Cats on Code

Why aren’t my commits showing in my Github contribution grid?

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 01:00:00 +0000

There have been a few cases where I had been working on something, committed it, pushed it to master, and yet the ‘Contributions’ section on my Github profile wasn’t reflecting those commits. Even stranger, commits I made at work would show, but when I worked on personal projects at home, they would not show.

My personal contributions grid on Github. With a few gaps I couldn't explain, ...until now!

The Solution:

There’s a whole list of potential reasons, detailed here, on what the issue could have been. The issue I was running into was that the email I had set on my local machine for git was different than the email I use for my Github account. Hence why commits I was making on my work computer (where I had configured with the correct email) were showing on the grid, but the commits I made on my personal computer at home (where I had an email different than the one I use for my Github configured locally) were not showing up.

To change the email configured with your local git, enter the following command in your command line:

git config --global user.email youremail@email.com

Make sure to use the same as the email you use for you Github account in place of 'youremail@email.com'.

That’s it!

Now your commits, that have made their way to the master branch, should be reflected on your contributions chart! If not, you have another issue that’s likely documented in link I gave above, here it is again.

Git committing!

Alpine Climbing: The First Summit

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 05:25:00 +0000

For six precious summer days, I camped on Mt Baker for a mountaineering course that ended with a very successful summit. After living in Washington state for 2 years and doing the more strenuous day hikes, this summer seemed like the perfect time to start learning more technical skills in order to do more difficult approaches.

Mountains Are Calling

When I first moved to Seattle, I had no idea the city was surrounded by some of the best mountains and mountain ranges. I was first surprised with my first night in my new apartment in downtown, where I stood in awe on my balcony as I saw the sunset over the Olympic mountains in the distance. And that’s just the view of my apartment. Anywhere you go in Seattle there is some mountain

Within my first year, I was starting to do day hikes every weekend. A friend was training for Rainier, and it seemed like the perfect excuse to get out of the city. And she wasn’t the only one on the trails training for Rainier, we were often met with plenty of other folks carrying way too large and heavy of packs for only a day hike.

Summiting the local mountains like Rainier, Baker, St Helens, Hood, etc all seem like a right of passage for becoming a true Washingtonian. So I put down my growler and started training.

Day One: Base Camp

In January I had taken a few weeks off before starting a new job. I had just gotten my last check from the previous job, that included all my vacation cashed out. I did the only sensible thing and immediately started looking at ways to spend it. I booked a mountaineering course and immediately started climbing stairs and hitting the trails (Kind of, I twisted my foot on a hooverboard mid-january and had to delay serious training until March. But we don't talk about that).

When the week of finally approached I was having all the feelings of nervousness mixed with doubts on the amount of training I did. But after reviewing the itinerary, description and training, I knew I did everything I could (and more!) to prepare for this.

Day one revolved around getting our gear ready, driving from Seattle to Mt Baker's Heliotrope Trailhead, and hiking up to basecamp. Here we are getting on to the first snowfield and scoping out where to setup our tents.

July 4th was the big day. Instead of spending the day drinking and eating a copious amount while waiting to watch fireworks, I woke up at 4:30AM. I packed all my gear, clothes, food, and supplies for 6-days as tightly as I could into my 85 liter pack. And at 5:15AM I was set to catch my Lyft to the office for gear check.

For having bought all my own gear (which I'm very glad to be done with), I did pretty well with only having forgotten my locking caribeneers. Fortunately there were plenty of climbers on the trip to lend me the two I needed. After having unpacked for the check, we repacked and loaded the van for the 3 hr drive up to the Heliotrope trailhead on Mt. Baker.

At the first snowfield, we evened out platforms in the snow and setup our "spacious" 2-person (you read that right) tents. Then we used the freshly melted glacial water to make all our meals. Because we fancy.

Within three hours we hit the snowfield and started scouting out a spot to setup camp. We shoveled and stomped out a platform, setup our tents and made our first meals.

Day Two: Knots and Snow School

The first night I got just as much sleep as you'd expect. If you expected basically none, then you are correct. Fortunately day two was relatively laid back with learning about knots, rope handing and practicing moving in up a steep snowfield as a rope team.

Day two started out physically less demanding, with learning the essential knots and rope handling to be part of a mountaineering rope team.

Cliff notes: There are lots of useful knots. The alpine butterfly should actually be called an octopus knot, because it looks way more like a drunken octopus than a butterfly. Lead ropes are heavy, but like could totally save your life, so I guess they're worth it. Prussicks are the most simple, cheap part of alpine climbing, but yet insanely useful. Don't be a jerk who's pulling on the rope. Turns out, rock climbers have a huge advantage with this part of alpine climbing, who'd of thunk. Lastly, Imma going to be practicing these a lot more.

After knot tying, rope handling and stomping around a bit in the snow, we practiced arresting. This is the most basic and essential part of mountaineering that even people who do guided climbs are taught. Basically, the whole point of a rope team is to catch and rescue someone if they fall. That fall could be down a steep, slippery part of the mountain or it could be a crevasse. Either way, falling sucks. Don't do it. But like, know what to do if it happens.

Snow school entailed learning how to tromp around in snow, as a team, wearing crampons, and not falling. But(!), in the event of falling we also learned how to self arrest with the ice axes.

Arresting is really the simple most thing you have to do to stop a fall. Wether that's for yourself or a clumsy rope-mate. You fall, you stop yourself with an ice axe in a way that isn't going to pierce an organ, then you kick furiously until you can put your weight on the steps you kicked in. Done.

While there was a lot of content this day, it was all building up to crevasse rescues, which we covered on day four. But(!), day three held much more exciting plans before getting to that!

Day Three: Ice Climbing

Here it is folks, other than summit day, this was the most exciting. There is something about climbing up ice on relatively short ends of sharp objects that really is next-level badassery.

Crossing over from the trail to the Coleman ice glacier to practice ice climbing.

We hiked over to the Coleman Glacier and set ourselves up with our harnesses, crampons ice tools aaaand that's about it. The guides setup the top ropes so we could practice both climbing and belaying. Turns out belaying was more exhausting than the actual climbing. Out of the six days, I think I was the most sore from that.

This was a day for all the sharps (crampons & ice tools). Balancing all your weight on the short tips of the sharps definitely is an art, but not as difficult to begin as I would have expected.

Climbing turned out to not be all that difficult to get started with. I kinda loved it! Rappelling down was actually more scary than going up. For me at least, as a non climber. While I don't care for rock climbing, I kinda want to pick it up just to get use to the height, rappelling and belaying.

Day Four: Crevasse Rescue

Between the climbing and hiking to the glacier, day three ended up being pretty phyically demanding. Which meant day four was a little more relaxed in that sense. However, it was more demanding content-wise with trying to cover all the bases of crevasse rescue.

An information heavy day, where the first bit was watching and trying to absorb as much of it as possible. The second half putting it all together during simulated crevasse falls.

There were some baby crevasses not too far from camp that we hiked up to and spent most of the day at. The first couple of hours was sitting and watching a demo on setting up the anchors and rope system to rescue someone from a crevasse. Which is hella complicated.

My turn in the crevasse. Not too far from camp we found some safe, baby crevasses to hang out in while our trusted team 'saved' us.

After getting to see the demo all of one time, we got to practice it once. Which basically meant, for most of us, having one of the guides walk us through most of it. Do I feel confident leading a rescue after doing the setup once. Nope. Not at all.

Each person had to go through each of the three roles - the person "falling" into the crevasse, the person arresting the fall and the lead, who has the responsibility of setting up the anchor and rope system. Each round of rescues took roughly 45 minutes minimum, meaning it was a long day of rescuing with a small fraction of the most important parts actually being retainable. Can you tell I wasn't the most impressed with this day?

The day wasn't done after falling into crevasses. We wrapped up day four with learning simple ways of rappelling and ascending on a rope.

After rescuing, we did some more half-assed learning of self-rescue ascending with the use of those nifty prussicks we made on day two. And that's about it. Cool stuff, important stuff but a lot of content with little practice. So uh, anyone want to head to park/snowfield and practice setting up rope system?

Day Five: Summit Bid

The. Big. Day. It finally arrived, we were climbing the rest of the mountain that lured over us everyday while we sat and ate our meals at camp. The morning of we woke up around 4-4:30AM to be ready to start climbing at 5. As we made our way out of the tents we were greeted with the most gorgeous, clear sunrise where the crescent moon hung over summit.

Summit Day! The morning started early, but with gorgeous views of the sun rising and the cresent moon over the top of Baker.

The morning started off with a slow and steady pace, as you are meant to do with long-climbing days. Every hour or so we'd take a quick 10 minute break. And I mean quick, the breaks would pass so quickly as that was the only opportunity to make any adjustments with clothing, eat something, drink water, re-apply sunscreen, and try to fit in sometime to relax and enjoy the view.

Summit day was a total of 9 hrs on our feet, with 6 of those going up. Typically there were 10 minute breaks in between each 1-2 hrs of climbing.

Going up is basically kicking in steps, or finding a steady rhythm while stepping up in established steps. It's also being aware of what you just went though, and what other people in your team are about to go through. Like, if just went over an difficult part, the person after you still has to go through it, so don't speed up. K?

Turns out there's a lot of trust and intuition that's required to be part of a rope team. Being mindful of stepping and pace is so crucial to keep proper spacing between other members (rope should be fully extended but not tight, *the more you know*). Aaaand, sometimes when you get that person who's just off in their own world, it's well, cool. Just cool. Moral: Don't climb with strangers, make mountaineering friends!

The gang made it! There's nothing like summiting to see the dozens of other mountains you plan on climbing.

After around 4-5 legs of climbing, we made it to the top! And hooooly smokes was it stunning! We had THE most perfect day, with amazing visibility of all the surrounding mountains (think Rainier, Glacier Peak, Hood, Adams, etc.), the San Juan Island, the sound and really just EVERYTHING (or so if felt like) in the PNW. Five Star. Totally recommend.

The group ran around the top-most part, which was roughly 15-20ft squared (maybe? that's a total guess but seems right? don't @ me, or do if you know the actual surface area), and tried to guess all the most prominent peaks before going into photo-shoot mode. I mean, my homegirl (and only other woman on the trip) was doing full on yoga poses. It was impressive.

My beer sherpa, Matt, greeting me back on base camp after summit. Not pictured: two growlers from Black Raven Brewery and 2 more Pacificos.

The way back down was the way back down. Back by 3PM, total of a 10hr day. Not bad. Fast forward, Earlier in the course I found out I occasionally got phone service from Canada, so what initially started out as prank texts to the boy turned into suggesting that he drive up to Baker and hike up the trail to our camp and deliver beer after we summit. It was a Sunday, what else did he have to do? So he did it. And now he's a legend.

Day Six: Pack up

We opted to wake up earlier to pack up and hike back down to the trailhead to ensure we had more time to hang out in Seattle. Again, hike down was a hike down. We packed all our gear back into the trailer and headed back into civilization. Cheers to us.

Back in the city I meet up with the only other woman and exchanged griefs of being a female entering this sport while eating the most glorious cookies from Metropolitan Market. Five Star. Highly recommend.

Our home for the six days, with the summit of Baker always captivating us.

Back IRL

Looking back, it was truly a great experience and I'm SO stoked to climb more. My list of mountains to summit is getting ridiculously long. But my big takeaway, from a guided trip like this, is to get a solid group of my own climbing friends and practice with them. Especially since I'm so fortunate to be surrounded by some of the best mountain ranges!

Doing the guided trip/course was nice, as a way to get into it. But I realized, as I was talking about taking this trip, I'm surrounded by SO many other people who are experience or are interested in mountaineering. I wasn't particularly impressed with the guides of this trip, hence why I haven't mentioned the guide company (they ended up giving me a full refund, but not going to get into that here). Mountaineering is definitely a challenge, but it's full of experiences totally worth having with the right people. But that's like most things in life, eh?

I was so lucky to have another woman on the trip who *totally* got the frustrations I had with this trip. Spoiler alert, we're totally staying in touch and planning all sorts of adventures.

This was a wild ride of an experience, and I can't wait to conquer more mountians!

Fourth Flatiron Class: Advanced SE

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 05:25:00 +0000

After eight weeks of teaching and getting to know some incredible kids, I have ended my summer teaching fellowship with Flatiron School with my final class, Advanced Software Engineering.

Getting Advanced

These seasoned Flatiron students came back for more, kicking up what they learned in SE 1 by putting databases and user sessions into their Sinatra apps. This class had a healthy mix of students from three different intro classes, two even coming from a class at the Flatiron HQ in New York.

The advanced class revolved heavily around group projects.

Upping the Game

The Ninja. The Table Tennis. The Stickers. The Code.
All the above and then some were taken to a whole new level with this class. Lets just say, it got vicious. Not gonna lie, databases make you live dangerously.

Sometimes, it got so dangerous, breaks to watch old reruns of Supermarket Sweep became necessary. Candied hams and mother and daughters special for the win.

One 17 year old student was showing off the website of their business & Daily lunch time ping pong matches.

Hanging with the Big Devs

On our final day I was fortunate enough to arrange a class field trip down to Braintree's Chicago HQ. One of the many perks of holding class in the Merchandise Mart is being surrounded by all sorts of legit tech companies, another one may be having Doughnut Vault across the street.

During our tour of the Braintree’s HQ, we were teased with sights of all the free food, hanging out in their treehouse, devs working in giant bean bags and, best yet, their game room.

In the end, our tour guide (who’s normal day job is working as a tech recruiter) came out and surprised us all with swag on swag. We’re talking stickers, pens, notebooks and t-shirts. Ryan hooked us up!

A last day treat of getting to tour the Braintree head office.

The Final Finals

As usual, the final days were spent in utter chaos, planning, learning new technologies and BUILDING AN ENTIRE APP FROM SCRATCH IN THREE DAYS! Insanity!   

But these kids not only pulled through, they took on major challenges and learned SO much. I couldn’t be more proud of the challenges they undertook and worked with. I don’t know if they realize how much they know

The final final presentations of the summer.

Learned. Loved. Coded.

This summer, I feel like I learned just as much as these kids did. I had never been great with explaining my code or how ‘things’ worked, but this summer reaaaally stretched me to do so. It has been an invaluable experience with instilling syntax, concepts and various technologies with myself.

While I was absolutely stretched outside of my comfort zone, I loved every minute of it. I can’t remember a time I worked this hard or this many hours and had no complaints. It was never easy, but knowing I was making an impact on 30+ kids lives was exceptionally rewarding.

And guess what!? I even got some time to code! Crazy! I know Sinatra like the back of my hand and a few wacky looking codepens saved in my account, but I’ll admit, I had way too much fun making projects to demo. #Meowspace4Lyfe

It is surreal sitting here on my couch at home, on a Monday, when I would normally be welcoming a new class. Instead, I am sending my resume and working on code challenges.

I'm not 100% sure what my next steps are, but I am making plans to keep teaching alongside developing.

Third Flatiron Class: Intro to SE

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 05:25:00 +0000

My second round of the Intro to Software Engineering class with my new co-teacher was yet another successful chapter in this amazing experience.

It's all about the Experience

In June I started teaching high schoolers the ins and out of web development in two week long, intensive courses. Now, they're by no means experts by the end, however, they left with a solid foundation and, more importantly, enthusiasm to continue learning!

Forming groups and whiteboarding final project ideas

The Code is Incidental

In our classes, as molded by many other coding bootcamps, the culture is just as essential as the code itself. The goal is not only to get kids engaged in coding, but to also form strong relationships with thier peers. Doing so helps so so soooooo much more for building a strong classroom culture that opens up discussion, questions and self discovering.

The less dependant the students become on me and the more the rely on thier peers, the less work to do. Win win.

Final Projects

In the end, we had four AMAZING final projects that were bulit in only a couple days, including ideation to the final touches. Each group had their own twist on what they chose to focus on. Having a lot of natural designers, many latched on to displaying their content beautifly while other had very intericite logic on thier backend.

Final projects are setup for demonstration to visiting family and guests.

Serious Developers

Seriously, these kids knocked out AMAZING projects and absorbed so much in the two weeks we had them. It's crazy to think that we still managed to fit in improv games and just be silly with each other.

It was sad to let yet another class go, especially one so unique and diverse in thier talents. That said, I'm incredibly proud of the work they did and how well they all joined forces to make incredible projects!

Second Flatiron Class: Intro to Design

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 05:25:00 +0000

When I saw that I was teaching a web design course I was stoked! I thought for sure that it would be a breeze since design and front end development come easy to me, but teaching something that came more intuitively proved to be more challenging than I thought.

Doing More Than 'Making Things Pretty'

During these two weeks my students went from zero to learning html, css, jquery and design theories. The last four of those days spent implementing what they learned into a final project. Pure craziness!

I was lucky enough with this class that a good chunck had already taken the previous course and were familiar with the

One day coding was interrupted by supermodel and Taylor Swift bestie, Karlie Kloss talking about her coding and bootcamp experience.

The Final Projects

Squeezing front end coding and design theory into a couple of weeks wasn't easy, but these kids knocked it out of the park when it came time to make their final projects. It's the most gratifying feeling when kids pickup and apply tough concepts and code after minimal instruction.

Easily one of the most clever and stunning designs done up by our Sammich Maker.</a>

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Digging up all the dirt on our class, Flatiron Tabloid summed up what made our class so great, the culture and general sillyness! </a>

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With site that's out of this world, this team came together to make a beautiful and creative app with a whole lotta pizzaz. </a>

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Too many goodbyes

Not only did I have to say goodbye to the majority of students in this class, but also my incredible co-teacher Jeff. I really couldn't have asked for a better bunch to be part of my first month of teaching.

One last group shot before having to depart with these fantastic group of kids and my co-teach Jeff.

First Flatiron Class: Intro To SE

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 05:25:00 +0000

I taught my very first class this past June in front of 13 teenagers who, much like myself, had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Learn. Love. Code.

In the matter of two weeks I was meant to turn these kids from knowing nil about programing into making a live, deployed sinatra app for all the interwebs to see.

Having never formally taught teenagers, I was nervous on how quickly they'd pick up the material or if they'd even be interested in any of it. With the help of a fantastic co-teacher, we quickly built a class that was not only excited to come to class, but also code!

Students showing off their code in front of friends and family.

Not your average classroom

Sure, kids were spending full days inside a room learning things. You'd think it'd be a lot like school, but it wasn't. And we made sure of it.

Classroom culture was key and easily one of the most imporant parts of our classes. We made sure to have plenty of breaks, do improv and have a classroom that wouldn't be afraid of being silly in front of each other.

Making code fun with poster making and silly sites

Final Projects

The first round of final projects set the bar high! Before starting I thought it was crazy making kids build an app in only a couple days. But they constantly suprised me and put these projects together like they'd been coding for years.

The brilliant team behind the Eat Your Feelings final project app. </a>

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The always entertaining team behind the Dr Excuse Generator final project app. </a>

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The punny team that built The Punnerator as their final project had way too much fun! </a>

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