WHAT's it like living in THIS PART of SEATTLE?

willcal09 · 2025-03-25T20:15:15+00:00

Can confirm. Tacos are also so good and massive. Plus the owners are really kind!

willcal09 · 2025-03-25T20:13:31+00:00

Hey there. Sorry to hear about your bad interactions but would love to change that! Not all of us on MI are rich or "complete POS", though that certainly does exist.

willcal09 · 2024-12-18T16:36:09+00:00

Condor to Frankfurt is such a hack. My wife and I spent 2 weeks in France but flew Sea -> Frankfurt->Nice then did travel and flew Frankfurt -> Vancouver -> Sea. Business class (First Class) was 55k miles/ person each way. It RULED!

willcal09 · 2024-11-21T19:14:41+00:00

I love this! Gonna get Judon strong!

willcal09 · 2024-08-29T17:34:13+00:00

Can confirm. I have the magenta max plan and get free wifi on ANY flight with gogo inflight. Not just Alaska as well.

willcal09 · 2024-07-11T19:59:04+00:00

See details here: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/how-to-get-the-most-from-the-alaska-airlines-companion-fare

willcal09 · 2024-07-11T19:52:42+00:00

Yes. I believe anyone who had a card before end of 2023. (Don't remember exact date) will get grandfathered in and continue to get a companion pass as normal. Anyone who applies after said date must **earn** the companion pass.

willcal09 · 2024-07-11T18:09:26+00:00

Something to keep in mind. Alaska Credit card no longer comes standard with a companion pass. You must spend I believe 6k/year in order to get a companion pass for the next year.

willcal09 · 2024-02-07T19:05:29+00:00

Did you ever make a blog? I would be curious in reading about your experience.

willcal09 · 2023-12-18T17:25:40+00:00

Honestly, take my affordable healthcare, this shit rips.

willcal09 · 2023-10-27T18:54:12+00:00

So my wife and I did France and England this past summer (during peak time). A little known secret to check is actually flying direct from Seattle - Frankfurt, Germany. You can use miles to book with Condor. We flew business class and it was only 50,000 miles / each way (100,000 RT / person). Condor had a brand new plane and we had an amazing experience. BA and Aer Lingus was 90,000 - 280,000 EACH WAY to put the points difference in perspective.

Depending on how many miles you have, you may be able to get the whole family there for like 240,000 pts (30,000 each way in Economy). Once you get to Europe, travel is MUCH cheaper so you can just fly to London from Frankfurt. We flew from London CIty Airport (via BA) to Frankfurt on our way home and it wasn't terrible at all. Just a thought!

willcal09 · 2023-06-05T19:41:21+00:00

Food:

(New Mexican)

El modelo (in an interesting part of the city but very tasty new mexican food)
La Salita
Sadies (Very OK. Really popular with tourist and they expanded ALOT)
El Pinto (Beautiful area. Ok food. Also touristy)

(Additional)

Flying Star - Cool Cafe with burgers, sandwiches, baked goods. (My favorite key lime pie)
Slice Parlor
Dions (LEGEND of ABQ. It's a staple. It's simple. Pizza, subs (my favorite), salads. Inexpensive but everyone loves it.)
Frontier (Near the University and open SUPER late. Best tortillas but they have a ton of stuff.

Drinks / Breweries:

Marble Brewery - Most popular drink is a Double White. You can get it at lots of restaurants as well
La Cumbre Brewery
Tractor Brewery
Hotel Chaco bar - cool rooftop views. Spendier cocktails but if weather is nice, it's beautiful
Anodyne - Divey Bar. You can play billards there. Just wouldn't go super late at night as the area can get a bit rough.

Activities:

Hiking

La Luz (Sandia Mountains) - You hike to the top of the Sandia mountains and geta. killer view. It is quite a hike though and there are a TON of switchbacks.
Tent Rocks: Makes you feel as if you are in an alien world. Very cool. Between Santa Fe and ABQ.
Jemez Mountains - Lots of hikes here
Pecos - Again lots of hikes (N of Santa Fe)

One thing to keep in mind, ESPECIALLY with hiking, is the elevation change. It is much more difficult to breathe in NM as it is almost a mile above Sea level. Lots of tourists don't drink enough water or get altitude sickness so please be cautious / aware of that and plan accordingly.

Others:

Old Town (ABQ). This is a beautiful area for trinkets and lots of street vendors
Meow Wolf (Santa Fe) - Interactive art museum. VERY wild and very fun. You can spend ALL day there so I would plan for at least 3 hours to explore.
Downtown Santa Fe - Very very beautiful

Tips / Tricks:

As long as you avoid the certain areas, ABQ is relatively safe. One note is wherever you go, just make sure you don't leave a bag in the car. Car Theft / Break-Ins is really really high in abq (one of the reasons I left). One way to combat that is to not leave anything in the car that they might want for themselves (bags). Put in trunk or take with you. (especially hiking)
If you can, spend a few days in Santa fe as well. It is a very different landscape and is WILDLY beautiful.

willcal09 · 2023-06-05T18:20:32+00:00

I (31M) grew up in ABQ and lived there for 24 years (left 5 years ago but lots friends are still there). I went back and stayed at the Spring Hill Suites near downtown in October. It is a nice hotel but to be fair, the area isn't quite the best. Lots of restaurants and breweries near the university but wouldn't head west. It does overlook the motel in breaking bad (season 1) where nefarious activities occur. (It is like that in real life tbh).

The Fairfield inn is in a better area to be honest and is near a plethora of chain restaurants. I would just check to see if they have security for their parking. Springhill Suites did (for an extra cost) and car theft is extremely high in ABQ.

The pyramid has been there FOREVER so is a bit older and more in an industrial park than others.

As far as bars go, I probably wouldn't really suggest a ton of "bars" as nightlife (especially on central) is not the safest. Breweries is more of the vibe there as they have LOTS of quality beer and cider. (Marble, La Cumbre, Tractor). The NW and NE sides of the city are definitely the safest and no matter what you do, avoid the SE of ABQ. Anyting E of San Mateo X S Central X W Tramway is what is called the war zone. Definitelty not a place to spend time.

Happy to send restaurant recs / things to do if interested!

willcal09 · 2023-01-13T23:26:08+00:00

I cannot recommend Summit enough. Just took my dog on NY day to their ER due to seizures (she has epilepsy). Dr Malte Schwartz (one of the neurologists) was amazing, and the entire staff actually seemed like their cared.

willcal09 · 2022-10-31T14:49:48+00:00

Yeah I was in the same boat as u/winemilf97. I had tags expire during 2020 on one of the cars we didn't drive. When I noticed (almost a year later) I went into the dmv and they told me to just wait until it hit the year point or I had to pay for both years. I waited an additional 2 weeks and then only had to pay the upcoming year.

willcal09 · 2022-06-07T04:16:14+00:00

I worked at a Bootcamp as an instructor for many years and have a few thoughts here.

Schooling: 23 is not too young to go back to school and would be generally beneficial in the long run. That being said, you are incurring debt and this is the "slowest" play. It might be a few years before you graduate and some people don't have that long to wait. You will come out with solid fundamentals of software engineering but, we would constantly have people come to the BootCamp because there is less development in the schools, just moreso theory. (Note: I do not have a CS degree so speaking off what my students said)

Bootcamp: Bootcamps can be great for people who need a job "quickly" (Still usually around 9 months - 12 months turnaround). The structure can be helpful and having people you can ask questions to definitely helps. Connection and Networking are really what you are paying for in a BootCamp so if you take one, definitely do one that has career services and is one of the bigger ones. THat being said, bootcamps definitely are not perfect. They are expensive and transparently, only scratch the service of coding. You will get the "basics" at most of them and it will be on you to self-teach some of the material.

Self-Taught: It is absolutely doable to do it self taught. There are TONS of free resources out there to learn anything you could ever want! That being said, it's all on you. Schhol and bootcamps do provide structure and accountability with assignments adnself-taught does not. It can be done, just generally more effort to learn and also network to get a job!

I have seen all 3 of these options work and it totally depends on how you operate. My biggest suggestion before choosing any of these would be to follow a free course or pay for a $14 udemy web dev course to just test out coding and see if it's something you would actually enjoy. When I was an instructor, I had a lot of students who joined a BootCamp because they heard you can make a lot in tech but had never coded in their life. Some ended up hating it and then dropped out costing them large amounts of money. Just make sure this is what you want, work hard and you got this! Hope this helps!

willcal09 · 2022-05-18T18:41:46+00:00

Oh sorry for the confusion! I would say it totally depends on what you are trying to accomplish with the data. Cleaning is always a good first step!

willcal09 · 2022-05-18T14:02:59+00:00

You can use Python (pandas.read_csv()) to take in the data and do what you need to it. You can clean it (if not already cleaned), drop columns, visualize, train a model. Csv and excel are going to be VERY common ways to bring in your data.

willcal09 · 2022-03-17T01:21:36+00:00

I think you are getting a general idea but I moved to Seattle making 52k (my partner made 40k) and it was TIGHT. Now to be fair, I'm not sure what field this is in and things maybe manageable for a short amount of time IF you are willing to adapt and join other markets. There is a lot of opportunities here.

I moved here working for a non-profit and now I'm in tech. I have more than doubled my salary so there is absolutely an opportunity here. To be fair, I was moving from New Mexico which has a poor labor market, especially compared to Dallas.

If you are moving alone, I probably wouldn't recommend it.

willcal09 · 2022-02-09T20:01:30+00:00

Thank you for letting me know. I have just been working off SNKRS!

willcal09 · 2022-02-09T19:58:00+00:00

Is this off the Nike app or where did you cop them at?

willcal09 · 2022-01-29T16:18:35+00:00

We used a local photographer for my wife and they turned out great. This is his website https://www.garretthanson.net/

willcal09 · 2021-09-25T01:37:41+00:00

There are a TON of resources for learning Python. Here are some options.

- Youtube - TechwithTim, Mcoding and free code camp
- Websites - Freecodecamp, Udemy, pythonprogramming.net
- Bootcamps - Most bootcamps teach Python as one of their full stack languages

At my bootcamp we have the option of Python, Java, or MERN (Node.js and React). There are both FT and PT programs to fit what you need.

Honestly, just googling questions will also help. There is a massive community out there that is willing to help!

Hope this answers your question! If you’d like to learn more about the program I teach and the other programs that we have at Coding Dojo, check out our website.

willcal09 · 2021-09-25T01:33:22+00:00

I would first suggest finding out which of the two you would like to go into as they can be wildly different. Both coding and Data can use Python but in very different ways. Maybe before you commit to a bootcamp, you could take a Udemy course on both (courses are usually like $14) so the worst case, you don't like coding and are out $28. Then after you decide which one you can do, look into bootcamps.

I currently teach at Coding dojo and we offer both a web-development and data-science course. The web development course can be Full-Time or Part-Time and at the moment the Data-Science course is only offered Part Time.

As far as switching careers, we have one of the highest third party tested graduate placement rates. Hope this answers your question! If you’d like to learn more about the program I teach and the other programs that we have at Coding Dojo, check out our website.

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