draft

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📚📆 Oops I Joined a Book Club!

📚Oops I Joined a Book Club!

Birds of a feather, read books together! LOL I made that up. 

I woke up one day and decided to seek like minded individuals. So I joined a local book club. 

Anyways, a random Google on the Internet and I found the website: www.bookclubs.com and joined a cute little group called the "Philly Sci-Fi Society" ran by a person named Katie. I blindly joined after seeing the current book on the list was UBIK a book unknown to me but indeed a Sci-Fi read. I started a little interaction with the group message board and WHAMMY! I get to meet them next month on the 10th of Jan. at Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books in Germantown. 🙌🏾 So anyways, I ordered the required reading and scheduled time each day to read the book for my bookclub and the book I already started. 

We can add my two books to my perpetual list of things to do 😩🤣 I may or may not have a problem. We can say for sure......

Anywhoo! to accomplish this task, I have created a short schedule for myself that will include coding and reading. 

DAYTIME BOOK: 

The Children of Blood and Bones Series will be my daytime book. (before Sunset)

I read part of this book before and so its a snoozer to me because none of its new. But I have to re-read it before I go on two the other parts in the series. To speed things up I'm using an audiobook. Mostly, I look forward to reading the next book. 

NIGHTTIME BOOK: 

Ubik will be my nighttime book. (Sundown) 

Super Sci-Fi book. I would have never chose it. This will be my before bed (or in the bed) I will be using my eReader and reading my Bookclub book. This will be considered my nighttime reading. Of course I have no limit to any of these activities, but the minimum is to pick them up and read a few pages (for progress). 

I have also created a date tracker in my book to annotate when i read and how many pages per session. This will count as more of an accountability log. 

Anyways, I look forward to meeting my book club and I will be back to provide reviews on them shortly.

If you want to join: https://bookclubs.com/clubs/6114455/join/4dde0412

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🍽️ What's for dinner? An Elephant! 🐘

Back to pecking away at these two courses that I started taking. Both via the Cisco Networking Academy (designed and developed by OpenEDG JS Institute, and implemented by the Cisco Networking Academy.)  

SIDE***NOTE

I am in LOVE with Cisco Networking Academy because I'm able to utilize my Macbook Accessibility features and accelerate my reading by highlighting the text and letting my computer read to me. 

see below, A lazy girls guide to reading on the computer: 

Step 1: Navigate to Setting/Accessibility 
Step 2: Click Spoken Content
Step 3: Select Speak Selection

A nice little controller will pop up (I couldn't figure out how to screenshot it) that will allow you to start, stop, pause and speed up/down the text voice being read to you. 

Go to the course, highlight the text you want read. 💃🏽

***

I finally feel like I found a course that won't waste my time. 

1. First of all the courses are meant to lead to certifications.
2. Secondly neither of the courses have a lot of filler information. (aka, blabbering instructors)

https://jsinstitute.org/wde-certification

https://jsinstitute.org/wda-certification

SIDE NOTE: 

I must confess; my excitement may or may not 😜 have led me to also add additional courses from the Cisco Networking Academy to my dashboard.

 Specifically, 

which is the first in a 2-course series that will prepare me for the JSE – Certified Entry-Level JavaScript Programmer and JSA – Certified Associate JavaScript Programmer certification exams.

AND 

Don't get me wrong, I love reading independently, but I am so extremely excited and 😩impatient to learn the information that I lose track of where I am or get distracted and start reading some random MDN doc.

From what I can tell, most or all of the courses listed on the Cisco Networking Academy are FREE!!! A lot more reputable and a lot more inexpensive that taking those Coursera and Linkedin Courses. The only thing that I will be paying for is the exam, which has a great credential to validate my skill set (the same as a college degree, I hope).  

Web Dev Essentials: CSS (WebDev2), is aligned with the WDA™ – Certified Associate Web Developer certification. (cost: $195 for the exam)

Anyhoo......I would highly recommend this course over all of the others that I tried on the internet. 

The Web Dev Essentials: HTML (WebDev1), is aligned with the WDE™ – Certified Entry-Level Web Developer certification. ($69.00 for the exam) which prepares me for the PCEP – Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer certification exam from the Python Institute.

🤞🏾CONCLUSION:🤞🏾

Staying on this path will lead me to the following Certifications which I think is a great start to my future tech resume.

🤞🏾 WDE™ – Certified Entry-Level Web Developer Certification (HTML)

🤞🏾  WDA™ – Certified Associate Web Developer Certification (CSS)

🤞🏾 JSE™ - Certified Entry Level JavaScript Programmer Certification (JavaScript)

🤞🏾 JSA™ – Certified Associate JavaScript Programmer Certification (Advanced JavaScript)

🤞🏾  PCEP™ – Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer (Python)

This journey to the perfect training program was long and tedious. A lot of man-hours were wasted trying each course and deactivating the accounts when I didn't like something. 

But finally! I am confident that I am in the right place. I am glad I quit all of those other courses. Exhales. 

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Welp! I Better Start Somewhere

The Start of Something

Today is the day of reckoning. I am determined to blog despite my ego. I have so many unfinished drafts and absolutely nothing posted. This journey that I'm on is so new to me. I want so badly to become a Software Engineer, but I can't afford to go back to college.

Lucky for me, we live in 2025 and YouTube University is thriving.😂🥹

I initially planned to create my personal website/blog from scratch, but I quickly realized that being able to code and being able to design are two different things. I am utilizing Visual Studio Code, HTML, CSS, to draft my posts. Hopefully, My page will evolve over time. In the meantime, I will be using Blogger because it is open-source and I won't have to deal with those silly drag and drop templates from other website providers. I will discuss more about why I named my blog the Pragmatic Empiricist, but for now, consider it a Manifestation thing.

I have a perpetual list of things that I plan on doing because every time I conduct any kind of research, I end up down yet another rabbit hole.🐇

✅Today's challenge was to complete my first post using Blogger. (I have extreme analysis paralysis and I intend on breaking out of it.)

Additionally;

I will update my blogger account utilizing my old drafted post, despite my fear of being judged; I'm so excited to be on this secret mission of mine and maybe one day it will mean something. Someone like myself may see this Archived Journey and feel inspired to pursue the unknown like me.

Oh did I mention that I am 40 plus. Yep, I have to not only fight my extreme ADHD, Analysis Paralysis, but also Arthritis (LOL jk). No but seriously, one's brain works differently at 40. Not to mention our egos are unmatched because by 40 most people have mastered whatever field they've worked in. I fully understand that I will be forced to interview along side 20 somethings, but I have already convinced myself that my age is my advantage. I have 10 plus years in a professional career and have gained transitional skills that are unmatched. Also, despite me not having a clue about the tech world, I am very open-minded, motivated, optimistic, confident and determined to figure this out.

Reminder to self: Have unwavering faith in your ability to accomplish anything on this earth, it make take a little hard work and dedication, but in most cases, it has already been done before. (Rarely, is someone the first) Use your resources and use the examples of others to guide you on this journey. It's all uphill from here. LOL

Exhales....

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