________  ________  ________
   2018-01-27                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   Let me tell you a story from my youth.     /        _/         /         /
                                              \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
   Sound  of  audience  groans, lynx windows    /        \/        \/    /   \
closing, logging off.                          /        _/         /_       _/
                                              /-        /        _/         /
   When I  was  a very  small human,  around  \________/\________/\___/____/
five or six, I went  swimming with  a friend
and his dad. I'd been to the pool before and  had had some classes with school
so it  wasn't new  to  me but my friend was  a much stronger  swimmer, which I
didn't know at the time.

   We  got out into the pool and he dived in the deep water  and I followed, I
just assumed I could.

   I almost drowned, his dad  had  to pull me out  and I sheepishly dripped my
way back to the shallow end to practice swimming.

   The point of the story is I learned  absolutely nothing, and I  still throw
myself into shit under the assumption that I can do it.

   So anyway, a few months back at work some work came up that was way outside
our role and  skillset, which  is pretty strictly declarative, but me being me
put my hand up anyway because fuck it, I've coded shit before;

      10 PRINT "GIVE ME A RAISE"
      20 GOTO 10

   Right? How hard can it be?

   Pretty hard, it turns out.

   Salesforce uses its own language  called  Apex which  is  pretty similar to
Javascript I'm told, and I  really threw myself in the deep end  of that shit,
it wasn't a small project.

   Took me a couple months to put it all together and working, with a bunch of
trial and  error,  a crap load of rewrites and considerable stress  but it was
really worth the challenge and gears started turning.

   So I  guess now I'm  set  squarely  on the  path  to  become at least  Apex
certified, with a target of July and lots of study ahead of me. Wish me luck.



EOF