Week 3 - Back on Track

So this week/day is an exciting day for me as I have just about caught up with where everybody else is. I am actually pretty proud of myself since I not only managed to do three or so weeks of work in about four days, that is actually nothing new for a career procrastinator like myself, I am happy that I did it in a way that is healthy and sustainable. I stayed up no later than two, ate regular meals, slept a full night's sleep every night, and even managed to squeeze in some work out and recreation time. This may not seem like much of an accomplishment and many would consider it just one aspect of being a well balanced adult, but for me it is a big step forward. Now, onto the readings and reflections.

Part 1:
One part of these readings that really spoke to me was to make your semester schedule livable. It is easy to say that I can just study and completely lock out recreation so I can get a lot done at once but what often happens is that I burn out. Academia is not a sprint, it is a marathon with maybe a quickened pace during midterm and final season. It is very important to work at a pace that is indefinitely sustainable. I know from experience that trying to blitzkrieg an entire month of coursework in a day is nearly impossible and performance will be heavily diminished after long periods of studying. Just like every other part of the human body, the brain needs rest as well. The pace I have been working to catch up has been a little taxing on me since I have done essentially a month of coursework in four days, it is still sustainable for a few weeks before even a slight decrease in quality. Do not misunderstand, I am looking forward to next weekend where I will most likely be able to take a day actually off without having to work or do any kind of classwork. But even if I do not get that day to rest, I am well rested enough so that even a night off would be sufficient to resuscitate me.

Another part of these readings that jumped off the page at me was about just getting started or Stage One as the article referred to it. Admittedly, planning is a bit of a week point for me both in that I often neglect it entirely and that I sometimes spend far more time than is reasonable attempting to optimize the order in which I do things. For example, on my day one, I had many assignments to choose from. I spent a good thirty to forty minutes trying to look ahead and plan out my attack on the large workload ahead of me. What I should have done was just start like a normal student on week one. It feels good to get things done, it does not feel good to look at the clock, see that an hour has gone by, and then realize that you have essentially done nothing.

Part 2:
I feel as though the essence of this week's lessons can be distilled into two salient points. Planning is important, and this program is giving us every opportunity to succeed. The survey of the curriculum and the mandatory appointment with Claudia for our individual learning plan forces us to lay out exactly what we are going to do to become graduates with useful skills after our tenure at CSUMB.

Part 3:
I found the reading about what every computer science major to know to be pretty much right on the money. I feel like many prospective computer science majors neglect the communication aspects of the job and focus solely on the technical requirements. Of course, I have seen quite a few people come and go at IBM because they were woefully technically incompetent, but the far greater problem for many is that they cannot communicate their ideas effectively. Thankfully, effective communication is something that I have always been pretty strong with but like every other skill, I had no idea how strong I was until I got a job and had a group of people to compare it to. I found that even as a wet behind the ears intern still trying to figure out the super reliable and never infuriating messaging client that I was able to translate what one person was saying so that another could understand it. I could help even between two distinguished engineers having a conversation about stuff I could barely understand. Their technical skill levels were off the charts but communicating their ideas was holding them back and wasting time. Of course, the technical skills list here is equally important and comprehensive. It is certainly a challenge to familiarize oneself with all of the things a Computer Scientist needs to be successful but then again, if it were easy, anybody could do it, there wouldn't be a massive engineer shortage, and our pay would be much lower.

Week 2 - Catching up

This week I am feeling optimistic about my chances of catching up to the rest of the class in a timely manner. A lifetime of procrastinating has given me a near superhuman ability to speed read which actually leads nicely into the next section.

Part 1 - Taking a personal inventory

Reading through the study skills, it was blindingly obvious the areas I need to work on. The three most representative of my character flaws are definitely The Value of A Schedule, When to Study, and How to Use Your Time. I feel like when I work, I am extremely efficient. I can produce high quality work in a relatively short amount of time. However, I have a tendency to rely on this ability to work quickly when it was entirely unnecessary. If something comes up or something takes much longer than my initial estimation, it can really masticate me in the hindquarters.

As for what I am good at, this was also easy to identify for me as my failings tend to produce these strengths in an individual. Reading, Getting the Main Ideas, and Extracting Important Details are all things that come very naturally to me. I got a 770 on the reading portion of the SATs largely due to all of these skills. I can read at roughly 600 wpm with an 80% retention rate which means that I am roughly three times faster with 30% more retention than the average reader.

Part 2 - Activity Log

Part 3 - Project Management Basics

Video 1:
     This video was a good primer on what is a project, operation, and the responsibilities of a project manager. Despite working in industry for the past three years, I did not know the concrete definition of project and operation. The video also gave simple analogies to help define projects and operations. It also served as a reminder that machine generated voice is nearly always worse than a regular human being reading a script but I think this point may have been unintentional.

Video 2:
     This video goes into detail about a work breakdown structure. This is different from a schedule in that the intention of this exercise is to see what needs to be done at various hierarchical levels. For example, building a smartphone can be broken down to hardware and software, the hardware can be further broken down into screen, battery, processor, etc. Each of these things have various deliverables that need to be completed until the result is the end goal and completion of the project.

Video 3:
     This video provided information about Gantt charts which are bar charts showing the different work packages of a work breakdown structure with estimated times of completed and which elements are dependent on one another. Gantt charts help organize a project and help people understand which elements can be worked on in parallel.

Part 4 - Previous Capstones

3D Architectural Animation - This project seemed pretty well done for the most part. However, the presentation suffered at the end due to the jittery nature of the demo video. I am not sure if the issue was the power of the machine the render was done on or some other much more complicated problem as my knowledge of 3D graphics is limited. I think if the demo ran at a smoother frame rate, the entire presentation would have more impact. As for improvements, I think that the general idea of using a 3D render to increase donations is a good one. People are more likely to give to a specific thing rather than a nondescript line item like "renovations." However, it may further increase donations if the 3D model was interactive and people could cycle through different tiers of donation goals like kickstarter with cooler and cooler structures being possible with greater donation goals.

Steebly Collaborative Coding Environment - This is a cloud based collaborative computing environment. While I will admit this project was an ambitious undertaking, I personally do not see the value over the many web based services that do exactly the same thing that are already established in the marketplace. Secondly, the presentation itself was a little sloppy with some unnecessary breaks while things got sorted out. Not a huge deal, but still could have been avoided. I feel like it would have been worthwhile for the team to go into their specific value adds; their special sauce if you will to help differentiate themselves from an exceedingly crowded market.

PICKUP Meet and Play Mobile App - First off, this presenter definitely had the best speaking style. He was concise while inserting jokes where appropriate. It makes the things that inevitably go wrong during demos not seem like a big deal. As far as the app goes, I can see it being a viable business. We have all sorts of apps and services based around being the middle man. Tinder, Grinder, Uber, Craigslist, Ebay, and AirBnB all connect people who need each other in some capacity and as far as I know there is no current app specifically designed for pickup sports. Back in a past life when I was a tennis player, I had difficulty finding somebody to play with. I was far to good to play with a novice but I would get absolutely destroyed by even an average collegiate player. I could see myself using this app to help me find a player whose availability and skill level were a good match for me.

Part 5 - Summary

This week contained a wealth of information about agile development and how projects are actually completed. I have always been interested in the human and business side of software development so this was a particularly interesting week of course material for me. It also further delved into the importance of good study skills and keeping to a schedule which is a nice reminder for somebody like me.

Week 1 - The Chase Begins

So this blog is supposed to be a record of what I have learned each week. And for 98 of the targeted 100 weeks that is exactly what it will be. For this and the subsequent post, I will be posting once I complete the coursework following a late addition and start to the class.

As far as the material for this week is concerned, I learned some general guidelines and information regarding how to succeed in an online program as well as the program itself. This was a pretty cool thing for me since I will probably not be going to the physical campus barring some kind of great catastrophe. It is nice to get a feel for what the school is like and helps me feel like a member of a team. This is especially important considering that this program is 100% online and if the disparity between the way people talk to each other on Twitter and the way people communicate face to face is any indication, empathy and emotional connection is much harder to forge from behind a keyboard.

As far as assignments are concerned, this blog seemed to be the bulk of the coursework for this particular module as far as deliverables are concerned but it also included information about our industry analysis paper. A six to eight page research paper can be a daunting task for many but writing has always been a secret passion of mine. I would consider it as a career possibility if it was possible to make any kind of money doing it. Despite what friends and loved ones think, I am not so narcissistic and delusional to think that I am actually one of the top .1% of writers who get published and my track record at various games of chance in gaming establishments leads me to believe I am not going to be one of those hundreds of lotto winners who writes the next Twilight series and makes more money than some small nations despite the actual writing being terrible. I suppose the point of all of that inane rambling is that a six to eight page research paper is something that I will be quite comfortable producing and am actually excited to get to. It will definitely be something I finish up early as soon as I am done catching up one roughly forty (now twenty) hours of coursework that took place before I added the class.

Until next time - Kevin