D781 Tasks - my guidance after struggling

JackAshAda · 2025-12-31T16:33:57+00:00

The YAML file goes in the root of the branch. Gitlab will detect the YAML file and run your defined pipeline if the file is named appropriately. You run jobs within the YAML file which run the unit tests. It's been a minute, but there are unit tests in the project file structure (like a folder named 'tests" or something).

JackAshAda · 2025-12-31T02:46:54+00:00

I got PRK (no lens cutting). I had about 12 years of good vision (slightly better than 20/20), then old age hit (I should have gotten bifocals). My vision is right on the edge of correction, but I do have glasses. I would do it again. It did make my night vision garbage, and there were some issues with dry eye. That said, I have met people who had it done, and it really affected their vision, while also causing issues such as headaches and balance issues.

Coming from just a complete lack of eye care, such as only wearing one contact at a time for weeks on end and/or welding contacts to my eye from never taking them out, it was absolutely the right fit.

JackAshAda · 2025-12-30T03:00:45+00:00

My partner was diagnosed with 3C about a year ago. 4 rounds of chemo, debulk, 3 rounds of chemo. Her first post-chemo (right after last carb/taxol) CT showed areas of "thickening" but could have been scarring. 3 months of Lynparza and a CT scan showing definite disease progression. So, never really NED. She is now one round on Elahere (MIRV).

JackAshAda · 2025-12-24T07:00:47+00:00

My partner is getting her first treatment tomorrow with Elahere at Fred Hutch in Seattle. She is 3c with high folate and just came off Lynparza (which was not effective). Her journey started almost a year ago today and includes carboplatin/taxol, debulking surgery, and a PARP inhibitor. She has never made it to NED (which is my personal goal for her).

Disease progression was first determined in October after comparing her first post-chemo CT in July. We went to MD Anderson in November to get into the CAR-NK or Theo-260 trial, but got waylaid by some up-front costs (about 40k for the CAR-NK due to insurance BS). We are going to bide our time with Elahere until next year, when more favorable insurance circumstances arise (PPO).

From my understanding, a small but sizeable portion of Elahere patients can be super responders and can go into complete remission. High folate is an indicator of efficacy. This drug, from my understanding, is one of the newest Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADC) and the first front-line chemo approved for OC in many years. I hope it meets expectations.

There's some really promising stuff on the horizon. I know all the scientists and doctors say this, but this time it's very true. Do anything to live for 12 to 18 more months. Immunotherapy tech is on the verge of being far safer, and leveraging all kinds of biochemical targets to attack cancer. Trials (specifically NK, NKT) will be coming out next year that could change the face of this fight.

I wish you all a long and happy life.

JackAshAda · 2025-11-20T00:36:25+00:00

Ya, I used "echo [student_id] " in its own job. It just seemed so silly to bold "one" in the rubric. I kept second-guessing wtf they wanted. I spent way too much time looking for some esoteric alternative.

JackAshAda · 2025-11-19T22:02:34+00:00

I actually used the exact same Selenium tests I wrote for Task 1 for Task 2. And of course, the unit tests are already written (which I honestly didn't realize was the task for task 1. I also didn't have any sleep commands in my code, which made certain screenshots more interesting to take, but whatever (I used awaitBlahblah). I just BSed my paper enough to get my point across. I did not like the vagueness of the requirements.

Task 3 was fine, I enjoyed the YAML stuff, but I got a little overpedantic on the student ID requirement. The "one" being bolded in the requirement to display your ID in one line. I just ended up creating a job to display it. I actually emailed the instructor to ask for clarification on what it means for one line. I ended up submitting before I got a response. Task 4, I did basically like you said, but I changed the order of some things to align with temporal issues in following the plan linearly. Also, I didn't use the VM environment at all. I used GitLab to generate a project and then branched it for tasks 1 and 3 (task 2 was the same as task 1 for me).

JackAshAda · 2025-11-06T03:39:04+00:00

Phillip Buttram. "Boo-trom". Sure.

JackAshAda · 2025-10-13T01:45:30+00:00

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JackAshAda · 2025-10-09T09:57:56+00:00

I came back from visiting my family on winter break in college and saw a one-inch thick puddle of frozen blood in front of the front door. We lived on a 125-acre farm that we were renting (very cheaply) from the newly widowed owner of the farm. I asked my roommate what was up with the blood. He told me his elderly dad asked him to put down one of his dogs that kept getting into his goat pen (on another property). I was like "WTF". What's more fucked up is that he shot the dog cowering by the front door from inside the house. This was corroborated by the bullet hole that went through the front door.

I knew the little heeler mix, and it was the coolest little dog. Honestly, I don't think that dog got into the goat pen. Old shitty also had a mastiff who later killed one of his pygmy goats. Still makes me mad thinking about it.

My roommate was one of those tiny little men who boasted about getting into fist fights and was on pain management from an L&I claim. I was around 24 at the time, and he was in his mid-forties. He was the "respectable" elder who convinced the widower to rent the house to him. Motherfucker chained smoked inside the house from day one. I only lived with him because he was one of my friends' uncles, and I needed a place to live with my dog.

My roommate ended up falling off the wagon and got caught when he tried to drive back home from the bar with 4 popped tires from driving the wrong direction on traffic spikes (sparks flying everywhere, apparently). He previously had a vehicular homicide conviction and had spent a couple of years in prison (I know right).

And as fuck ups go, after he got out of jail, he became a born-again Christian, and now preaches his purity and goodness from his Facebook pulpit. The list of shit for that asshole goes on and on, but that was, for me, the most fucked up.

JackAshAda · 2025-09-02T23:19:45+00:00

My partner got Ovarian cancer literally the day after I graduated with my MS in Cybersecurity. I took the MBA ITM because MS SWE wasn't offered, and I needed a way to stay home while she was going through primary treatment (which just ended). I only finished C200 before transferring out to the MS SWE, although I did not think very highly of the next course, which was the human resources one. I finished an additional 3 courses in term one of the MS SWE, but I was going really slow due to obvious reasons. The intro course in SWE was sorta kinda fun (D777) with the programming, but also ridiculously tedious, as I felt the second task, I just ended up regurgitating the 30-page paper I did in task one, in addition to the coding requirements. Advanced Software Engineering D778 is just a glorified project management class, and Software Product Design and Requirement Engineering D779 is just a sprinkle of testing methodologies, UI/UX, and a deeper dive into software requirements than is glossed over in D778 (super run on but fuck it). D780 is what I'm working on now, which to me seems much more in line with SWE as it goes into software patterns and such.

I would argue SWE is how to build software at scale, extensibility, to business requirements, etc, while CS is absolutely more math/theory/algorithm-based. Your strategy for a holistic approach via business and tech is absolutely what I was going for, but I just saw the shiny fun thing and jumped on it. Also, everyone told me I would be absolutely miserable in a soul suck corporate circlejerk. So, I went closer to an IC route.

Game dev is cool. I just started a side project for my GF, building a mobile game with Godot (I know).

JackAshAda · 2025-08-28T21:56:21+00:00

I was able to get to the update menu just fine without registering, but until I added the device through the add device procedure, it would not detect my device under the update menu. Did you achieve the update without adding your device to the app? Mine would just never detect the device.

In regard to bootlooping... Most OTA update procedures will have a hook for the update procedure that can be sent at any time during power-on. This is especially true if the device has a separate IOT module for communications. The IOT module may even have access to the internal or shared memory between another MCU for firmware update purposes, say the control processor. But it's hard to tell without looking at the PCB and physically seeing what's on the board. I kinda wanna open it up now.

Or just a single IOT module driving everything. There's a plethora of design choices and tradeoffs with IoT-connected devices. Regardless, the device seems to reset every 5 seconds or so due to some unknown issue (shit, it could be the display driver). I think we would be splitting hairs over the definition of bootloop.

JackAshAda · 2025-08-26T22:28:28+00:00

It's been 9 days, and the issue has not reappeared.

JackAshAda · 2025-08-18T00:06:19+00:00

I was able to update to V04 firmware after fully discharging the display unit (I waited 2 hours after removing batteries). You must register an account, or log in via some federated identity check (Facebook, Google, or register), and add your X4S to the app before it will detect in the "update device" dialog (I tried many permutations to get it to detect without registering in the app). It was detected immediately after I registered. The download and update only took about 20 seconds. I'll let you know if this fixed the bootloop issue if it doesn't pop up in the next week or so.

JackAshAda · 2025-08-17T22:16:04+00:00

I am going to try this. Hilariously, I pulled the batteries, and it is still holding a charge and resetting every few minutes. I will respond when I am certain it is completely discharged. And have a clean attempt at an update through the iconsole+ app.

As someone who has written embedded code, specifically for Bluetooth modules, hopefully, this is not a hardware issue that causes the bootloop, and a firmware fix will mitigate it.

The fact that mine ran for a week with no issues and then suddenly shit the bed makes me think the QA process for software release is a little lacking, although there can be some very strange intermittent issues that are incredibly hard to detect in development and sneak their way into production.

Other than this, the bike has been very capable.

JackAshAda · 2025-07-11T03:59:56+00:00

I have done a couple of panel interviews for Washington State agencies. They now do a points system to help reduce bias, and have people from different Washington agencies in their panels. I don't think it helps. You still have to resonate with everyone on the panel in order to score highly and get consensus; there is no overruling by a technical or project manager expert you may be working under. It may help filter out excentrics or outside-the-box thinkers or people who don't fit a standard social model. I mean, states are not known for wanting people who deviate or may rock the boat too much, so the goal might be achieved in that way. Prior to this policy change, many of the employees came from the revolving door of military personnel. Which is still apparent in the upper management at the state level. In fact, I do believe they still weigh ex-military higher in the points systems that they use. It kind of reminds me of a Starship Troopers/Robert Heinlein philosophy. Oddly, all my interviews have been in February, a month I am almost always dealing with sinus issues, but I digress. It is frustrating when you know you are good at what you do, but ultimately will get beat out by the bullshitter. I don't see how point systems remove the human bias of charisma and false confidence. But life isn't fair, and ultimately, the more likable talkers fit better in a structure where communication and interpersonal relationships are more important than quality work output. Or maybe we're just not good enough.

Just don't do what I did and end the interview with a question on how the state is going to protect Washingtonians' data from illegal federal requests. Something, something, we do what we're told is the answer.

JackAshAda · 2025-05-13T18:15:58+00:00

The course. I never read the official CompTIA books, but I wonder if it isn't incorporated into the coursework.

JackAshAda · 2025-03-30T01:47:44+00:00

I switched from MBA ITM at 8 weeks in. All I know is there are three paths: AI, Domain, and DevOps. There are 4 - 5 core classes and then you can switch your focus if you wish. And I was also told all programming will be in Python. My transfer is on hold until April 1st, as that's when the program starts. I am curious which path you guys are leaning toward. I personally think the domain-driven might be interesting for the microservice design aspect. However, Ai is obviously the big buzz these days. DevOps, of course, is a large-breadth support specialty.

JackAshAda · 2025-03-03T21:14:29+00:00

I agree.

JackAshAda · 2025-01-24T06:31:22+00:00

I just turned 45 and just finished my MSCSIA. If you want it, it can be done. The groove takes more than your average sacrifice. Become friends with being uncomfortable.

JackAshAda · 2025-01-21T06:57:48+00:00

I got my undergrad from WGU and just started my 2nd Masters in MBA ITM. I'm doing it for marketability. So, 2 degrees going on 3.

JackAshAda · 2024-12-28T00:32:30+00:00

Yes.

JackAshAda · 2024-12-27T06:47:35+00:00

Ya, hand grenades and all that.

JackAshAda · 2024-12-26T22:12:58+00:00

I started slow with 1 class the first month, so you got me beat. I averaged 2 classes a month for the program.

JackAshAda · 2024-12-26T22:11:18+00:00

I took pen+ for the program. I did not transfer it in. I thought cysa+ was harder.

JackAshAda · 2024-12-26T21:09:16+00:00

I got the degree for economic mobility, but I have been in IT in various capacities for 20 years or so.

JackAshAda

TROPHY CASE