Biography
Personal Interests
I like lifting weights (what some people call 'Olympic weight lifting'), yoga, mountain biking, gardening, cooking, and my spending time with my friends and family. I tend to frequent a few coffee shops and breweries, however I prefer not to drink very often nowadays. In the past I've also made (and even sold) some artwork - over the last few years my creative energy has been required in software - eventually I'd like to host some artwork here.
I made a commitment to having few screen based interests as I would rather not be attached to one at all times, so I don't watch much television, any movies, have stopped playing video games, and limit my time spent staring at my phone. I have considered content creation, however I am hesitant to get started with it as it would maximize my screen time.
I have never viewed working for a 'company' as the end goal - rather I view it as a stepping stone into my own entrepreneurial ventures and relative financial freedom where I might explore my interests to the end of gaining further finance.
My Experience with Technologies
During University
I first found my interest in computers as a young teenager, where I played around jail-breaking my iPod, basic browser stuff using HTML sheets and java-script, and more. Eventually, I forgot about this as I had other interests (principally music and sport).
About two years into college (while getting my applied mathematics degree) I had to take a class in Matlab. I found Matlab to be very easy to pick up and initially quite enjoyed it and found myself to be a bit ahead of my peers - however there was one very big downside - the expensive licensing recurring for Matlab made it inconvenient.
To this end, I decided that it would make more sense to learn python as it did not have the aforementioned limitations. Python was easy to learn, get started with, and build basic scripts with. Further, I liked that I did not have to use the Matlab IDE. Eventually, I took a course in python at UNM where I gained some more formal knowledge of 'coding' and software by taking a course in python. Ironically the class was to be about matlab initially (and I was therefore dreading wasting my time) and then switched to python, to my delight.
I further honed my skills working as a research assistant by building and programming drivers for devices to record experimental data consisting of magnetic (vector) fields as well as plotting and maintaining this data.
In spring 2020 I decided to leave graduate school after only one semester as it was silly to pay the universities exorbitant fees for online classes. I did not have to pay directly for school; however, it was considered to be part of my pay as a researcher. I was disillusioned about school and would rather have the money directly at my disposal. At this point, I had decided that software was my most marketable skill and that I wanted to go forth and make a living.
After University
For a while I'd entertained the idea of taking a deep dive into this subject matter as I found it compelling, entertaining, and useful. For these reasons it was easy to put in the work and learn.
I took the time to teach myself about the development and deployment of web applications. At this time, I learned how to use libraries like flask and sqlalchemy, databases like mysql and mongodb, deployment tools such as ansible, docker, and kubernetes by putting together a portfolio to have proof of ability. Said code isn't available publicly, however if you want to see it ask me for a link and odds are that you'll be provided access.
At the age of 24, I was living off what little saving I had from college in the cheapest house I could find, making money by working for my land-lord, and without a car (I had never owned a car at this point). The pressure to succeed in acquiring finance was dire - A continued to accumulate skills by completing a number of small projects while I applied for jobs. I was shocked when I got calls back, but the job offers were at first less than appealing.
Finally, after rejecting some not so great job offers, I landed an interview with Amazon. I made it to final interviews, however in the end the jobs shoes were too big for a first-timer such as myself. Later, on the other side of the table, I found that I likely would have not hired myself with my level of ability and experience at the time I interviewed with Amazon.
To say the least this was discouraging. I had wasted an incredibly valuable opportunity by being too green. In spite of this I decided to keep pushing. Eventually, I did get a job.
Mountain Vector
I accepted a job offer from 'Mountain Vector Energy'. On my first day the CTO at the time was to return from his month long break and we were to begin developing a new application. However, he failed to show up and never did. As a result, I took what he'd left (a database schema and a very minimal prototype) and built up and deployed an HTTP API to help us build out the new platform which we later began to call Cufflink v3. For reference, the API I built was written in python and supported by the following libraries:
FastAPI- A type hint powered HTTP API framework.SQLAlchemy- An SQL ORM for python.Pydantic- A replacement for pythondataclassusing type hints.
This API primarily talked to MySQL and had some scripts for running data pipelines.
For the first six months myself and the project manager for this project were hardly holding the project together (we had two additional engineers, even greener than I at the time, who required extensive assistance). After prototyping, the API I'd developed was in acceptable state (tested, with pipelines for CI, and working on a prototype URL for our UI developer) I decided that it would be worth while to deploy with a more reproducible and scalable means.
To this end, I designed and implemented an actual production infrastructure using terraform. This had quite a learning curve, as I'd never worked in depth with azure (or any cloud platform) before, neither had I worked with terraform. However, with some research, I managed to get it all working and made it reasonably secure (later third party security assessments indicated so). This consisted of a MySQL database, kubernetes cluster, and a container registry.
With kubernetes at my disposal, I then wrote up helm charts for the services we had at the time to make it trivial to deploy services in a coordinated way. This went well and I had a great deal of fun with this. Some time around this point (after about 8 months working for MVE) we decided to cut the aforementioned two developers and hired replacements. Hiring was fun and I gained some insight now being on the other side of the interview table. I was responsible for performing technical interviews. We hired two excellent engineers who made my job significantly easier.
Until I left, we continued to improve the software. I did not like that the sales team (one person at the time) never let up on the software team, as it came across as micromanaging when they had failed in their job. It appeared that we were developing features for customers who did not exist. I stood up for the software team because it was unreasonable to continue as such. Soon after this, we mutually agreed to part ways.
After this, I for the first had some freedom to enjoy my life as a result of having my car (which I paid off in 14 months) and some money. I am taking this time to refine my skills, develop this site, and develop captura. To read more about this subject matter, please see the links on the home page.