I didn’t actually write a word on this day. But I bet I can still remember the salient parts!

I went out with coffee check-in group, and got back and had “bagel conversation time,” which now reliably follows coffee check-in group for me. This means my “do computer things” days start a little bit later, but also I feel more ready to start.

During this particular morning’s conversation, aside from rambling on and on about a lot of OPINIONS I HAVE ABOUT WORK AND CULTURE AND AGHHHH, I also mentioned that I was pretty awesomely stuck with a Heroku issue. Steven kindly offered to pair with me (after patiently listening to me ramble), and so we had a totally unscary time working through what was going on.

With the previous day’s Heroku errors long since resolved, we were free to figure out what was wrong on this end. Got lots of `gunicorn.errors.HaltServer: <HaltServer ‘Worker failed to boot.’ 3>` (me: “computer, that is not the way we write a heart <3”), which was interesting, because I didn’t think I had a worker. 

It was also interesting, because `pip install gunicorn` actually, uh, installed things. In retrospect, this all seems terribly obvious, which is probably because we talked about the error afterwards, and how to catch it faster next time (or prevent it entirely!).

Things then worked just fine locally, with `heroku local`, but NOT on my actual Heroku app.

Long story short, installing gunicorn locally (in my virtualenv) but NOT adding it to my requirements.txt file (of the packages needed) made this happen.

Steven finally asked me to try `pip freeze` (which prints out all the currently installed packages, and their versions), followed by requirements.txt, and lo and behold, they were one letter different.

`pip freeze > requirements.txt`, a new push to Heroku, and voilà! A test app is born!!

It lives here, in my least-favorite of the three random names Heroku’s given me so far, and is prone to be changing swiftly, but hey! It works! Something is there!

I then could not manage to get a single computer thing done for the rest of the day. Some days are like that, though, right?

The afternoon had early Thursday presentations, followed by Not Graduation for the Summer 1 batch.

Mostly, this involved each of them getting a printed envelope full of nice things people here said about them, a t-shirt, and a request to please return their keys now, which frankly sounds way better than actual graduations. Someone had collected some niceties about the faculty here, too, and the summer 1s were going to read some out, but then decided to make a markov chain app so we could, you know, simultaneously read all the compliments at once. Just. Mixed up. It’s amazing.

I can’t believe they’ve actually finished their batch. The Fall 1s are so close to being here now!

The lot of us (mostly) headed to Brooklyn Bridge Park for a snack-y picnic, lots of hugs, spontaneous nail polish (which I instigated), and five thousand mosquitoes. (I counted 12 bites this morning and probably missed some.)

I’m sad that they’re all heading to their next adventures, and that I now have even more friends who are far away, but this ALSO means I have friends in more places now.

Did not have a productive morning, but did have good conversations! Also had delicious food from Jess, who appears to have become my food fairy this week. She brought lentil taco fixin’s on Monday, some gingerlicious garlicky shredded beet salad yesterday, and herb-crusted tofu + pesto + avocado sandwiches today, plus cupcakes. The latter was the result of me stating that most of the grief symptoms were mellowing, and my feelings were starting to have shapes again, except I kept not being hungry and/or forgetting to eat — so she asked me what I liked to eat. And you know, I still love good sandwiches.

Went out with walkgroup, partly because walks are good, and partly because April’s leaving a little early (today!  🙁 ), and we quested in the streets of SoHo with a GIGANTIC RC contingent, and it was amazing.

Came back and continued grinding on my Twilio/Heroku tutorials. The Twilio tutorial is so rad, and then you get to this point:

At this point in the tutorial, you will need to find a way to expose your server to the public Internet.

Here are some tutorials that may be able to help you:

[…]

For the rest of the tutorial, we will assume your server is available at example.com.

Which, to me, sounds like, “I know you came here to learn things by having them explained, and that’s been going really well, but I was thinking you could just, like, go do a internet at yourself if that’s cool. kbye.” (Me: “no, I’m not sure that is cool, but let’s find out.”)

I am sure that if you are a 1337 web h4x0r type person, this all sounds awesome and simple, but also probably you are not following along with a beginner’s tutorial. This plunged me into the glorious deep end of Heroku resources, and spinning up dynos (what even is? not yet totally sure, despite reading about them), and I have a bunch of tiny apps locally and on Heroku that do tiny little things, and it’s kind of neat. The challenge is just how to blend them together.

As a side note, Heroku and Twilio also have different guidance about how to create a new virtualenv, so that’s interesting.

Heroku suggests `virtualenv venv` for the initial setup, and then `source venv/bin/activate` to start things up each time.

Twilio, meanwhile, suggests `virtualenv –no-site-packages .` for the first part, and then `source bin/activate` thereafter.

Who is right, in this battle of style? One of them is easier to set up, from my perspective, and one of them is easier to run each time you’re working.

Finally, I had both an independently successful Twilio test app, plus an independently successful Heroku app, and put them together…and a spectacular fire resulted.

I persisted for a while, and eventually ran into this:

$ heroku logs --source app
 !    Internal server error.
 !    Run `heroku status` to check for known platform issues.
$ heroku status
Installing plugin heroku-status... done
=== Heroku Status
Production:   No known issues at this time. 
Development:  No known issues at this time.

Doubting that this was right, I ran it again:

$ heroku status
=== Heroku Status
Production:   Yellow 
Development:  Yellow 

=== Potential API Issues 8:59:15 PM UTC (https://status.heroku.com/incidents/797)
[Investigating] 8:59:15 PM UTC (less than a minute ago) 
Our automated systems have detected potential issues with the API.  We are investigating.

Updates were swift and helpful, but once we hit this one:

Until this API issue has been resolved, you will be unable to log into your Heroku account and unable to contact support.

I gently flipped the table and decided that was a good signal to head out to the LEGO store to meet up with Ann and Steven.

Beyond “time spent with Ann and Steven,” here are two more reasons this was awesome:

I also picked up the positively gorgeous LEGO birds set, which was one of those “vote on the things online and then maybe we’ll make it into a thing” projects (LEGO Ideas). This might be the first actual “make some particular things” LEGO set I have ever owned. Not just as an adult — ever. (For the purposes of this sweeping statement, we are ignoring the giant box of assorted plain LEGO I bought myself as a college freshman, and also the rad Klutz book with a packet of awesome parts, because those didn’t build A Thing.)

I am THRILLED.

As a side note, you may remember another LEGO Ideas set, the Research Institute, which featured a bunch of women casually doing science, but which now has a note about how it “was overwhelmingly popular and is no longer available for purchase.” Do the LEGO people not understand how capitalism works? You can continue to sell popular things in exchange for money.

Outside of LEGO adventures, this week is full of feelings, because the summer 1s continue to have ever-decreasing amounts of RC time left before they Never Graduate. FEELINGS.

Spoiler alert: Thursday I get Twilio + Heroku = <3, with excellent help and encouragement from Steven.

HOW AM I ALMOST HALF DONE?

The other part of this is “what do you mean, it’s the last week with the Summer 1 batch?” The Fall 1 batch gets here next week (!), and I know I am going to like them, too, but I don’t know them yet, so it feels very abstract for now. I know a number of the Summer 1s, and so I know that I am going to miss them.

Made it in in time for a little bit of morning sitting group today, which was a nice return to routine. After being there every day for the first few weeks, it’d been almost two weeks since I participated.

Continued with coffee-walk check-in group today, and continued the pattern of “learn more about what fewer people are up to,” which is a fun change of pace (not necessarily better or worse than the more traditional check-ins).

Was planning to pair with Ann in the morning, except she didn’t make it in, so went back to my bud Codingbat and worked through some more exercises. It’s weirdly satisfying to just drill basics; they come to mind quicker and quicker with a bit of practice.

Ran with an idea I’ve been meaning to run with, and started trying to reimplement one of Ann’s Ruby projects in Python. This means learning how to do things with Twilio! I’m kind of excited. I made my computer text me. Next up: not sure yet! But I feel like I’ve found my path into the weeds for now.

Came in “late” and felt like I was getting away with something. It is terrifically difficult to feel rebellious at Recurse Center, so I suppose that it’s fortunate I don’t tend to go for rebellion. I mean, how are you supposed to rebel against “do whatever feels worthwhile and meaningful and enjoyable for you”? Do something you hate? Ha!

Fridays are optional at RC, which means I hadn’t yet been to one. I had every intention of coming in last Friday, until I got news of Nóirín’s death, and then it turns out that I didn’t feel like doing much of anything for a while. But this Friday? This felt like something doable, especially since it could be whatever I wanted to make it.

Forgot that there was a job fair in the evening, so decided to carpe diem and stick around. Turns out a friend on the Etsy data team had mentioned me to her coworker, who found me and introduced himself (!), which made me feel that feeling that is Other People Probably Think I Am Smarter Than I Do. Ann insisted on introducing me to Stripe people, too (read: Jack), because Stripe also seems to have this serious mutual-fanclub thing going on (Jack: “Ann is awesome!” Ann: “Jack is awesome!”), and it’s really encouraging to see.

Didn’t get very much “done” (at least not that I can remember now, on Monday), but had a really emotionally rad day, so cheers to that.

High temperature + air quality warning = actually took the subway again, instead of biking.

Half-napped during sitting time, which was just what I needed.

Check-ins felt fruitful — my group this week is working on interesting things, and Alice offered to help me with my Pebble C code if I’d like (and then she explained structs and some other relevant things to me!).

Also a headache, which wasn’t as helpful.

Took that as a sign that joining the hoomoos-seeking lunch trip was a good idea, and had a delicious falafel sandwich. Also the cheapest lunch I’ve yet had in New York (about five bucks).

And then I got a number of messages asking me if I wanted to talk, if I was doing alright, and I got suspicious and asked what was up, and then I learned that one of the brightest stars of a friend I have ever, ever known had passed away, and then I did not try to do anything else for the rest of the day. I went out with friends. Nathan came to join us. And even if I am far away from home, even if I am far away from most of the people who also knew Noirin, my amazing partner is here, and my incredible peers at RC are perhaps the most supportive community I could conceive of. And, at the very least, we are in a place where there’s a high value placed on doing what you need, on doing what is important and necessary for you right now. And that is making the whole grieving process just the tiniest bit less awful. And I will persevere — we will all need to pick up the batons that Noirin can’t carry anymore — but it’s going to take a little time.

Holy cats. How is it already week four, though?!

Got here nice and early again, read The Giant Python book a bit, was here for all of sitting group (yay), and spied The Healthy Programmer on the bookshelf, so that’s where my first piece of the day went. I actually skimmed through a whole book! Would love to go back and read it in more detail at some point; it’s not that it’s not relevant right now, but there’s other stuff I (perhaps paradoxically) want to be focusing on more actively right now. But maybe I’ll finally get a laptop stand for when I’m standing, and a separate keyboard so I can still type…

Wrote a lot about the essence (or part of the suspected essence) of Recurse Center today in my 750words, working through the ebb and flow of my “am I doing this right?” fears:

There is so much I could do, and as what I could do narrows to what I am doing, and what I have done, there is a certain kind of panic that sets in. […]

The big thing is just time, though. It’s just time. It’s just having a lot of time, so that not all the time has to be used perfectly. This is part of how so much CAN be accomplished here. In the rest of my life, all my free time has to be used well to be effective.

Actually got my blog added so our internal bot can be like, “hey, Liene wrote this!” It really was as easy as I thought, and even if I’d messed it up, no one would have actually cared. Yay!

Remembered to go outside multiple times today (once for lunch, once for a “get up and walk around the block” break, and once to head to the curious and fascinating DOOB pop-up a few blocks from here). Now I want action figures of actual people.

Started to read about finite state machines, and fell down a Turing-inspired Wikipedia hole instead, which took up most of the end of the day. “Whoops.”

Spent pretty much all day flailing around vim — I keep thinking that Ben Orenstein’s “you’ll get frustrated enough to find better ways!” (my words, not his) will kick in, but mostly I just fling myself against the walls and occasionally get a different tone, if you’ll excuse the absurd metaphor.

But! Vim. We hadn’t hung out much in about a year. It’s nice to be practicing these things again.

Stuck around surprisingly long after I intended to go home, discovering more and more ways in which Ann and I are twins, talking about the culture of technology companies and different kinds of diversity and nonsense behaviors and rad engineers that have encouraged us both and “how do I know if I’m doing learning right” and why I get that square on my Pebble watchface at certain times and and and. I’m going to get her to teach me things, and it sounds like that will probably be Mischief (capitalized for fun, not for branding).

Woke up after a night of atrocious sleep, so I bravely got myself out of bed, got dressed, ate breakfast, and recognized that I was indeed exhausted (not just grumpy about getting up). Talked it over with Nathan a bit, and realized I’d probably be useless at RC in that state, so I went back to bed.

This is so simple as to be boring, and yet I almost cried when I told Ann about it this morning, because it represents a really tangible piece of how RC enables me to take care of myself. I have a work ethic that is often so strong as to be unhealthy (ask me about the time I got off the lightrail to throw up, then got back on in the same direction), and I’m used to working jobs that don’t have a lot of give, anyway. For me to say, “I’m not going in right now, because I’m tired and I need to sleep some more,” some huge shifts had to happen. Not that they’re one-and-done kinds of things, but this is part of my general “why I need to go to the Recurse Center” thinking.

Worked through more LPTHW — I’m now into exercise 43, which is even more beastly than previously beastly-seeming exercises — and took breaks and mostly was pretty focused when I intended on being focused.

Kate Heddleston is in residence this week (and next week!), and she’s giving a talk on Human-Computer Interaction tonight, which I’m psyched about. I am a human! And I like computers! And I like it when these two kinds of things interact with one another, because I think it CAN be totally awesome.

Didn’t do a lick of my own thing (except make tea) before 12:30. Had sitting group (I’ve been every day, often late, often on time), had morning check-ins, went to Ben‘s “Ask Me Anything” talk, which was actually super useful. (There is such a tricky balance here between “INTERESTING THINGS ARE GOING ON” and “I ONLY HAVE THESE THREE PRECIOUS UNINTERRUPTED MONTHS TO WORK ON MY OWN STUFF.”) I took sorta sketch notes (no pictures, only words):

Also experimented switching my little Pomodoro counter. It defaults to ticks (or tocks; I can’t remember which is which, because I am not a strict adherent) of 25 minutes (during which you focus), with breaks of five minutes in between. After four ticks of 25 min, you get a break of 15 minutes. I’m experimenting with a 52 on/17 off structure, inspired by this post my coworker sent to me months ago, which I quite liked, even though I only got to try it out one day a week.

Today’s LPTHW quotations include the following:

Now I have to hurt you with another container you can use, because once you learn this container a massive world of ultra-cool will be yours.

Skipped Ben’s “care and feeding of dotfiles” talk, and maybe I shouldn’t’ve, but I’ve also become confident that I could literally just ask him (or any of the other people I know with strong vim opinions, including my partner), and they would probably be happy to share the thing they’re excited about. Also skipped Raquel’s “Life outside of the bubble” talk (i.e. what is some awesome stuff to do outside of tech?), although I did not avoid getting the inspiration-song stuck in my head.

Really liking the longer “tocks” of 52 minutes. It feels long enough to get something done in. Being able to take regular real breaks also feels REALLY conducive to being a happy, productive human being.

Played around with Python’s hash function a bit after encountering it in LPTHW exercise 39.  This is the first thing in here in a while (like, much of this exercise) that’s kinda blown my mind. And lo, there is a walkthrough of the functions (but I got plenty lost before then, which I’m glad about).

Sent off another email (I’m skipping all typos, but emailing about the two code errors I’ve seen so far) regarding exercise 39’s last “you should see” example — the PDF I pulled down earlier this month has an ImportError, and nothing else. The code itself works just fine, and in fact it’s fine on the website as well.

Worked some more on dictionaries and modules (<3 <3 <3), and eventually got cut off by the appearance of presentations (which, fortunately, I love).

Now headed out to an outdoor free movie and takeout with Nathan and Nora, who’s in town for the weekend (we’re heading up to Vermont to visit/meet family; they’re doing the former, I’m doing both). I want to spend more time with my code, so I’m smuggling (read: transporting) my giant Learning Python book home with me for the weekend. Eeeeee.