Happy Monday! ☕️

Still not sure about cadence (at least once a week) and on what day but that will come with time.

There will be a section under bits of each issue that will talk about the journey of Findur. The idea is to provide snippets of the journey from the beginning to its current state (the ups, the downs, and everything in between).

Here are the current bits and bites ✌

TLDR:

• [Bit]: Started Findur because I got fed up with the endless Zillow search, frustrated that I couldn't develop my ideas, and knew that I was going to be responsible for managing Project X (a new tech startup in the Energy Space - Coming Soon - I hope 🤞)

• [Bit]: Currently adding tracing-id's on the backend to be able to clearly track costs for each search request since I rely heavily on 3rd party APIs (Google Maps for example)

• [Bites]: Orange Ricotta cookie from @La Sicilia is 👌

-------- { Bits & Bites } --------

--- [ 👨‍💻 Bits ] ---

[Findur's Journey tidbit: Why I decided to do it]

The idea of Findur started back in August 2020 when we were looking to purchase our first home. We wanted to be close-ish to the loop (Houston, TX), a manageable commute to work, day cares in the area for when we decided to start a family, and general things like groceries etc. to be nearby (tip: It's so convenient to have a place down the road to grab something last minute as we learned from previous rentals).

It was such a hassle going to Zillow -> copying and pasting addresses into Google Maps -> Managing an Excel Sheet -> And then trying to take a step back to analyze the results.

I got fed up period. Also, at this point I've just been generally frustrated that anytime I have an idea (mainly tech-related), I couldn't develop a prototype comprehensive enough since I didn't know how to develop software and didn't want to go to the low-code route ( for various reasons).

It was also at this time that I knew I was going to be responsible for managing the build + product of a commercial software (Project X for now) with the intention that it would turn into a tech startup in the Energy space (🤞). One thing I knew from my career is that you have to know what you're managing to manage it well.

The writing on the wall was pretty clear -> just do it (Nike sponsor me, we can make a Tech line). I had a problem to solve, had the opportunity, and knew I wasn't going to have time like this again.

Before I was going to start the self-taught developer journey, I just wanted to do some quick validation while we were looking for our home. I started by leveraging my python experience and built a web scraper to scrape listings from Zillow -> that then took each one and pasted it into Google Maps to get commute times -> and dumped it all in an excel sheet automatically. I then used Spotfire to visualize and interact with the data (think Power BI/Tableau but just better - sorry Microsoft 🤷‍♂️).

Below is a gif of the result that not only confirmed the house we were thinking of (thanks to my wife, Safia, for finding it in the first place) but clearly demonstrated the potential of an app like this.

I officially started in January 2021 learning software development off hours (nights/weekends). Now I just had to figure out what hell HTML/CSS was... (little did I know there was a lot more to it than just that - like state management 😲)

To be continued...

[Current tidbit]

Before opening up Findur for early users, I want to make sure I can trace all the costs associated with the search request. Google Maps API is mighty expensive so it's critical to understand average usage for future pricing (95% of my operating costs are Google's APIs 😢).

My current setup is below. I was able to finish the majority of it this weekend but have a failing test or two that I need to get to the bottom of. Ideally, this will be moved to something like Loki in the future. Then it's off to building the dashboard in Grafana before deploying the updated API 🚀

--- [ 🍪 Bites ] ---

Food Review Reference:

• 👎: Nope, not it
• 🤏: Meh
• 👍: Good, not complaining
• 👌: Top Notch

Took my daughter to La Sicilia. Since she's only 10 months, I had to eat her portion, of course. The Ricotta cookie was super good (👌). The apricot heart-shaped cookie was pretty good but wouldn't get it again (👍)

Foodie Bites: Chef Diego Chiarello @ La Sicilia, Houston TX was on a Food Network baking show competition 😲