So, the day has come that I would have never predicted. I am now a Mac user. Damnit Apple! Why must you make such amazing products and ecosystem that makes everyone use you. Oh well, it's not so bad. The only problem is that now I feel like I need to get a damn iPhone so I can sync things up. Android to Mac doesn't work so well (or at least I haven't found a great solution yet).
I have a few tweaks to do still, and I'm waiting on some adapters to get my 3rd monitor, and my good keyboard working but it's coming together. I've kept notes on setting up my environment and I'll probably make that one of my first blog posts for my new website. It took me most of the day to get the Tmux/Vim setup good enough for me to want to use it. I am still making a few small tweaks, but overall I'm really happy with it.
I have a few other productivity tools downloaded also, like Alfred, and BetterTouchTool. I really like the gestures, so I got one of those bluetooth mac touchpads. I still have a mouse nearby in case I need more precise click/drag stuff to be done, although for the most part I'm doing my best to never leave the home row. I've got most of the shortcuts memorized, and I am using Vimium chrome extension. I was trying out safari at first, but that just didn't have the plugins (or vimium) that I want.
So although I lost a week to waiting on the Macbook to arrive, I feel good about my progress. I have given myself some soft due dates on when I want to complete the CSS3 sections from The Odin Project, so if I get stuck on something I'll do my best and move on. I don't want to run into another massive road block like I did with the final Rails project. I don't even know if I am going to go back and finish that to be honest. I'd rather start a whole new project, doing TDD from the start and doing something I am more interested in, since I'd want it to be more of a "show-off" thing for my portfolio also, and if I'm not interested in it I won't put as much effort.
I probably won't polish up these little learning toy projects all the way either, a lot of it is that last 10% (which is a HUGE difference appearance wise) that is mostly just tweaking small things, rather than locking down the concepts. For example, on my positioning project I felt really good after learning a few tricks with the box model, and getting some colored squares and plain text positioned how I want, but to completely match up with the New York Times page and add in all of the content I'd have to spend a lot longer on it. All that would entail is figuring out fonts, copying over images, and other stuff that feels boilerplate rather than productive learning.
I'm sure I'll have enough headache with that stuff once I begin building my blog and trying to get things the way I want there.
I have a huge list of ideas for posts to write, so I am looking forward to getting started there. I haven't placed creating the site on the top of my priority list just yet, as I am still researching and asking around about what platforms would be best to use for a personal site + blog. I'm hoping to have something going by the end of the month however.
So the new estimate to finishing up to the end of The Odin Project is somewhere in the middle of March, rather than in the first week. No biggie. That gives me about 3 months to work on projects, sharpen my skills, and be on the lookout for jobs before the summer hits. I am so damn impatient with it because I can't stand my current job, but hey...that's all the more motivation to work hard and keep learning!
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