Lessons Learned from Planning a Wedding in the "Digital Age"

For the last six months or so, my life has been consumed by non-ruby stuff. In June I got married and during the 10 months leading up to the event, the time I would have otherwise devoted to side projects and ruby learning, was entirely consumed by what my husband and I worked hard to make a very smooth and tech-savvy process. We learned many lessons along the way, and I have decided to share some words of wisdom with other technology hungry folks who may be planning a wedding as well.

Lesson 1: RSVP Cards are Necessary and a Website Form Doesn't Cut It

I thought I would save a few trees, spend a little less money on stamps and RSVP cards so I decided to make an online form for the people who had a computer and knew how to use it. I figured it would make it easier for my family and friends to RSVP and their card wouldn't get lost in the mail.

This brought up a few issues I didn't anticipate. First, my friends and family couldn't remember that they didn't RSVP yet because there was no card to send in — they had nothing to sit on their desk indicating that they hadn't RSVP'd yet. This memory lapse only got worse the more they procrastinated. Secondly, the form led to confusion about who was actually invited. Because the form tried to lend itself to all types of guests, they didn't know if they could have plus ones, etc.

If you do use an RSVP form in lieu of RSVP cards, make sure to send them back a "thanks for RSVPing" so they're more likely to remember they already RSVP'd or add a reminder email for those who haven't filled out the form yet.

Lesson 2: Don't Give Your Email Address or Phone Number to Any Company Ever, Unless They Are One of Your Vendors

This one is just a good ordinary life lesson. Of course you can give your information to your vendors, but only after you've decided who your vendors are so they can't contact you when you ultimately decide to go in a "different direction".

I found that large corporate vendors tend to hire people who work only on commission and are desperate to make some kind of sale. As a result, I got countless phone calls and emails from people I never asked to get information from.

Many wedding sites say in their "Terms" (TheKnot for example) that even if you opt-out of them selling your information, they might do it anyway and the only way to stop them is to contact them directly. It's really disheartening that companies conduct themselves in this way.

Lesson 3: Definitely Use Trello or Another Project Management Tool for the Planning Process

Using Trello for wedding planning was one of the best decisions we ever made. Abe and I used it to assign each other tasks (ex. "Please call florist."), make sure we knew when deposits were due and who we had already paid. We even used it to organize our seating chart. Each family member/friend was assigned a color based on the side of the family they were associated with. This made it really easy to know who could sit with who.

Trello has a really great drag and drop interface that makes it easy to organize projects or weddings. Abe goes into greater depth about this on his blog

Conclusions

Planning a wedding was stressful, but well worth the effort. I hope these tips help you plan your future wedding. Enjoy!

Also awhile back I added images to my blog, yay! I haven't gotten around to writing a post about it but hopefully pictures will become more common in my posts now that my life is returning to normal.

Marissa Mayer's Work-From-Home Ban is not a Feminist Issue

We wanted Marissa Mayer to be our heroine, our champion — the woman who had it all. She would be a great mom, a great company leader, and at the same time fix what was broken about corporate policy where it relates to women. It's now obvious that's not going to happen.

Throughout all this, we have started treating every decision she makes as a feminist issue and that's a problem. Banning work-from-home is a work place issue. Yes, the majority of people who work-from-home are mom's who are juggling work and being the main caretaker of their family, but there are plenty of others who are not. The problem with highlighting it as a feminist issue is that it clouds the real problem: the lack of trust and respect Mayer has for ALL her employees. Men and women are both affected by this policy change.

Anyone who has read Daniel Pink's "Drive" knows the studies on how to motivate workers. It's not money or being watched every second, it's autonomy, purpose, and mastery. And when you take away an employee's ability to make a choice about how and when they work, you're taking away their autonomy and their happiness. By disallowing her employees to work from home she is telling them "I don't trust you and I don't care about your autonomy.". That's a bold statement and it will definitely hurt her relationship with everyone at Yahoo.

I understand the sentiment of an employer needing to know everyone is working. The problem is that if she feels that people are taking advantage of remote work and not actually working, making sure she can see them in the office isn't going to fix that. Unmotivated people aren't necessarily motivated by being watched. They will do the bare minimum to appear to be getting work done. If she believes employers are abusing the work-from-home policy, forcing them into the office doesn't mean productivity or creativity will rise.

Full disclosure: I'm somewhat biased, being a remote worker myself. I personally don't do well without quiet working spaces or with office drama. I find that environment distracting and since moving to remote-work my productivity has soared. My stress level has dropped dramatically and part of that is not having to deal with a half-hour commute each way. Being able to control my own environment is key to my creative process.

My company is almost completely comprised of remote workers. The reason is because we wanted the best talent the US had to offer, not the best talent within a 50 mile radius of our headquarters. Remote work isn't for everyone, but it's up to managers to determine who is and who isn't capable to producing work at home. Completely banning remote work will hurt employee moral, and that won't be good for Yahoo.

For a company that's already flailing this is not the way to draw new talent. Yahoo needs to figure out how to attract the top-notch developers that are flocking to Google, Facebook, or various well-funded start-ups. When Silicon Valley has all the choice, why would anyone choose to work for a company that so blatantly states that it doesn't respect their employees time or lives outside of work?

2012 Reflections

I cannot believe that 2012 is over. This year has been incredible. I've learned massive amounts about coding and my own life it's hard to comprehend it all.

About 1 year ago I started this blog. It was my first real rails project and I take great pride in it. I've neglected it a bit since changing jobs but now that I've finally settled in to my new life I'll be back. I have a lot of posts geared up to be written, and have recently added paperclip.

Every year when I reflect on what I've learned I amaze myself. And really that's the most important thing; not setting resolutions and keeping them, but rather making sure we are always learning and growing. This time last year I had only known Rails for a few months. I had no idea how much in love with it I'd be or that it would set me on a new life path. I had already been involved in coding, but mostly WordPress sites.

The Rails community is so amazing. I had the joy of attending two Rails conferences this year and both were amazing; but they made me realize how much of a minority I am in my own industry. I don't want to harp too much on things that everyone is already discussing, but I think the community has grown a lot as well over the last year. It's good that we're having conversations about sexism and inclusion, it makes us aware of our own faults and strengths as a whole and individually and I am excited to be a part of this new journey with the tech community.

My favorite person and long time boyfriend asked me to marry him in September and I of course said yes. He has been such an integral part in my personal and career growth and I can't thank him enough for the hours he has spent cheering me on. I wouldn't be where I am today without him. Check out Abe's blog abeuchitelle.com.

I also changed jobs. I decided that I no longer wanted to work on projects I didn't fully believe in. The company I worked for was an amazing part of my growth but it was time for me to fly the nest. It's really hard making decisions like that because you always feel like you're letting someone down. But I needed to do it for my own personal growth and for my career. I wanted to work with Rails and Ruby every day.

It's considerably different going from doing agency work to focusing on one project with one team. I'm enjoying working from home and I have more time to do the things I love because I'm not wasting an hour of my life in the car commuting. I've got to say it seems that time goes so much faster and I have gained a better work/life balance from it.

I hope you all had an incredible year as well and have an even more incredible 2013 It's going to be a good year for tech, and I hope my and your personal lives get better in 2013.

Happy New Year my friends!

Nifty Methods: cycle(first_value, *values)

Recently I was working on an app and needed to "cycle" through some values. Previously, the code was using each_with_index and using that index to figure out where the "odd" or "even" class was applied to the table rows. Since I needed to change the code to use map I could no longer use each_with_index effectively.

First my thinking was to use modulo to loop through and add the classes, but that seemed to be complete overkill for my situation.

I then turned to google to find something simpler. It seems Rails already has a dead simple solution. It amazes me every time I find something that I don't feel is necessary to write from scratch already in existence.

The method is cycle(first_value, *values). This can be used for many things, but the most obvious is cycling through "even" and "odd" classes, but can also be used to more advanced arrays. The Rails API uses cycling through colors as an example. The method also can accept a Hash to create a named cycle.

If you're interested in reading more about this nifty little method, you can find more details in the Rails API.

The Pros of Working from Home: My First Two Weeks in the "New" Office

I recently changed jobs and now work as a Senior Developer at PhishMe! I love my new job, coworkers and my new "office". Being that the company is based in Virginia and I'm not, I now work from home. When I tell people that I almost always get "Oh, I could never do that...". I used to think the same thing, but now I know (at least for the type of person I am) that working from home is AWESOME.

I don't think working from home is for everyone. You have to make a great environment for yourself to work in and you have to be a self-starter. Understanding how you work and what gets in your way the most is important. For me, human's are a major distraction, I can't concentrate if there are people around me talking or moving. Sense wise, I'm extremely sensitive to my surroundings and if I don't want music playing or people talking it can be detrimental to productivity for me; and I'm completely aware that this is my own neuroticism.

So by this point you're probably wondering what I like most about working from home?

Ability to control my environment

The number one thing I enjoy is the ability to control my environment. I cannot stress how amazing this makes my day. I get to control the temperature in my home office. If it's cold, I turn on the space heater, if I'm hot, I open a window. I can be as cold or as hot as I desire, and changing that quickly is not difficult. There is no longer a "consensus" on temperature required.

Having my own space

This office is mine. I own my space and I'm CEO of my life. In the type of work environments we are moving towards there is very little room for "your own time" or space. I found that in a big office where all the space was shared, that it was hard for me to get "in the zone". I couldn't focus on one problem because I was always being asked (not always literally) to focus on something else whether it be talking, or a meeting, or a new project, or a maintenance task. I could never just mentally hone in on my work.

Food

Oh my, all I keep thinking is that "sad sandwiches" are out of my life. If you don't know what a sad sandwich is, you are very very lucky. I can have hot food whenever I want. For breakfast? Yes. For lunch? Yes. For snack? Yes. No more wondering if someone will steal your fancy yogurt, or thinking "Ugg, I guess I'll use the microwave to avoid eating a sad sandwich". I could, if I wanted to spend my entire lunch break making food and eat at my desk, but that lunch will be so much tastier than re-heated leftovers from the night before that just don't taste right microwaved. If you're thinking "Wow, this lady is picky about food preparation" - yes, yes I am.

Flexibility

This might seem odd, but working in an office with mostly males (I'm female) has at times made me self-conscious. Some days your legs are just sooo tight you want to do some stretches at your desk, but bending over in the middle of the office just doesn't seem ideal. Well, now I can do that and there's no one to make me feel weird about it.

Lack of Morning/Evening Commute

No more travel. I never really commuted that far, ~30 min each way, but that's an entire hour of my day, and hour I could never hope to get back. My new commute is short and sweet. The best part is no one can get in my way. I was always dealing with slow drivers or bad drivers causing unnecessary frustrations.

So there you have it, my reasons why working at home is awesome. If you're thinking "could I work at home?" I would make a list of pros and cons. Also, very important is spending the money to make sure your home office is perfect. I made the darkest least favorite room in our house into a lovely, bright, homey room that I want to actually spend time in. It's very comfortable and I love it.

Life Changes and New Hosting!

Wow, it's been awhile since I have written...anything. I have somewhat maybe good excuses. I have been obscenely busy and have unfortunately not been able to write any Ruby or Rails. It's very sad, but all of that will change next Monday because I have found a new job working in information security. I'll get to write rails all day long and I'm so excited.

Another life change that is keeping my very occupied is that I am not engaged and wedding planning is consuming the hours I'm not spending working or filling out paperwork for my new job.

My life will soon return to normal and I will be able to write again. Also since I'm leaving my job I could no longer host on our work servers, so i've moved myself to AWS. So far I like it becasue I can control my own servers and play around a bit. 

I feel like although I haven't written blog posts, my yearly goals are still in place and I'm working towards them. This new job will definitely make me better at Rails, JavaScript and MySQL. I have a ruby gem started and hopefully by next week will be able to get back to working on it.

Now I've Got Pretty Permalinks and Much More

Note: This blog post referred to an older version of this blog that I had built from scratch. I've attempted to update links so they don't 404, but know that this post is not currently accurate.

I'm off to a pretty good start with my yearly goals. It may not look like it but I've made a lot of changes under the hood to this blog. I was finding my ability to find myself on google pretty low so I added a sitemap — and it's not just any sitemap, it auto-updates using sweepers. In the next post I'll go over how to build the sitemap specifically.

A couple other new features are "pretty permalinks" and an RSS Feed. For the permalinks I used the Stringex gem. The gem allows you to more easily control your permalinks and comes with a nifty little method that allows you to create the URL's for already existing posts. I then made sure I added rewrite rules to my nginx config so that the old /posts/1 urls still functioned. Nginx rewrite rules are a little different from Apache as you can see in my exmaple below:

rewrite ^/posts/1(/)?$ /posts/hello-world permanent;

Lastly, I updated my 404, 422, and 500 pages to actually look like my site. Yipee!. I should have done that earlier, but when I built eileenbuildswithrails.com I wanted to get it live before the New Year.

Next set of changes will involve adding pages to the cms, including a contact form, ability to add images, and perhaps comments. Thanks for reading!

Setting Goals for the Coming Year

Every year at EMN we do performance evaluations sometime during the summer. Generally, they are pretty straight forward, but a question I was asked got me thinking;

"Where do I want to be in a year?"

Every year I amaze myself with the amount I've learned in the past year. But I've always done so without setting trackable goals where I can actually see my progress throughout the year. I personally find New Year's resolutions to be contrived and most give up because they set goals that don't have manageable steps. Changing oneself – whether that be on a personal or professional level – takes time.

Here are my manageable goals for the year:

• Make this blog better - mostly under the hood stuff. I am working on currently adding a sitemap , pretty permalinks, rss and fixing up my 400 & 500 pages. Also, want to add photos, pages, comments fleshing out the admin to be more of a CMS that I can distribute on a small scale.
• Improve the testing on the blog (I have tests but not for everything and I want to get better at TDD by increasing my code coverage)
• Finish the Ruby Koans to improve my TDD (by the way, Ruby Koans are awesome and I'm about 1/3 of the way to enlightenment)
• Contribute to at least 2 open source projects and release at least 1 open source project.
• Continue doing what I'm doing — learning new languages/frameworks, building awesome web applications, I'd like to spend more time with Sinatra, Emberjs, Backbonejs, RubyMotion, etc
• Don't forget to have fun and ensure I maintain a healthy work/life balance
• Write more in this blog. I've been writing at least once a month but I can do better since I'm learning new things

So, there you have it. My goals for the year. I'm sure they'll change, but now I can track my progress on my yearly goals.

I encourage you to create your own development goals for the year and at the end of the year determine whether you have reached or exceeded your goals.

:has_many Relationships in ActiveAdmin

When I began using ActiveAdmin I discovered that there is not a lot of documentation on advanced usage such as displaying the :has_many relationships on the index and show page in the admin of the posts. I wanted to make it easy to add categories to posts and to know how posts were categorized easily.

Once the Category and Post models are created a join model also needs to exist, in this case Categorization. This part is the same as any other :has_many, the hard part is display in the admin.

Go into the admin view for Post and add the following (other fields removed for easy viewing):

index do
  column :title, :sortable => :title do |post|
    link_to post.title, [:edit_admin, post]
  end
  
  column :categories do |post|
    table_for post.categories.order('title ASC') do
      column do |category|
        link_to category.title, [ :admin, category ]
      end
    end
  end
  default_actions
end

show do
  attributes_table do
    row :title
    row :content
    table_for post.categories.order('title ASC') do
      column "Categories" do |category|
        link_to category.title, [ :admin, category ]
      end
    end
  end
end

form do |f|
  f.inputs "Add/Edit Post" do
    f.input :title
    f.input :content
    f.input :categories, :as => :check_boxes
  end
  f.buttons
end

As you can see inside the tables creating a special inner table is required for best display. I add the link to the category edit in so it's easy to edit/view the category from the posts table.

To add checkboxes for category select it's as simple as adding f.input :categories, :as => :check_boxes to your form view.

Want to figure out how to set up active admin? Read my "Lots of Love for ActiveAdmin" post. If you have questions, comment on the gist on github or find me on twitter.

ActiveAdmin is a really great simple way to implement an admin for a simple website or blog.

Honeypot for Rails Email Form

While working on my companies new website I realized that our contact form didn't have any spam protection and would become a favorite of bots not long after launch so I decided to add a honeypot.

If you're not familiar a honeypot is a hidden form that users can't see, but because bots don't read CSS they fill it in. If the form is filled in it automatically fails. This is a better alternative to the captcha because it doesn't require your users to type out a ridiculously illegible code (which from experience, i can tell you gets frustrating when you've gotten it wrong 60000 times).

I searched through a few gems and after being frustrated with the outcome decided to just do it myself because really it's just a few fields and the form is ajaxed and the gems would send a 200 response essentially removing the form, which was no my intention.

Open your form view and add a field for the honeypot. Be sure to add a label explaining it is a honeypot to ensure accessibility for screen readers and instructing users to not fill in the field.

<div class="field sweet_honey_for_bots">
  <%= label_tag :sweet_honey, "This is a honeypot, if you see this you're CSS is turned off or you're a bot. If you're not a bot don't fill it in." %>
  <%= text_field_tag :sweet_honey %>
</div>

Then go to your model and make your field accessible; attr_accessible :sweet_honey

One last quick step is to instruct your form what to do on save. You can have it simply fail with no error but that isn't accessible plus if anyone does fill it in, you might want to give a fun little message for them. I have my form rendering a partial because of the ajax-iness, plus I don't want the form to disappear just in case it's not a bot.

if params[:sweet_honey].present?
    format.html { render :partial => "emails/email_bot", :layout => false }
elsif @email.save
    ...
else
    ...
end

This is super simple implementation of a honeypot. I figured why make it more complicated when I just want to prevent send?