Friday, June 26, 2015

It's a good thing I read the blog I wrote 2 weeks ago.  I feel like I haven't done anything.  Actually I did the following:
   1.  Wrote up a requirements document for the whole project.
   2.  Wrote a partial design document for the 9p portion of the project, with more detailed requirements of the whole system.  In the process I discovered there is no independent 9p server running on Linux.  there is one embedded in the virtio implementation.  I will be modifying that. 
   3.  At my mentors' suggestion, I began coding part of the Xen portion of this project:  a simple front and back end that communicate via Xenbus, an event channel, and a shared memory ring to pass an integer between them.  
   4.  One mentor suggested that I use VMbox for this.  I misunderstood his reasons, so I spent FAR too long trying to get this to work.  Which brings me to my issues:

I signed up for Outreachy because 4 years ago, after being unable to work, for a number of years, due to health problems, I began working again.  I had worked 2 months, when I was rear-ended, and sustained a very mild brain injury.  After therapy and rehab, I am ready to work, again, but I need to learn how to cope with some differences in the way I learn, and approach problems.  For instance, where my judgement used to be instinctive, and accurate, I am finding I have to question it, and reassess, more often.  None of my problems is insurmountable.  But it will take me time to discover how they manifest, and how to compensate.

The reason I'm impressed with how much I have done in the last two weeks is that I still have health problems.  Last week, I had to stay away from my home for a few days.  This week, I had two procedures done on Wednesday, that took up part of Monday, almost all of Tuesday, all of Wednesday, and all of Thursday (while I recovered), during which time I did no work.  Fortunately, that's the last thing I have to do for a year.  I will be working this weekend to make up some time.

I have also come up against differences in style between my mentors and me.  Since I am learning/re-learning what constitutes optimal work habits for me, I suspect their judgement is better than mine.  So even when I disagree, I will try everything they suggest.  So far, they have been right. 

Still since I don't always understand them, I do need to question them more often, to make sure we're on the same page.

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