Last updated on August 31, 2022
I stopped updating here for a while, for a number of reasons. First, because for the Cloud Resume Challenge, this needed to be an html site. Which is fine, but updating became a pain. I just converted the site to WordPress, so I can blog more easily. I also used the opportunity to try out AWS Lightsail. It works just fine, and for folks who aren’t familiar with AWS, it would definitely make standing up a website much simpler. It’s about the equivalent of web hosting on any other hosting platform. I’ll stick with it for now, because there are more interesting things to do than manage my website. If it gets more expensive, or I need more features, I’ll probably switch to an EC2 instance.
The bigger news, though, is that I have a new job! I’m now a Senior Cloud Engineer at Mindgrub Technologies. I was hired mid-April, and started the first week of May. It’s been a whirlwind since then. I thought I was rapidly picking up new things before! I’ve built and modified a number of Infrastructure as Code projects using AWS CDK, built and updated quite a few CI/CD pipelines (mostly using GitLab CI, but also Github Actions and AWS CodePipeline and CodeDeploy), built Azure Functions (similar to AWS Lambda), helped manage a k8s instance on Google Kubernetes Engine, and learned SO MUCH about how WordPress and Drupal work. I’m about four months in now, and honestly, I’m having a lot of fun. I mean, it’s still a job, and there are stresses with any job, but I’m excited to get working every day.
Where does that leave the Cloud Resume Challenge? Well…..I don’t know. Ultimately, the point of doing the CRC for me was to show potential employers that I could handle real world cloud related scenarios. In that sense, it absolutely was a success. I was able to talk about the Challenge in interviews, explain the process, and even get into details about where I’d struggled and what I’d learned. I had more than just the AWS Solution Architect Associate certification, I had some hands on experience. Now, just a few months later, I have WAY more experience. So, I don’t know if I need the Cloud Resume Challenge any more. There’s part of me that would still like to finish it, but most of my mental energy is needed for all the new things coming my way in my new job. So for now….it’s just on the back burner. At some point, I’ll probably come back, realize I know how to finish the last tasks quickly, and be done. But even if I don’t, it fine. I’m doing the job I wanted it to help me get.
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