What did you do this week?

I gave my employer 3 weeks’ notice. I’m going to Google the first week of May. I’ve been thinking about working there for a very long time. Hopefully I learn a lot and meet a ton of great software engineers.

Edit: I’ll be writing kernel patches in C and kernel modules in Rust for Android’s trusted execution environment! I’ve wanted to be much deeper in the machine than web development typically is. Better yet, I’m the most Junior team member. So hopefully lots of learning is ahead.

I solo'd in a Cessna 150 earlier this week. I didn't think I was going to get to fly this week due to weather and scheduling conflicts but I found some time with my instructor and snuck away from work for an hour and a half. Did three landings with him with me in the airport traffic pattern then he signed my endorsement and left. I was pretty nervous but all my landings were really good. I thought I had fucked up majorly though on my last landing.

To solo, you have to record three full-stop landings, which means I have to take off, land, taxi off the runway and then taxi back to the start of the runway to take off again. On my second landing, I got the instructions to taxi and hold short of the runway. There is a line that separates a taxiway and runway, if you cross it, the FAA gets pretty upset because it is what is called a "runway incursion". Traffic was heavy that day so my instructions were to hold short and wait. I watched two planes land and got another instruction, "Line up and wait". Now, I thought I knew what that meant, which was to pull up on the runway as if I am about to take off but wait for clearance from ATC, but then I cross the line to go onto the runway and second guessed myself, "Was I sure this is what was meant??? What if line up, meant pull up close to the line and wait? Oh shit, oh fuck. starts sweating, presses brakes in even though I half past the line already, hoping ATC doesn't see how much of a moron I look like right now "

ATC didn't say anything to me and they gave me the go-ahead to take off which I did, and because I thought I could have messed up, didn't fly a great traffic pattern and ended up having to burn a good amount of altitude after my turn to final. I land, taxi off the runway, expected to hear "Can you take a number?" which means I have to call the tower and explain myself. Didn't get it. I thought maybe they were gonna call my instructor and I would have my solo rescinded again. Nothing. Take the plane back, check out and pay for my time. Drive home. And then I finally googled what that command meant, and I HAD IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. That is when I finally relaxed and allowed myself to enjoy the moment.

Working on a new version of mkws. Also, working on a couple of themes: preview 1, preview 2.

Finished out this sprint's group project functionality for my senior project. I was working on a job aid for my class and found I broke the collection (Wix database) and toggled what needed it. I had to school some classmates on the code so they can present parts of it so I'm not carrying half the presentation (I'm doing the dev partly through drive, interest, and because I'm probably the only person in my group to code for fun ever). I also worked on some functionality for the next stage, which has me juggling variable data through Wix GUI objects (passing variables to text boxes for the next collection/db query to utilize, making a pizza generator for a fake restaurant). It's my first experience with JS (Node.js, even), but it's close enough to C# it doesn't feel completely foreign. I also plan to show at least one classmate my development workflow over an hour or two in the coming week hopefully to demonstrate that coding isn't that bad.

I also got an email from my coming job, which gave me a start date in June, and some interesting training that will see some travel so that's great. When I start working, I'm thinking of trying to travel as far as I can in the region for clients to get some miles under me, and hopefully important experience.