2025 Resolutions

     

I’ve been doing new years resolution blogs for five years now. I know they probably don’t make for the most engrossing reading, but they serve an important function for me personally. A 2019 paper by the American Psychological Association found that sharing your goals increased your likelihood of achieving them. Given that less than 10% of Americans accomplish their goals according to a 2024 Forbes survey, and I’m currently batting at a consistent average of 2 out of 3 goals per year, I’d say something must be working.

Postgraduate Education

     

As the year winds down I’ve decided to apply to Oregon State University’s Online Master’s in Computer Science program. If accepted, I would start in the fall of 2025. There’s a number of reasons behind the decision. A graduate program would be a good way to brush up on the CS fundamentals that I picked up during my undergraduate. I’d also like to teach some day, either at the high school or collegiate level, and for that I need a masters degree.

Vibe Check

     

It’s been a pretty tumultuous month. Amidst work, contracting, family responsibilities, the election, and Intermediate Climb School I feel like I’ve been stretched pretty thin. I’ve also been struggling with what exactly to write. I didn’t want to get too far into the politics of what just happened because it’s been covered by far more competent people than me in a level of detail I couldn’t hope to match. Suffice it to say I hope this serves as the DNC’s wake-up call that the era of identity politics is dead and that we need to come up with a value proposition that the silent majority, not just the democratic base, can get behind.

Appium

     

I recently had to develop a test framework for a client. One of the requirements was that the tests had to be able to interact with elements outside of the app in order to provide a full “end-to-end” test suite. This alone ruled out native Espresso tests, which I had used in the past, because Espresso is only capable of interacting with views within the app. After a short stint of research I found Appium to be pretty much the industry standard for these kinds of tests.

2024 Resolution Check-In

     

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I figured it would be a good time to do a new year’s resolution check-in. If you haven’t read my 2024 resolutions postyou can do so here, but to recap I had three primary goals: Update my Worldwide Equipment Guide app to use the new Odin API Climb three new mountains. Complete Intermediate Climbing School (ICS) That first goal is appearing like its increasingly less likely to happen this year.