My broken headphones

So my headphones broke after a few months of using them. These headphoenes are the V-moda Vibe duo

(http://www.v-moda.com/collection/modaphones/vibe%20duo.aspx)

After doing some research about getting another pair I came along this review. Keep in mind that my headphones also broke on the right side.

When My first set of Vibe Duos stopped working, I was unhappy. The sound simply stopped coming out of the right ear.

I realized it was because the "high quality" fabric-covered cable was fraying internally right where the cord connects to the jack that plugs into the phone. when I jiggled it, I could get intermittent sound.

So I returned them to V-Moda and got a free replacement set. After all, they sounded great.

But the second pair broke in EXACTLY the same fashion within 3 months.

So I had them replaced again, free of charge under warranty.

Guess what happened.

That's right, third pair broke in identical fashion, perhaps 3.5 months this time.

So I got a FOURTH replacement pair and sold them on Ebay.

Never Again, I promised myself.

So there we go, as stated in the blog "Never Again"

Lesson Learned

So since I am slacking at work someone had to refactor my code. Although the code that I wrote started from pretty much the beginning of my career.

I started writing this code and as functionality needed to be added I just added it to the module. I had modular code to a certain extent but used it in the wrong way. When a certain case hit I was using one module to do the other modules task. This made my code confusing for other developers.

Another big thing wrong with that code was that things could be extracted. While programming classes are made to do a certain task, and that task alone. I was making the class do several different things which could be extracted into their own classes.

The lesson learned here is keep my code modular. Refactoring as I go.

The bad habit that I had was started out with a modular design and just adding functionality to classes as those functions were needed. I need to learn to pull that functionality from the class and create new classes which can be used by my original class.

Back from Vacation

So I went on vacation. Took a break from school work, and work.

It was a good break from everything, I think I really needed that vacation cause I just might be over working myself. The three hour time difference is small but I can actually notice that I am more tired than normal. Catching up on school work and work work is rough with having to work at the restaurant. Cooking at the restaurant after a two week break is kind of rough as well, having to get used to being in a cloud of smoke just sucks.

Back to the same old routine now.

Another thing I noticed is that a lot of the fixes I had done prior to my vacation were not correctly done. I need to start looking into the correct ways to implement my code. I should already know these things but I am still missing them. Taking more care when doing my work might take a little more time but will help me in becoming a valuable asset to any company that I may work for. Plan to read more technical books to learn how to program better. Just have to find free time to do things such as read.

Back to my endless nightmare known as life.

Back to hacking.

So my task of researching DEM's is put on hold now. Back to hacking. 

I think it was good that I took a break and my brain had time to settle.  Can't wait till i quit the restaurant and can have free time to do more work related things.  I want to make time to do side projects on my own and I want to make more time to read.

The price of my time is currently set at $1500. Is it worth it?  Am I going to be able to survive without that extra income? 

...

Always weighing on my mind.

SwingWorker

While researching my first algorithm I came across SwingWorker which is my first step I've taken into threaded applications.

A summary of SwingWorker:

SwingWorker is designed for situations where you need to have a long running task run in the background thread and provide updates to the User Interface when done, or still processing.

Any subclass of SwingWorker must implement the doInBackground() method to perform the background computation.

The workflow of SwingWorker:

1. Current thread

The Execute() method is called on this thread.

(schedules the SwingWorker on the worker thread)

2. Worker Thread

The doInBackground() method is called.

3. Event Dispatch Thread

Invokes the process() and done() methods here and notifies and PorpertyChangeListeners on this thread.

Use at work:

We are using the SwingWorker to make a calculation that deals with the rendering of the graphics which does take some time, so that is why SwingWorker was used in this case.

Just something I learned.

Here is the javadoc

https://swingworker.dev.java.net/nonav/javadoc/index.html

New Task

So my boss is letting me try a different type of work...

Recently at work I've been "hacking" so they call it, just writing code to do a certain thing (which I still need work on). But now I am going to start looking into algorithms and analyzing outputs from different types of algorithms.  I got an "A" in my data structures and algorithms class so maybe algorithms is what I might be interested in.

My approach is going to be research the two data sets first, before even looking at the algorithms, then look at the implementations.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

WHO DID THIS??????

Just passing...

I noticed when i submitted my code the other day that my habits from school carried over to my work. In school it was always, "just get it working." Now at work it's not to just get your program working, it's catching every little thing that could possibly be wrong.  You have to test everything to make sure that your code is functional.  I have to try break this habit of just getting my programs to work.  It should be simple but it just something i learned about real life application versus classroom applications.

Anything

My life is slowly moving from reality to living on the net...

I began to realize this when I noticed that I am on my computer for pretty much as long as I am awake during the day. I wonder where it'll take me?

I recently hit another block in my work.

I was trying to reuse a previous algorithm that I had used before and it had failed. Using my resources I found an alternative way to do the task that I had wanted. I think that using your resources is a key point in learning new things as well as recognizing your flaws.

In this case I learned something new about dealing with views of applications.  I was trying to modify a screen position and the only way was to change it and convert it back using the view. This did not work teaching me about the view of an application.

Another thing is that we are beginning to work on a unix environment at school.  The problems that I had last month with my previous blog (class path) are helping me with the unix environment.  Work and school are currently working together to constantly teach me new things.

Work at restaurant...Over it.

So by boss tells me... "um...blog more"

So this semester is pretty hectic.

I cut my hours at the restaurant down and I still am having a hard time finding time to do everything.  With school restaurant work and internship work I want to make a weekly schedule that tells me what to do EVERYDAY! I think this will help me keep up with my school work and internship work, and maybe throw working out in there.

I am slowly becoming a software engineer.  Still noobish in a lot of ways, but working at this internship is teaching me a lot of things about working in the industry.  I just so happened to go in on a day when requirement documentations (I think that's what they are called, the prequil to design docs) were being presented for our project.  That was an interesting meeting for me, seeing the input from a potential customer being transformed into upgrades that can be done with a specific type of software. One thing that I think makes me a major noob is that I am STILL configuring my mac for work.  It works for the most part but we have a new system which just threw me off. Configuring your system with path variables and what not is something I really need to learn.

Till next time...