I recently started a new job and part of the first few weeks have been learning light coding. Essentially, I’m in a training role and it’s beneficial to know a basic coding to be able to talk to smart people during their new-hire orientation.
I know nothing about coding. Literally 0. The new job is also hands-off and kind of boundaryless, so I have no idea how much coding I actually need to know.
“It’s so easy,” one trainer said, “I knew nothing about coding and built a website with full payments integration by my first afternoon.”
You, like, what now with who?
Over the past month I have learned some things… Like, I’ve built an HTML site that is straight from 1997 with pictures of Kesha, Cheesy Hot Dogs and M&Ms. It also has a table illustrating what % of hot mess all these things are. In short, I’m basically a web developer.
The tough part has come in the second phase of my coding journey where I’m trying to learn PHP so I can add more complex things to the site.
This is not going well.
The online tutorial I’m using went from holding my hand to literally dropping me off a cliff into a boiling lake of fire-breathing sharks, that’s slowly draining and the empty lakebed is actually just broken glass shards coated in poison.
Like, example:
Exercise 1:
Look at you go! Add the number 5 to line 17 and see what happens!
*Tedd does this*
You’re awesome!
Exercise 2:
Now use your basic understanding f(x) estren $copi data party 7 to correlate make a game in which 14 people are eating sandwiches with bologna, ham, and 7897*&5 – return the answer of 14 if Sammy Jo eats 11.5 ham sandwiches before noon on Friday (Hint!: remember $cobra = strlen(G^2 – f(x)*R).
What?
How did we make this leap? I literally just punched in one number and now I’m supposed to build a video game for PS4?
No, girl.
That’s the equivalent of taking a history exam like:
Question 1:
George W______ was the first president of the United States.
Question 2:
In 4500 words or less describe the positive and negative effects the Treaty of Paris has on the American people and how it affected the growing turmoil that would lead to The War of 1812 (Hint! Pay special attention to John Jay’s roles in negotiations leading up to the signing of the treaty).
How ‘bout not.
I just kind of gave up and decided that I understand some code, so that’s probably fine? Like if someone asks me about PHP, I can at least say that Sammy can eat 11.5 sandwiches.
Homeownership
Ever since I bought my place this spring, I have been living in a constant state of fear. I know NOTHING about electricity, plumbing, or really anything that goes into a finished house. My place is not a new place, so I know that at some point in the near future, something is going to explode and then I’m going to have to deal with it.
It reminds me a lot of when I was first starting to drive. I was absolutely terrified. I was sure that within a few days of getting my license I would be running over pedestrians and driving my car through nitro glycerine plants. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!
My parents would let me drive and I would be internally screaming the whole time.
“I’m going to kill someone. I’m going to crash. It’s going to happen. I’m going to crash this Jeep into a guardrail, which will somehow speed up global warming and bring about the end of human life as we know it.”
Over time I kept telling myself that everyone drives. Pretty much everyone older than me in high school could drive, and some of those people were complete idiots. If they can do it, I can do it.
It took about 3 months, but after that time period, I was pretty comfortable driving and things were fine. I no longer feared driving off the road and triggering The End Times.
Well, this week, it finally happened. My condo started to fall apart. It began with my microwave going ballistic and shutting down. About 3 days later I could no longer turn the lights on in my bedroom.
This is fine.
When the microwave crashed I immediately went into total panic mode.
Who repairs microwaves? An electrician? Do I call GE? How much does it cost? What if I need a new microwave? Who puts it in the hangy place where my old microwave lives? Can I cook oatmeal in a pot? How does one even heat anything without a microwave?
After a solid day of indecision, with the brief thought that I would simply never use my microwave again, and live with a 12-pound paperweight hanging over my stove, I decided to go to the one place that has never let me down.
YouTube.
I watch about 20 minutes of videos on microwave repair – one involved hairdrying the keypad until it melted off, then sticking it back on.
The other simply said to open up the control panel and wiggle a thing around.
Since the wiggling seemed safer, that’s what I went with.
I told Ernesto that I was basically an electrician and planned to fix the microwave myself.
“Oh, no. Oh, Tedd.”
He had zero faith in me. To be fair, I had zero faith in myself.
But I gave it a whirl. I watched the video, pried of the faceplate, took off the control panel and wiggled the ribbony thing.
I put everything back and plugged it in.
IT.
WORKED.
I kept hitting buttons in shock. Express cook: works. Popcorn button: works. Clock reset: works.
People have gotten gold medals in the Olympics, they have climbed Mt. Everest, they have signed global treaties, won major sports events, and gone to the moon.
But nothing. NOTHING. Compared to the feeling of my fixing my microwave.
I AM A GOLDEN GOD. I AM THE OWNER OF THIS HOUSE AND I HAVE TRIUMPHED!
I was feeling invincible, so I decided to tackle my bedroom light as well. I immediately googled “light repair for Bayon Bay ceiling fan/light” – the first hit was the ability to order a new remote which would come with a new receiver and – I assume – fix the light.
THE GOLDEN GOD WILL BUY THIS REMOTE!
It was a good thing that my copy of Super Mario Odyssey also arrived this same day and that there was the shipping delay of the light remote, or who knows where my new-found homeowner egotism would have taken me. I would have ended up with a sledgehammer remodeling my downstairs bathroom.
THE GOLDEN GOD WANTS THOSE FANCY EARTH-COLORED TILES SO THE SHOWER IS LIKE A CAVE!
The light remote came a few days ago in a box with roughly 700 wires and some sort of color-coding diagram that looks absolutely terrifying.
The Golden God must be on vacation, because the thing will most likely remain on my kitchen counter into the new year. The old fear of homeowner failure is back.
But at the very least, I can cook oatmeal and popcorn and regale people with the story of me triumphing over the microwave. I’m hoping the washing machine hears the triumph and doesn’t try anything funny.