What have I done?

What. Have. I. Done?

Let me step back for a minute. Some background, if you will.

I fell into technical consulting right out of college. I ended up being a RICE (Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Enhancements) guy, doing data science things without knowing it. Spent 10 years traveling around the country. As anyone who has traveled knows, you burn out.

I then tried to make a go at being a full-time motorcycle safety instructor. I know, a bit of a switch. My wife gave me five years to make it work. Seven years later she rightfully pulled the plug on that. Then life happened. Turns out it was a good thing I wasn’t working full-time, as I was able to deal with everything that life was throwing at us. Now, nine years later, at the start of 2019, it was the “what now?” moment.

I got turned onto machine learning by talking to my wife’s co-worker about the math behind it: linear algebra. I can do that! That’s what I studied in school!
20 years ago. I might be rusty.

Some Coursera classes and some Khan Academy to shake the rust off weren’t enough.

I had taken a few classes at General Assembly before, and was peripherally aware of the intensives, but I hadn’t considered them until now. Reading the description of the program got me excited! Here’s a program that does exactly what I want, and helps with exactly what I need! Excellent!

That was two weeks ago.

Last week was my first week. And now we’re back to the premise: what have I done?

It’s been, to put it mildly, an interesting week.

The python doesn’t worry me. Coding is coding. I know how to code, have a reasonable grasp on best practices, and Google. A lot of my coding starts with “how do I…..python”. The amount of resources available are impressive. Besides, why re-invent the wheel? Someone has spent considerable time in some esoteric library understanding the functionality and writing about it, so I don’t have to. I just hope to be able to answer some of the stackoverflow questions at some point.

Probability doesn’t bother me. I’m rusty, but I’ll get there.

Statistics, however. Oh boy. I didn’t study any in school. I haven’t since then. I think I’m going to be hitting Khan and Coursera pretty hard on this subject. At least the resources are available.

It’s also the first time in quite some time I’ve been in an office environment, with the physical and mental challenges pertaining thereto. Like sitting. I haven’t sat this much in a day in years!

Time management will be a huge part of next week. How can I better use what resources I have available, as well as maintaining my sanity? What will I need to give up to get through?

I’m planning on using this blog to track my journey through the next three months as well as insights and cool code bits I can come up with.