I’m getting pumped for starting the University of Minnesota’s Coding Bootcamp

Four more days until the new training starts and I think I have stuff pretty much ready. There’s always more you can do of course but I’ve got an early start. One of the tools I’m using is this personal website that has served various purposes through the years. My Butturff sites are among the oldest I have own continuously since at least pre-2004. A lot’s changed in twenty years. Initially what I was doing would be called Web 1.0 using Microsoft Frontpage. I think one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 was the arrival of content management systems of which WorldPress has proven a big success. I’ve tried others but this is the one I tend to concentrate on and will probably do some freelance work on in the future.

I did a year of training with Riverland Technical College in Austin Minnesota starting back in 2020. I do self educate a lot but I think it is beneficial to have a formal schedule to work by in a lot of things. I’m big believer in being proactive on training. I’ve been thrown into situations with inadequate training and left to sink or swim in the past and i did opt to swim but I have confidence in the University of Minnesota. I think this could be very important in terms of development skills.

In terms of this website I’m basically setting up subdomains like having a spiral notebook for several topics. Just the process of creating the posts on each is a great way to reinforce the memory. Simply hearing it in a lecture has always been a good way for me to remember things which is why I like them but I think to thoroughly learn it does take something more. On average most people have to repeated something about eight times to commit it to intermediate and then long term memory. Then you do have to use it so having something to review and brush up with periodically really shores up the process of becoming expert in something.

As an undergraduate I did some of this via tutoring at Rochester Community College. One of the first electives I took was a class on how to study taught by a man whose name I cannot recall but who I do recall had a PhD. It had a lot to do with organization but it also had a lot to do with how memory works and tools for that. I then subsequently was a paid tutor for the college and I shared this information with a large number of students over a two year period. This had the effect of making it and inherent element or systemic element in my own approach as I further developed refinements on my own. I continued using it right up into graduate school. I like to think that at this point thirty years later I’m a fairly advanced practitioner.

So as a tool for reinforcing memory it’s my strategy to use visual cues and short essay reading to continue the process. Writing notes on something is an intermediate step to putting something into long term memory. In my personal study habits I’ve long since migrated from hand written notes, to typed records, and finally to what I think will eventually become not just web notes but probably blockchain notes. A part of the reason I’m setting up my site here this way is the thought that will SEO it might prove useful for others down the road. That’s why I’m making it an open source resource. Something I’ll keep reviewing and searching over time as an aspect of website development. Content development and structural refinements in terms of how it’s laid out.

I do suspect that for a personal resume oriented site it will be really pretty large in time. Hence I keep the main site clutter free by making use of subdomains. That way by specializing each one into a different topic I’m free to develop an extensive number of post. I can easily do thirty to fifty in a session when it comes to terminology and ideas. That’s the reason for the structure and I do expect it’s going to evolve and get further refined over time.

Currently I’m putting in a large image with a term or idea on it. Straight up titling/text. That’s a visual cue that then gives way to the actual notes. I hypothesize these posts will work a lot like flashcards and foster improved visual memorization. I’ve always been a visual think myself so I find it satisfying to work on but we’ll see how effective it is long terms.

As I’m thinking about it I sort of regret not going into education and wish I’d had better advice and role models when I was younger. It’s probably one area where the death of my father in 1970 at the age of twenty-five continues to reverberate. Mom eventually remarried to a man from Appalachia which if you are not familiar with the region is demographically one of the poorest areas in the United States. He never graduate from K-12 and only got his GED in the Marine Corps. He was kind of a hard man to get along with in a lot of ways but eventually after I grew up and saw what I became he apologized for a lot of things. It’s entirely possible without that influence I might have been on trajetory to the sciences. I did also grow up in an atmosphere with doctors at the Mayo Clinic where my mom worked. I memorized a lot of stuff inspired by them.

I’m not one to blame things on others though I made my choices but now at fifty-six I’m making some more. I really want to become an expert in this new field just as I wish I had say in the medical area. I did become an expert in the methodolgy and historiography of American History in college though after I took the course in study skills. Like my Step-Father I dropped out of high school but I did graduate at age nineteen. I dropped out and went to work much as Kelly had. I almost joined the Marines right before Operation Desert Storm. I was only turned down on account of a pin my ankle. I think I could have done it but that’s another course in life I might have taken but didn’t. I also have some regret about that as I have a lot of respect for veterans. Even though my Step-Father really wasn’t a very good influence much of the time he did instill some discipline. He also inspired rebellion.

I think if you approach something with the intent of making an art out of it then life experiences matter and that is one thing I have gotten however inadvertently: diversification of experience. There is much more to the story. I went from a high school dropout who went to work early and wound up in janitorial work like my stepfather to going to college and eventually even getting involved in politics.

I met a lot of interesting folks there. Senator John Kerry comes to mind back before he ran for president in 2004. Senator Paul Wellstone is another person I met before he became a US Senator. His untimely death in the plane crash with his wife and daughter is what inspired me to get involved as a volunteer in politics and to shift away from the Republican Party. I held a fairly high ranking position for a time but I think in a lot of ways I did still lack mentorship when it would have mattered. I sat on a committee that met in St. Paul and I proposed that the DFL consider exploring the use of a new thing one what we now call Web 2.0: social media. Myself and another man who was a professor spoke and got the measure passed and it was adopted by the party. It made the DFL an early adopter of it as a form of outreach. I’m still interested in politics but haven’t been involved for a long time. I’m on the autism spectrum and it limited my ability to articulate verbally despite a high IQ. It’s another thing I’ve worked to overcome. You never know I might get involved again. I’m not sure which party I’d affiliate with in the future by the way. The DFL is certainly associated with traditional liberalism. Right now the Republican Party has gone too far afield in far right ideology and I don’t see much prospect for it improving. My own views are actually mixed. I’ve subscribed wholly to one of the American ideologies that defines our politial discourse currently. The philsophy I settled upon is Left Libertarian but really more one of my own creation to a large extent. I see value in both conservatism and classical liberalism. Provided the basis of decisions is rooted in the precepts of liberty of the indivdual. Liberty defined as civil rights that are widely enjoyed by the electorate. Restricting voting or other civil liberties is the wrong direction. Of course definicit spending endless fortunes is also the wrong direction. So progressive socially fiscally conservative more out of necessity give our current circumstanced in the world. It doesn’t have to be convoluted or complex.

First things first though. The matter at hand is becoming a full stack developer and laying the foundations over the next six months. As I build this site out and refine others I will further refine the model and try to build something that has a greater persistence over time. Hopefully something where others will find it has utility. In recent years I succeded to a degree working in management in the retail sales sphere as a manager. I think it helped to develop my business acumen. I’ve been interested in that too. It is a concern when one goes in two many directions but then if you can take a diverse background like mine and finally integrate it into a new whole? One never knows where it might lead but ultimately some sort of business and earnings is the goal. One of my first objectives is moving the flashcard system I’ve developed for my studies into the appropriate subdomains for further refinement.