Situation:

Mounting technical debt led to semi-automated processes without clear explanation or purpose, and no clear next steps or direction. Because these legacy systems and processes are so integrated with critical business workflows when problems arise, technical teams are not empowered to take action. Instead what should be a simple update will turn into an all hands on deck meeting about risk and what should have been done before.

Problem:

The lack of Development and Test environments and no SMEs to define core acceptance tests. Processes that were presented as being automated were anything but. The skills and knowledge required to maintain the current system were not adequately documented or sought out during the hiring process. The process was the metaphoric equivalent of the copy machine held together by duct tape and bubble gum. As long as no-one breathed to hard on it, it would be okay.

Solution:

I introduced a DjangoREST API as a micro service running behind AWS Lambda to standardize how data is taken into the automation process. Because this endpoint functioned as a general gateway for data after receiving a post it would save its contents in S3 as JSON data files holding submission data as well as paths to any attachments associated with it. From there a scheduled on a separate system receives the handoff and formats the contents to be stored in its final location.

The proof of concept was presented to the clients, additional notifications related had to be implemented to reassure stakeholders the process was still behaving as expected without the need for human involvement.

Result:

Reduction in human error.

I let a friend convince me to participate in a local 5K hosted by his organization—that race turned out to be tougher than advertised. I crossed the finish line first overall. While the official times may suggest a comfortable margin, the reality was very different. Once you take the lead, the pressure to hold it can be intense, and every step to the finish demands focus and determination.

This marked my first, first overall, win; making it a very rewarding achievement. …sweet victory

Rebuilt the old Java tiling engine in Python, just to see if I could. Because a lot of the math had already been worked out, it was not to difficult. The means were different, but the methods to calculate and render accurately are still the same. As an added bonus/challenge I took a stab at hexagonal tiling and design. My love of video games made this rewarding on such a deep level. The next logical step here would be to make a few small scale games if I can just find the inspiration.

Cold plunging was a craze that swept through the fitness community and got a foothold in social media space. Even though trends can gather widespread popularity and acceptance the results may vary or be fudged. So I had to see for myself if this was something I could benefit from.

My first times cold plunging yielded benefits very early on. Aches and pains from marathon training were winning the battle. There are only so many hours in a day, if a certain amount of time is spent training then a certain amount of time will have to be spent recovering. One of the ideas in training is being more efficient and effective with your timing. I believe as an athlete you should also be efficient and effective with the time you spent recovering. I.E if you're dedicating X hours sleep, Y Hours to other passive recovery methods and Z hours to active recovery methods. How do we get the most out of each? I found one of the answers to be cold plunging. It helped me deal with swelling and got me to relaxed meditative states.

I started out using a local wellness and recovery companies cold plunging service, that enabled me to run longer and train harder. Which meant I needed to plunge more to mitigate the wear and tear, before an injury sidelined me. This had the potential to be very expensive but the cost/benefit was still in a good place so far. This prompted the thought "why don't I just do it myself?" If I can plunge as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted for however long I wanted I thought I could squeeze more of a benefit from the equation. So based on what I knew about the process and with a little additional research I built my own fully functional cold plunge. And my friends let me test it out on them.... or used the fact that I had it to their advantage.

Need: Better way to Deal with the Wear and Tear of Running

Solution: Cold Plunging

Secondary Need: Cheaper more convinient way to cold Plunge.

Secondary Solution: DiY Cold Plunging

Impact: Can sustain higher Mileage with no physical problems. Although running 112 miles in a week takes time away from so many other things. Proposed solution... figure out how to become a professional lol

Finishing a marathon in under 3 hours has been one of the most rewarding running goals because it was the result of dedication, discipline and perseverance. No matter how much you prepare you still end up experiencing setbacks and adversity during the race. This distance will test your mental resilience and ability to fight through discomfort. I feel that the marathon is a great anology for life where that deep sense of commitment and determination can turn challenges into success.

Situation:

The organization finds itself trapped on old infrastructure because of high coupling, low cohesion and mountains of technical debt related to short term decision making. That reality made patching and upgrading systems not only expensive, but time consuming as well. Addressing bugs or applying fixes could take multiple weeks from the time a change started to additional days troubleshooting outside of the change window. Disaster recovery was also more of an art than a science, so unplanned outages would plague the organization and institution in ways I had never seen before.

Problem:

A majority of the legacy systems were old enough that vendors would not offer full support. Also the way virtualization was handled meant only a couple of engineers at a time would have the required knowledge to bring a system back to business as usual.

Solution:

Cloud-native development was already sweeping through the industry, making tech stacks everywhere more flexible and less tied to underlying hardware. Using a lift and shift strategy as a baby step to help align the organization with the goal of modernizing, applications and services that were once hosted through on premise legacy hardware was hosted in the cloud. From there I was able to decouple and remove dependencies from these applications with the cloud services offered by AWS. Any software with major dependencies were spun off from the large cluster and run in containers that supported its unique requirements. Software that could be upgraded was placed on track to be upgraded/patched tested than deployed. What started out as a large legacy cluster became smaller micro services that were handled by the respective SMEs and dealt with over time.

Result:

Through my contributions to the Web Modernization effort I introduced improved resource utilization, lifecycle management and improvements to web disaster recovery procedures by leveraging Infrastructure as Code (IaC), containers and Orchestration. These contributions led to our tech stacks being more scalable, flexible, portable and cohesive.

Situation:

There was no standard set for marketing, organizations and departments had a Wild West approach to directing client traffic to desired URL. Some methods appeared more successful than others, but there was no way to tell which worked from the ones that were ineffective.

Problem:

The organization needs to overcome the barrier that separates digital and physical media. Physical media is more effective when it is simple, memorable and trustworthy. Digital media tends to use URLs which were long, difficult to deal with and did not communicate professionalism.

Solution:

A bespoke PHP application that enabled branding and analytics in ways that were previously unavailable to the Organization. By Leveraging AWS Cloud Services, ECS & RDBMS, I was able to provide the organization with a solution they could use to fill their analytics vacuum. This application collected data points that shed additional light on usage patterns such as user location, time of day, URL referrer and types of devices used when interacting with a URL.

Result:

The URL shortener bridged the gap between the tangible infrastructure that makes up the internet and the intangible nature of peoples need for simplicity, clarity and trust. Within the first year this application registered over a million uses and had widespread adoption into marketing workflows.

I enjoy the challenge of isometric tiling because it is an art that at a minimum requires percision. Once you've mastered being percise the sky is the limit. Isometric tiling can be challenging because it requires careful alignment and consistent angles to maintain an illusion of three dimensional space, on a flat surface. Small measurement errors in the angles or length of the edges can distort the overall pattern and shatter the illusion due to the lack of symmetry. Maintaining seamless repitition across large areas is also difficult becasue a variety of shapes and layers must fit together perfectly without gapping or overlapping. The combination of both technical and visual demands make isometric tiling an art of patience and percision