Life Background
I'll start with a little bit about myself. I used to be a logger for up until about 3 or so years ago and I loved it. It was a family business that my family started way back in the 40s. But that love sorta got lost. I didn't think I would ever quit logging but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like there was more to life for me out there some where. So I left the logging industry and got a job at the local hospital.
The job at the hospital was a different change of pace and it was easy going. But it was just a job to make ends meet. It was about 3 months into that where I decided what direction I wanted to go. I watched a video that was made by Network Chuck on YouTube that was about AWS. That video was the start of my whole AWS journey. Every little free time I had I spent studying.
I had to sacrifice a lot of time to take notes and study, but in the end I ended up getting 3 AWS certifications. I got the certified cloud practitioner, the solutions architect, and the solutions architect professional certifications.
By the time I got those certifications the hospital I was working at downsized and I was let go. So as I write this I'm on Unemployment. You can put me in that crowd of maybe if I get these certifications that would get me a job. There maybe instances where certifications alone might get you a job but that is few and far between in my opinion. I had to decide what's the best thing to put on my resume to just show that I'm serious. I had to tell myself I have to much time into getting those certifications to give up. So I found the cloud resume challenge.........
Cloud Resume Challenge
The cloud resume challenge was created by Forrest Brazeal and on the surface the challenge might seem easy but when you dig real deep you realize there's more to it then just creating a website on a cloud service of you choice. To summarize the challenge you not only do have to create a website of your resume but you have to create a API and you have to fetch that API somewhere on your site. That API has to invoke a lambda function that writes a value to a DynamoDB table. Did I forget to mention that you have to use a infrastructure as code to automate the whole process? and then you have to create a CI/CD pipeline using GitHub and GitHub actions.
I remember in my challenge reference book that Forrest stated there were going to be times where you might have 10-15 tabs open trying to research the issue your currently facing, and boy was he right. Some of the issues that I faced were the dreaded CORS policy when I was trying to fetch my API. Then I had to figure out how to parse that response and make it visible on my site. Also had to figure out how the lambda function was going to talk to the DynamoDB table. Long story short there was some situations where I had to do a lot of testing and research.
The infrastructure of code tool that I used was terraform. I Had to learn how terraform worked and how it works with AWS. Terraform is a very powerful tool that is widely popular because it works with multiple cloud providers. To transform all of my architecture into terraform and to see terraform apply all of those resources was truly a site to see.
This image below gives a rough idea of what resources were used.
The Ending
I wanted to close out this blog with a message for the people that want to take the challenge. This challenge will test your patience, this challenge will frustrate you but you can't give up. This is where I think Forrest Brazeal does a great job of making you figure out stuff on your on so you can actually learn it. You have to keep in mind that this will probably be best thing you can do for your resume. Yea certifications are great and they look good but you have to bolster those certifications with some hands on projects. I highly recommend visiting the Cloud Resume Site for more information.
Links
Special Thanks
I would like Forrest Brazeal for creating a tough challenge. I would also like to thank everyone that helped me in the discord and to those that I reached out on LinkedIn.
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