I. Am. AT 56%.

Do you remember Occupy Wall Street?

There was (and is) so much helpless rage surrounding the financial crisis of 2008. This boiling caldron of human frustration and despair inevitably boiled over giving rise to the Occupy movement.

People took to the streets across the nation and stayed there. They protested against a system that seemed to reward the very banks that caused the crisis while simultaneously leaving the hard hit “little guy” to suffer.

This movement had no clear leader, no political organization (in contrast to the Tea Party which has successfully had several of its candidates elected to congress) and only one quixotic creed: CHANGE. They wanted a better, different world even if they didn’t appear to know how to achieve it.

I watched on TV as Occupy camps began to pop up throughout the country like over zealous fans doing the wave at a baseball game. The people were well meaning if haphazard and I was deeply enchanted by their signature chant:

WE. ARE. THE 99%

WE. ARE. THE 99%

I am the 99%. As a teacher I barely make enough money to be considered above the poverty line. When the economy is humming along, most of the gains flow to a small part of the population. The rest of us wait for it to trickle down. The Occupy protesters captured all of that sentiment in that one punchy chant.

Well today I have a different percentage that I would like to celebrate: 56%. I finally finished my crash course on using the command line interface (CLI) on my Mac computer. The crash course that I completed can be found here. This means that I have completed 56% of the PreWork that I must finish before web development Bootcamp starts on March 23^rd.

I. AM. AT 56%

I. AM. AT 56%

I am very excited to have made it this far. According to the author of the course, I am now a “barely capable shell user.” Admittedly that does not sound like much, but two weeks ago I didn’t even know how to find the command line on my computer. I really have come a long way.

Of course I want to be more than “barely capable” on the CLI. As a result, I have also begun working through command line tutorials on YouTube. These videos are even better than the initial course I completed in many ways and they go into more advanced detail which is great.

According to my PreWork curriculum the next topics  I am supposed to learn about are Git and GitHub. These two concepts are completely foreign to me. All I know comes from this post from fellow blogger Moirai who writes the Algorithmical blog.

I am definitely swimming in uncharted waters now. Wish me luck.

PS: I am curious how many people use the CLI regularly. Take this poll! 🙂