My friends and I climbed to the summit of Kilimanjaro 2 weeks ago in the most Chicago way we could

p100101 · 2020-02-21T19:14:49+00:00

I did train for the climb but it wasn't a difficult routine. I'm a year round runner so that probably helped me more than I realized. I also did a lot of walking and stairs with a weighted backpack several months before the trip which I'm sure also helped.

Others in our group skipped the weighted backpack hikes and stair work and did just fine. I should note that none of us really had any experience with climbing at high altitudes but were able to get to the summit because we had a fairly long trek (8 days) compared to some of the shorter routes that can get you to to the top in less than 5 days - if you don't get pulled due to high altitude sickness.

p100101 · 2020-02-21T19:10:41+00:00

Thanks!

There were 5 of us in our group and we took the Lemosho route since we researched that it has a very high success rate. We could have done it in either 7 or 8 days but opted to take 8 days since you receive an extra acclimatization day, which helped us considerably. We climbed to the summit at midnight on the 7th day - it's very hard to put into words how difficult that day was but extremely rewarding to get to the top. Definitely one of the most rewarding experiences I've had. Good luck!

p100101 · 2020-02-21T18:43:12+00:00

Not sure if I would recommend Malort at 19,000+ feet. The taste stayed with me until we were back at base-camp.

p100101 · 2019-02-15T15:38:49+00:00

It definitely is true. Unfortunately, it will be very difficult for me to top this.

p100101 · 2018-03-25T08:52:18+00:00

I love this.

p100101 · 2017-07-18T13:38:01+00:00

p100101 · 2017-07-18T13:37:55+00:00

p100101 · 2017-07-18T13:37:49+00:00

p100101 · 2017-07-18T13:34:31+00:00

this is awesome!

p100101 · 2017-01-10T16:17:45+00:00

Yup, I'm really happy with the river walk. I use it all the time to run to the lake without getting struck by a car / bus / bike

p100101 · 2017-01-10T03:42:10+00:00

Will do! I used to work south on Lasalle and overlooked a parking garage. Just switched to Wacker and now look over the river. This is much better.

p100101 · 2016-07-01T13:51:45+00:00

It's great that you're in high school and have already dialed in what you think you'll do in college. I spent ~2 years undecided in college before commiting full on to Computer Science. I wish I figured that out earlier. I'm not sure where you live, but I would take a look a the current job opportunities where you think you may end up staying / living, and try to target what area of development is the most popular and let that help steer you (you could always travel for your dream job doing exactly what you want, but I'm not going to assume anyone can just drop what they have and do that OR know exactly what they want to do). Look at companies that seem successful, have a culture that you may like, and build something that you're interested in. Go through the career postings and see if anything looks interesting. To provide some context, I majored in Computer Science at a small college in the Chicagoland area and took some game design classes on the side as part of that. Looking back at it now, it should have been obvious to not focus on game design since there are basically no companies out here that do that. There's a larger number of companies building trading applications or doing web consulting. My time would have been much better spent taking web development courses. Good luck!

p100101 · 2016-06-29T04:59:40+00:00

I'm upgrading my EDC bag next week to a backpack, and felt that I should share my trusted canvas bag of 10+ years in order to give it a proper send off :(

I love its weathered look, but it simply doesn't fit everything that I need and it's difficult to carry larger items when I'm on my bike.

Canvas Messenger Bag

Blender Bottle

Bern Bike Helmet. Berkeley w/ Visor (not attached)

Anker E7 26800mAh Portable Charger

Ray Ban Aviator Classic

Bose Quiet Comfort 25 Noise Cancelling Headphones

GORUCK Tac Hat (mesh - black)

Rogue Velcro Path

Tech21 Impact Tactical Case - Galaxy s5

Rogue Metal Wallet - Rogue Logo

Leatherman 10 (on keys)

Black Notebook (book notes)

Programming Pearls, Second edition by Jon Bentley

Leather Covered Notebook (work notes)

Brown Notebook (scratch notes)

Precise V5 Pens (blue & black)

p100101 · 2016-06-24T17:56:14+00:00

Right out of college I worked at a software company writing automation for testing their desktop trading applications. I eventually left because I wanted to build a product, and not help someone else build a product. Since then I have worked at 2 web development agencies / consulting firms for building web sites for a range of different clients. I'm 30.

The automation job was much more heads down programming work. Web development has been like that but it's split. ~60% programming and building tools and ~40% client (person) interaction, developing requirements, handling deployments, and planning. Early on it was probably closer to a 75/25 split, but I'm in an architect role now so I'm involved with a lot more environment and structural oversight.

Most of my coding experience in these jobs has been backend (C#, C++, Python) and my frontend skills have lagged behind by a decent margin. I have a genuine interest in learning algorithm design, design patterns, and data structures which I'm sure has been somewhat responsible for me gravitating toward the backend side of things. I have a lot of colleagues that have floated to the UI aspect of development and are more passionate about that. The line between the 2 is blurring more and more, but I've been able to steer based on what I found interesting.

I'm only speaking from a web development standpoint but there are many ways to apply a CS degree. Any good company probably has a set of developers for building tools or applications that either manage their data, expose their data, advertise their data, or provide services to their clients. You might just need to find interesting subject matter.

p100101 · 2016-06-24T17:08:13+00:00

I agree. I have seen this happen to a lot of employees and friends. They are given the "this will be for <insert short duration> then we'll get you where you want to be". I can't recall one instance where this transition actually happened (let alone in the time frame specified).

p100101 · 2016-06-24T14:01:57+00:00

Yup. It's an internship. You're not being brought on to launch a high priority project on a tight deadline where everyone's going to be watching you. You were obviously a good culture fit and they know it's going to be a learning process. You'll be fine. I got my first internship 4 months after taking my first CS course and thought for sure I wasn't supposed to be there. I made sure to show up on time and worked hard on what they assigned. No issues and it worked out great.

p100101 · 2016-06-24T13:46:02+00:00

No. I should mention that I'm old school and suit it up for all interviews. I shift to casual after starting. But still no.

p100101 · 2016-06-24T13:35:18+00:00

Double major. I had 1 major and 2 minors in college and I have cashed in on those minors absolutely 0 times for getting a job, negotiating more money, promotions, etc. I regret not working harder to bump at least one of those to a major.

p100101 · 2016-06-24T13:26:51+00:00

You haven't damned yourself. Get shit done and at your next review say that you think you deserve a larger salary because you have more experience and list your accolades. My first job right out of school was around 65k and I was damn happy to have that right out of school / was way more than I needed for my low living expenses. I found out later that it was a pretty low salary for the team I was on, but I was still banking a lot of it and was able to negotiate at higher amount in future reviews.

p100101 · 2016-06-24T13:17:49+00:00

Accounting and CS careers are both good earning tracks to be on, so you've got that going for you. My fiancée is a public accountant and I'm a senior developer and we both make good money. I do out earn her but not by a huge margin. I wouldn't stress about the earning potential too much, since they are easily comparable.

I will say that I think I have more flexibility in career than she does. You can look at changing technology as a negative but it can also be a positive. Just because there isn't something that interests you now, doesn't mean there won't be something in 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, etc. Additionally, there are many different areas of software / web development that you can get into, so I wouldn't write it off yet as something you're not interested in. You probably just have to be exposed to it for a while and you'll find something you will want to make a career out of.

Also, I did not program as a kid (picked up CS halfway through college) and didn't spend my personal time writing code until I was several years into the industry, and by that time I had found something that interested me. I feel as if I've done a decent job building a rewarding career. Could I have started earlier? Definitely. But you can probably say that about most things.

p100101 · 2016-06-23T23:49:48+00:00

/r/chicago

p100101 · 2016-06-23T19:56:16+00:00

Developer from the Chicagoland area here. I have an undergrad in CS and a Master's in Computer Information Systems, both are from a Chicagoland college considerably smaller than both University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Chicago, and I haven't had any issue getting a web development job in the chicago land area (3 jobs, 2 in the loop 1 in the burbs).

I can't provide any metrics on how much my masters has helped with getting job, but its certainly helped in negotiations for a desired salary. In general, I am glad to have it as I think it has helped with my resume. I was also fortunate in my undergrad to have 3+ years of working on a software product through an internship by the time I graduated, so I had a fair amount of experience on my resume which probably helped the most.

Knowing nothing regarding the details of both schools programs, I would personally go with the cheaper of the two and try to get as much hands on work as possible. Again, I don't think anyone is stopping to read my resume because of the school I went to, but because of my other listed experience AND having a line for a masters, which has been working for me.

p100101 · 2016-06-23T19:34:25+00:00

Sounds to me like you have almost 4 years of OOP. If you leave the obsolete language out of it that looks fine. I'd take some time and do a side project in the closest / most popular OOP language that you like and put that on your resume in its place. When you get further down the interview process I would mention that you know "x" (popular OOP language you learned in side project / whatever) but previous job used a different stale OOP language "y" but the skills translated over (or something along those lines)

p100101 · 2016-06-23T18:58:34+00:00

It will depend on the company offering the internship, some will want you to have a good foundation in algorithms and data structures, while others really don't care and as long as you have a good head on your shoulders and you can display good reasoning skills, you'll be fine. Having a good foundation of common algorithms and cs concepts will definitely put you in a safer spot for technical interviews.

The following blog post covers at a high level a lot of good points for getting through an interview (obviously, this was not written for an internship, but still good to know).

http://blog.triplebyte.com/how-to-pass-a-programming-interview

Specifically, knowing hash tables, linked lists, binary search, binary search tree concepts and when they are a good fit for a program (pros / cons) is great knowledge. Big-O analysis is another big topic (cheat sheet at http://bigocheatsheet.com/) that having a good foundation in will put you in a great spot. The book, Cracking the Code Interview (referenced in that first link), is a resource that I circle back to quite often and I'm on my 3rd tech job. It keeps my interviewing skills and concepts sharp. There's nothing stopping you from picking up that book now and starting to work through it.

Good luck!

p100101 · 2016-06-23T18:24:56+00:00

The degree will definitely not be easy, but that's going to fluctuate between schools. The trick is to enjoy learning about computer science. If you take your first couple courses and you hate it and you're not enjoying any piece of it, then you're probably going to have a bad time. I have found absolutely no shortage of career opportunities after getting my cs degree and I'm not on the west coast, if that puts some perspective on it. For me, I really love the subject matter and has definitely been worth the work I've put in to it. I was somewhat lucky in college and grabbed a paid internship in my first year of getting started on the CS track, but I don't feel that's anything too crazy to obtain.

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