App passes 600 users

The beginning-of-year surge has continued: my app surpassed 600 active installations this week. I recently made a change to try to fix a semi-rare crash that I can't reproduce on my own device; the update is in automated testing now.

Moved in for the new semester

After an all-day training session, I got settled into my new apartment this evening. It's quite nice. We did notice, though, that no coaxial cable was provided with the modem one of my roommates brought, so I'm doing a quick Walmart run to get it. In other news, I just tonight detected that the main hard drive in my desktop computer is in the process of failing, so I'm copying the data over to the other drive. Unexpected things, but all manageable.

App hits 500 users

A few new students have arrived on campus already. I'm not sure how they heard about my app since I don't have ads going yet, but the Google Play console stats show that it's surpassed 500 installations!

I'm trying to get Facebook ads up, but it's constantly locking me out of my account and requiring extra security checks. Strangely, the Facebook page I made using Facebook's advertisement creation wizard was immediately flagged as spam (i.e. advertisement?) by Facebook and unlisted. I appealed it and it was restored, but as soon as I went to the page's settings to add appropriate disclaimers I was locked out again and cannot log in now. Hmm.

App updates rolled out

New students are moving into campus this week, so a lot more people may be interested in my bus app. I didn't have time this summer to implement all the additions I wanted, but I did make some updates which I published this morning. Before I go back to campus I'll try to get Facebook ads up to inform more people that the app exists.

App still growing, somehow

Despite most students being off campus for the summer, and despite my total lack of marketing, my transit app has been steadily gaining users. It passed 400 a couple months ago and is now a little under 450.

Working on supporting infrastructure

With the assignment I wrote out for test to other course staff, I've turned my attention to developing tools related to the grading process. We want students who didn't complete previous segments on time to still be able to work on the current segment, so there needs to be a way to use a known-good solution for past segments. That needs to be done without distributing source code so we can reuse the assignment next semester. I started a tool at the beginning of the summer to make this possible, but it will need more work to be able to support what the assignment has become.

Working from home

I spent this morning packing my belongings and cleaning my apartment. I'm now back in the Quad Cities and will resume working tomorrow (since I didn't get any work done today). I have a little less than three weeks to finish my project before the semester starts.

Last day in the office

Even though my full-time appointment continues until the semester starts, I need to move back to the Quad Cities due to my summer lease ending. Today was my last day working in the same physical office as the other summer course staff. I finished documenting my project for the testers and started working on infrastructure that will be involved in grading the assignment. Tomorrow morning I'll finish cleaning my apartment and move out.