Happy Labor Day everyone. I was in my usual seat at campus.
In fact we spent the entire weekend on campus and sacrificing most of our Labor Day weekend to work on the project. Not just because we need to finish the project but also because it is a project that we believe in. It has the potential to change the lives of millions of people. I can give up a 3-day weekend for that.
Tomorrow is our first formal review of the project. And there are still some bugs in it. A few that will be easy to fix. And one or two that will be more challenging. I'm still very concerned about the mapping feature, which is a huge part of the app. Because it has been coded in Recompose some parts of the state are hard to access. Reverse engineering the entire map page might still be the only way to free up the state entirely and access all the functionality that I need. Turns out that the state in Lifecycle holds all the directions and distance information that I need to completely polish off the mapping feature. But I've not found a way to call it in my functions or other components. So all that great information just sits in my console log like a bird on the back porch being watched by a cat on the other side of the window.
Today was also the first day I explained to my mother what I've been working on. She knows I've been spending hours at home and hours on campus in front of a laptop doing something. So today we sat down and I walked her through all of the steps of the app, from the login to the mapping to the reporting. It was a moment that I felt was transcendental and honestly much bigger than I could give it credit for being. I was so proud to show off this project and what it could do and what it could potentially do, and I could see that she was proud too. She's always believed in me and let me take chances in life and keep swinging for the fences.
As a butler and manager I was responsible for organizing and carrying out parties for some of the richest people in the world, where everything needed to go smoothly and look amazing. And those were great moments in my life. But all of it pales in comparison to this app. And even if it never gets picked up or goes mainstream its ok. 12 weeks ago I was tending bar for a hotel party for some guests and sweating through my uniform at people who were only concerned about how many olives I put in their dirty martini. Today I'm about a week away from presenting an app that could potentially end hunger in towns across the country. A thing that I helped build with my brain, my 10 fingers and hours of effort.
Its the first time I've been happy to work on Labor Day.