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I went to the Apple Store yesterday and came home with an iPhone.  I haven’t completed given up on Windows yet, I’m still have a SIM card in a Lumina 950 XL – and use it for my work account.

Windows phone is still hands down for doing Office apps, but I haven’t done much with the iPhone yet.

I do have 15 days to completely decide.

I still LOVE my Surfaces.  I just wish more technology supported the Windows phone.

I’m even going to dabble with writing some apps.

I’m using a full monitor, keyboard and mouse with my Lumia phone to post this entry.
 
It is an email message, but it’s still great. I’ve got the monitor, keyboard and mouse from my Mac mini hooked, primarily because they were the handiest. It’s not something I’ll use often, but great for setting up something new.

And because I can here’s an affiliate link from Amazon:

It would fit well in a go bag with keyboard mouse.

 
Even better if I were presenting on the road, since I do have portable keyboards and mice I can use. According to how you look at it, fortunately or unfortunately I don’t do that any more.
 
Doesn’t mean if I won’t in the future, but a few people turned me off on it totally and it did involve a lot of social anxiety.
 
Sent from my Windows 10 phone

It seems that all phases of my life have been suffering from frustration. 

The dogs (see the dog blog).

Diabetes

Technology

I started to do what I thought was a simple change and found out that the project isn’t as upward compatible as we would like.  A lot of the old code needs to be refreshed and modernized, and I’m not up for the task.

I have pushed at it, but it refuses to budge.

So I’m taking a break and working on some of the things I’ve been learning. 

Jekyll:

So I have set up http://www.kweaver.us – which is hosted on Azure and got it working with Jekyll.  This is a sandbox I can play in for a while.

.NET:

I’ve been meaning to update the American Beagle Rescue Network site for a long time. to be easier to maintain, and be a .NET website.  So I have started on that.

I’m not leaving Open Live Writer entirely, as it is my favorite tool, and hopefully will be working with Jekyll soon.

—

There are all kinds of ways to work through frustrations – sometimes working at them sideways works.  Usually does for me.

I am still working on Open Live Writer, and in fact, am listed as a contributor for Version 0.60

I’ve even created a pull on a code change, but I’m not sure it will be accepted.  They are currently having a slight disagreement on how the program should behave.  It’s a minor change, just changed some text that is displayed in a dialog box.

However, I’ve done the following:

Created testplans – and I need to modify the corresponding test plan if it is accepted

I’ve tested all of the outstanding pulls so far.  That’s pretty easy, because they have an associated build and I just need to reinstall.  I have missed a few in the process, but other people tested those.

I’ve created documentation and some blog posts on the main site.

I’ve learned a lot about Jekyll and rake files and have been testing changes made by another contributor to the website.

I’m learning markdown – a lot of time the hard way.

Those are all tasks that I did at my old job — except that they never let me touch code.

It’s a pretty satisfying life – I’m not sure I could afford to do this without my husband, but I’m getting teacher retirement money, I’m teaching – part time, remotely, and I’m working on a project I enjoy.

The best things about working on Open Live Writer if that the team is great – they are truly welcoming and accept the contributions I want to make,  and it’s a project I use on a frequent basis.  In fact, I’m using it to write this post.

They have been working hard to improve the customer service experience.

First time I had to return something I had to make two trips because I didn’t have the full receipt – the email was missing the bar code.

Second time I had to convince them that while I had the receipt and it was from the Microsoft Store but online, I had to convince them that the item needed to be exchanged, and they insisted on keeping the box.  Microsoft Band.

Yesterday I walked in with a Microsoft Band 2 that wouldn’t change, and they took it and the charger, and handed me a new box.

Just stood there as I expected a hassle.

NICE!

They added spell check and some other important  features today, many of which I have been testing over the last few weeks.

The fun part is that I’ve been included as a contributor!

Here’s the release notes:

https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/releases/tag/0.6.0.0

Primiarily, this is a test post, making sure that the latest version didn’t break anything.  So far, it is looking good.

I’ve learned a lot about Open Live Writer in writing the test plans.  I wasn’t doing half of what it was capable of.

However, I need to learn a lot more.

I will admit I still don’t understand the code yet  –  but I spent the holiday week creating test plans.  I think I have plans for most of the dialog boxes.  I had the majority of them in a pull request that was merged this morning.  I had a few more that I hadn’t merged yet, but put them in pull requests this morning.

I freely admit that GitHub and I aren’t friends, but we’re talking.  I don’t entirely understand the process but I am getting there, thus I don’t trust it yet.

Give me another week and I think I will be more comfortable with it.

I haven’t had to do a lot with source control.  I have source control setup on my local server, but it’s Subversive which is a good way to start.

I’ve always had a bit of trouble wrapping my head around source control, I love it, but I’ve come late to the party.

So as I’ve blogged before, I’m working on an Open Source project.  Right now, I’d doing what I do best, doing error checking, writing test plans, and documentation.  I’ve even looked into some code.

I’m proud of myself as I have been able to create my own branches, add test plans, and consolidate the branches.  When the other people get back from their breaks, I’ll do another push.  I’ve done two pushes so far that have been accepted the project.