applying to and realized that I was unintentionally judging companies that didn’t contribute to the FOSS community :joy:. I also appreciated Yehuda’s affirmation that skills aquired from FOSS contributions were transferrable to the workplace. He explained, that if you learned how to do a thing in one project, you could easily leverage your knowledge and understanding to accomplish something very similar in another project. With many people struggling from unemployment, this kind of thinking :thinking: is invaluable.

Folding@Home’s Covid19 Activity :alembic:

Folding Home is using computer simulations to understand how the protein in the COVID-19 virus is moving. They hope that this research will reveal druggable sites that researchers can use to treat the virus. Based on a similar research path they took with handling the Ebola virus, their methodology seems pretty cool and promising. They are requesting computing power as donations to the cause. I don’t know much about chemical proteins, but it’s clear that we still have much research to do on the virus. It’s inspiring to see how people across a diverse range of occupations are coming together to make a difference in this trying time. :microscope:

TON Highlights :woman_juggling:

sdhani@HunterOpenSource:~$ cd TEAM_TON

sdhani@HunterOpenSource:~/TEAM_TON$ cat Run_TEAM_TON_Updates*

#!/bin/bash
calendar -t [[20]20]4]7] -w 
calendar -t [[20]20]4]8] -w 
calendar -t [[20]20]4]15] -w 
calendar -t [[20]20]4]17] -w 
calendar -t [[20]20]4]21] -w

sdhani@HunterOpenSource:~/TEAM_TON$ ./Run_TEAM_TON_Updates*

Date Progress
:artificial_satellite: Tue Apr 07 Discussed potential Next.js examples that we can contribute. Michelle suggested a Next.js + MongoDB :cloud: example, and I thought it was a great idea! Since I have some prior experience using MongoDB, I think I will be able to help fill any holes in understanding how to implement it with Next.js.
:vibration_mode: Wed Apr 08 I submitted a PR that was approved for another grammar mistake in the with-docker README file. Michelle submitted an issue asking for community feedback on contributing a Next.js + MongoDB :cloud: example.
:call_me_hand: Wed Apr 15 Michelle got the go ahead for us to start working on the Next.js + MongoDB :cloud: example. It was time to set some hard deadlines and determine the workflow in which we should all contribute to that example. Our hard deadline is to complete this example, full-scale, in the next two weeks :timer_clock:. It is important that we discuss potential workflows, break down the parts of the project and organize them into what we need to get done. We set goals on what we should become familiar with in terms on using MongoDB :cloud: and databases and decided that we should start meeting more often until we make a PR for this example.
:bellhop_bell: Fri Apr 17 I shared a Trello Board for our project that I created with the team. I hope this makes our sprint tasks easier to understand and follow. We also discussed some workflow tradeoffs, and spent some time clarifying database concepts in general, with an emphasis on NoSQL MongoDB :cloud:. I drew a potential workflow diagram, but Michelle brought it to my attention that our networks graph looks a little off. After taking a look, I agreed with her :100:. So we thought it was time to get some feedback from Prof. Weiss before moving forward!
:crystal_ball: Tue Apr 21 I’m foreseeing a helpful meeting with Prof. Weiss coming up. Hopefully it will clear up some of our foundational problems and help us recalibrate our workflow so we can produce a quick turnaround with this Next.js example.

Super interested? For a more comprehensive view on what TEAM TON has been up to, check out these blog posts from my amazing team members [chislee0708, MichelleLucero, liulanz]!

Contributions

I made a few blog edits to my peers blogs, and got to learn more about the issues that they were exploring! I also made some Wikipedia contributions to the Therianthropy wiki-article.

In my search for another internship, I’ve been learning new technologies. While working with Cloudflare’s Open Source, Wrangler tool, I encountered a bug in their download process for npm. In true Open Source spirit I added a comment to one of their issues on it with a hack that fixed the issue for me. (It’s worth noting though that after using that fix, I decided to go with another package manager installation series entirely.)

For more information about these contributions, check out the Contribution’s tab above or avoid the scrolling and follow this link

For those of you keeping track at home :wink:

Prediction Outcome House Points
I will be looking forward to my summer internship False :heavy_minus_sign: 20 pts
Grocery stores would be stocked :warning: ERR. Part True, part False :heavy_minus_sign: 20 pts
People would have gotten used to self-quarantine :warning: ERR. Part True, part False :heavy_minus_sign: 10 pts
Things are getting better. True :heavy_plus_sign: 50 pts
I would have converted my commute time into something useful. False. (What commute time?) :heavy_minus_sign: 50 pts
I would have grown :seedling: True :heavy_plus_sign: 50 pts

Verdict: 0 House points <– I think this means I’m a muggle :scream::scream::scream:

‘Til next time,

Shania

:mushroom:

Written before or on April 19, 2020