is hard and expensive…

I have been lucky to find good deals in SB for the space. Not everyone is lucky thought. It takes time and once something opens up you have to jump on it. Over time I have collected some website that have me look for places to live in the Santa Barbara area. Look below and feel free to let me know of something i have may have missed. These are not listed in any order whatsoever.

Property Management Sites

• Sierra Property Management

• Arrive Los Carneros

• La Colina Apartments

• SandPiper Property Management

• Gold Coard Property Management

• Bartlein & Company, Inc

• Meridian Group Real Estate Management - Link1 Link2

• The Koto Group

• Mathilda Apartments

• Wolfe & Associates Property Services

• The Towbes Group

• Gallagher Property Management

• Spectrum Realty

Rental Sites

• Realtor.com

• Trulia

• Zillow

• Hotpads

Always remember to try social media you never know that may come up.

Italy was awesome! I visited Rome, Siena, Florence, Cinque Terre region, and Venice. Did not make it to Spain, unfortunately.

Google Photos

Itinerary

Map

I am happy to answer any questions you may have. It was an unexpected amazing trip.

Tonight in STEM is a show where we interview professionals in the field of well… Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics! Tonight In STEM started as an idea to promote STEM to students, educators, young professionals that the STEM fields are more than a well paid career. It is an opportunity to create our future.

As I attended college, I was guided and inspired by many great mentors. They all taught me valuable skills such as: surrounding yourself with positive friends, being bold, and being passionate. This led my to take a bold attempt to share with everyone positive role models who are passionate in the STEM fields. Tonight In STEM was born to highlight these mentors to everyone, that if they can do it anybody can. The STEM fields are difficult but with hard work come great success.

www.tonightinstem.com

Recently at work, I was introduced to AutoHotKeys, a script-able desktop automation tool to create macros and small apps. This tool gave my an idea! I could re-create one of my all time favorite apps Ditto - Clipboard Manager. AutoHotKeys would allow be to mimic and re-create my own version of Ditto because at work like other work places third party apps are blocked from being installed. If you fall into this situation and AutoHotKeys is white listed within your work intranet or just need a small lite clipboard manager give it a try.

• Stores up to 5 items at a time
• Clipboard selection window is always on until you select the item to paste
• Just double click to select the item or use your arrow keys
• History is deleted at shutdown or reloading of script

1. Download and Install AutoHotKeys.
2. Download or copy and paste my script from My GitHub called AHK-Ditto into a file
3. Double click on the AHK file with the extension .ahk and your off. 
4. Use Cut, Copy and Paste like normal but when you want to access the clipboard manager press CTRL + `. 

With all the smart-watch news I decided to build my own. I found a small inexpensive kit from Ada. It is called the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit. Has a high definition display with 16 pixels! Check it out below. 

It has been 8 years since my last custom PC build. I have built many other for friends. This time around, my budget was below a thousand dollars, wanted a machine for video processing, compiling my programs faster, and enough RAM for all my chrome tabs and other programs. 

Specs:

• Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel / Plastic compact ATX Mid Tower Case
• MSI Z97-Gaming 7 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
• G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM
• CORSAIR Hydro Series H80i High Performance Water/Liquid CPU Cooler. 120mm
• Intel Core i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz) 
• Seasonic ATX12V/EPS12V 750 Power Supply (SSR-750RT)
• SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7PC128B/WW

I had a great opportunity to present with my co-worker at Science & Technology MESA Day on March 7, 2015. We hosted a computer science workshop to high school students who were learning how to build a game using Greenfoot and Java. We had many conversation about the projects and how working in teams was very important. We compared it to the real world and how we also have similar issues. We just got paid to deal with them and have fun in the mean time. The biggest take away and the reason I enjoy hosting workshops is because I get to witness the moments that students realize how valuable, fun, and difficult STEM can be. In that end its just rewarding to grow up and get paid doing what you love. 

I had the honor to be invited to be a panelist by the Society Hispanic Professional Engineer Greater San Fernando Valley Professional Chapter at their annual Noche De Ciencias event. This annual event is held to inspire the youth to pursue the STEM fields.  I had the chance to answer question from both parents and students about their future. These types of events fall close to my heart because I believe in giving back to the community, especially in STEM. 

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I was at SBCC for four years. A lot of things happened that led the SBCC Foundation to feature me as a SBCC Alumni. Please read the article below:

Who: Juan Zepeda
Profession: Aspiring Entrepreneur

Once Juan Zepeda obtains his computer science degree at California State University, Northridge in December, the Solvang native will return to Santa Barbara to join a start-up company.

"Computer science is like art," said Juan. "Just as an artist has a blank canvas, I have a blank screen and can write code to create programs. I can build things without buying parts."

After graduating from Santa Ynez High School in 2008, Juan enrolled at Santa Barbara City College, where he participated in the Math, Engineering, Science, Achievement (MESA) program and was the founding vice president of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) student chapter on campus. Through his involvement, he met with local engineers, gave presentations to minority elementary school children about entering science, and went on industry tours and conferences.

In addition to multiple internships at organizations such as TrueVision Systems, Sonos, UC Santa Barbara, and j2 Global, Inc., Juan also served as the information technology officer for the SBCC Chapter of Improving Dreams Equality Access & Success, a group organized to encourage, promote, and further the education of immigrant students. In 2012, he was recognized with the Outstanding Student of the Year engineering award. 

Juan graduated from SBCC in 2012 and transferred to Cal State Northridge, where he remains involved in SHPE, as well as the AIMS2 Program, which provides a grant to minorities seeking to study engineering or computer science. He hopes to one day found his own technology company. 
 

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At California State University, Northridge I took a Mobile Sensors class. The purpose of the class was to learn about what sensors on your phone can do. How they provide information about the user and how it can be used for good and bad.

One of the my first apps that I posed to the Google Play store was S-Kit. This app displays all the raw values to your phones mist common sensors. Some of the senors are:

• Accelerometer Sensor
• Linear Acceleration Sensor
• Gravity Sensor
• Gyroscope Sensor
• Magnetic Field Sensor
• Light Sensor
• Ambient Sensor
• Proximity Sensor
• Pressure Sensor

You can download it at: Playstore link

During the summer of 2014 I had an opportunity to work at j2 Global inc. This was an excellent opportunity because I was trusted with various Android projects. As an intern I accepted the challenge. At first I worked on their 1# application, eFax. I was to research Android test frameworks to cover both functional and unit tests for eFax. I discovered many frameworks such as jUnit, Espress, Spoon Runner, and UIAutomator. After comparing and contrasting I built test plans to run daily. 

My second project at j2 was to implement features and fix known defects into their Android app, OneBox. I had the opportunity  to comb through existing code and reorganize classes and activities. This would provide a structure so future code refactoring would be minimized.

Towards my last two weeks, I was given a lot of responsibility to port an existing Android project, MobileFax, originally written in Xamarin and port it to Android Java. With only two weeks I learned C# and Xamarin project structure. This allowed me to understand the limitations of features and APIs implemented server side. Once I understood the  Xamarin project I worked with a UX person to plan how the new re-written Android app would look and feel. My last week was spent implementing API calls, helper functions, Async tasks, and XML for the UI. With one day to spare I present the app to management.  

I am the type of individual who always is curios how technologies work. It is what drives me always to keep learning in this fast pace technology field. An example was when I was curious how Chrome Extension worked. All I knew was that Google had a set of JavaScript API's that interacted with Chrome. During the Summer, I set out to teach myself with the power of the internet. I started to read examples and look at the documentation. My first road block was when I realized that these Chrome Extension were written in JavaScript. I did not know JavaScript but thanks to my education in computer science it allowed be to establish a base. This allowed me to leverage any language and use it.

Once I got the basics, I started to develop an app called Reconsider. This extension would search for Amazon prices and convert them to workday prices. An example would be if an item costed $100.00 then instead of displaying the price it would display 4.5 days of work to pay this item. This would allow the shopper to see how much hard work it would take to purchase that item that they might not need. 

Download Work in Progress

Status: Under Development

One the best experience at California State University, Northridge I went through was my senior project.  Project Condor was a Multi-UAV Simulator software that was created from scratch. From:

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    qDebug() << "Hello, Project Condor!";
}

Our team started with the Jira and followed the Scrum Agile approach. We created an SRS and met with our customer to gather functional and non-functional requirements. We would have 2 week sprints and keep track of our burn down. We met every month with out product owner to give updates.  I took on the responsibility of Scrum Master. I loved the leadership I took and being the point of contact. when a teammate was blocked by completing their task my responsibility was to unblock and continue work on our burn-down.

On Project Condor we worked with NASA AMES and the US ARMY to implement features that they might need in order to utilize our software.  Condor was built  to aid Researchers in observing pilots while they controlled UAVs. Usually, a pilot can control one UAV but how many can a pilot control at once? What is the limit? What type of UAV? These are all question Project Condor is suppose to answer. 

At the CSUN Senior showcase we presented both a poster and a presentation to a panel of industry experts. We were honored to receive first place in the poster competition and presentation competition. 

At California State University, Northridge I took a computer security class. Computer Security has always been a hobby of mine. I always listen to Security Now religiously. Security became a hobby when I owned and hosted my onetechtip.com website and my website got compromised. At the time I had very little knowledge about security so I was forced to wipe everything and start over. This experience then fueled my fire to learn about security. 

On the Security Now Podcast I learned about a password manager called LastPass. Lastpass helps you manage and produce strong passwords. It auto fills passwords so you do not have to remember all your unique long complicated strong passwords per each website. I quickly adapted this service and have been using it since. A question arose Security Now Podcast, "How secure is LastPass?". This fueled my interest to listen closely to the co-host Steve Gibson review the technology. I listened closely and it fascinated me.

While I was taking the computer security class at CSUN I was instructed to write a paper on Security. I choose to re-analyze the technology and write a paper.  

LastPass Paper Download

While at Sonos and being part of the team I observed some repetitive tasks.This was a waste of time that could have been used to do other tests. I decided to implement a desktop program in Java that with a push of a button could run a set of commands. These commands could reset, reflash, restart, update, gather properties of the devices that where under test. This would save the individuals time and effort to verify devices states. I later went to present this at the Sonos Hack Week Competition. My software solution won in its category as the best software internal tool. In the first 10 months it has been used over 4,000 times! 

My one internship at Sonos was filled with technical challenges. Most of the technologies used at Sonos I had never been exposed too. Like most jobs I had to learn on the job. I started as a Software Test Engineer Intern. I would go though test plans and verify functionality was according to the specifications. I was usually found myself in a command line environment in Linux. After about three months my manager observed that I was good and coding. He gave me the chance to prove myself and I gained the position title of Software Automation Test Engineer Intern. Here I worked on testing the Sonos speaker UPnP API's. All scripts were written in Python which I had to teach myself over the weekend on Lynda.com. At Sonos I was exposed to the Agile Scrum Methodology. I love the structure and code review process which helped me learn about my strength and weakness.  

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As part of the AIMS2 Computer Science Cohort I had the chance to work with a team of four and work on a Raspberry PI board. This project would provide a instructor a way to gather information from their students during lecture. The Raspberry PI would serve a website where they would vote and analyze the professors methods of teaching the material. Class Pi, the official name of the project, was presented at the Southwestern Region of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges and won 1st place in the poster presentations. 

Class Pi Poster

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Abstract – ClassPi

           The purpose of ClassPi is immediately obvious to all college students – creating a better system of communication between the instructor and the student.  There are countless cases in which students are unable to grasp the concept of a topic, or instructors cannot gauge the level of understanding of their students.  ClassPi serves as the mediator, to bridge the gap between instructor and student.  ClassPi allows the instructor to post up questions about his topic for the class to see.  Students are able to respond to those questions and give feedback about the instructor’s topic.  Students’ answers are made immediately visible to the instructor by means of graphs.  This provides the instructor with fresh, live information regarding students’ understanding of the course material.  ClassPi runs on a Raspberry Pi server, which provides an ample amount of mobility.  Students are able to access ClassPi via WiFi enabled devices. Features for instructors include Instructor View, where they are able to upload questions before the start of the class, to see the results of the quiz, and to see how focused the students are on the topic.  Student features include a quiz-taking page, and a feedback field.  These features in ClassPi help modernize the traditional classroom to new technologies, which will result in better student-instructor communication and overall positively impact education.

​Ever since I started programming my main focus has been software. I did not want to do anything with hardware until I started to see small hardware projects people did. This grew on me. I saw so many cool projects with development boards and what sold me was that it was cheaper and easier than I thought. One day I looked into the Arduino and was amazed on what you could do. It was like Lego's for adults! I stepped on it and purchased a full kit with sensors, wires, boards, solder iron and other little electronics. So this is how my side project started and it is still in progress but I am teaching myself a lot of new things. 

I have always liked music as an energy booster, calmer or just to have fun. I am not a musician but I like doing projects around music that enhance the experience.  One day I was roaming the internet when I found many articles on Dancing Leds on www.instructables.com. I had been looking for a small project to do. I decided to build dancing LEDs with music but with a long led strip. I used a 16.4ft RGB Color Changing Kit with LED Flexible Strip, Controller with 44-button Remote and Power Supply.  I used the transistor to alter the voltage based on the audio coming in and then power up the LEDs. I could have not done this project alone but recieved helped from me EE friend Noe Gonzalez. 

SendMe is an Android application that  will provide the user to send there location to anybody with a smartphone or access to the internet. There is always a case were the user may be in a obscure location and needs to send directions to a friend to be located. Also some users may not be as map savvy as others. This app will allow the users to send their location. A second function that SendMe has is the ability to "check-in" if you have Foursqaure, Google Plus and or Facebook. 

Status: On Hold