So I’m finally done! I’ve finished building my website. I’ll do my best to keep it updated going forward. It was definitely a fun and interesting project, from picking the domain name registrar and hosting provider to migrating my code and implementing all the planned features, it was a fun and sometimes challenging endeavor. My first big task was setting up my hosting solution: Amazon Web Services.

Since I already work at Amazon in a call center capacity, it made perfect sense to try and use their service as my hosting provider. I am hoping this may help when I apply for a programming position at Amazon after I graduate. It seemed like AWS had way more services than what I needed, but this has repeatedly turned out to be a good thing during development. I also could tell that it was gonna be fairly complicated for me to try and figure out this summer along with my work and classes, but I’m glad I chose it. There’s so much stuff I can use at will in my code now! For example, I have an EC2 instance running the website. I also have a Git repo with CodeCommit, and CodeDeploy to push the new code to the server. I also have the site set up to send me a text message whenever someone needs help with their computer! I’m just now scratching the surface.

I learned a lot about AWS, including IAM roles and users, EC2 instances, S3, CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, SNS, Route 53, and probably more I’m forgetting. Migrating the code was fairly simple enough, but it did require some effort getting it all to work. I must say I’m pretty happy with the results. Let me know what you think!

Besides the website stuff, I had a pretty productive summer. I took 12 hours at DSCC and got out with 2 As and a B. Now all I have left is two semesters at UTM and I’m done! It’s awesome to be this close to graduating. At the end of the summer we took a trip to Destin that was pretty fun. It was kinda weird because about halfway through, I realized this was probably the last vacation I would take with my parents. Of course, you can’t ever really leave your work behind if you’re a techie! It’s bound to follow you. During the trip I had to finish reinstalling all my operating systems and programs on my laptop after Apple repaired it. Then of course my phone started acting up, and I had to restore it like 4 times. Eventually I got it working, but man I did not want to deal with that on vacation! One of the unfortunate side effects of this is that I didn’t get to take many pictures because my phone was often in the room downloading stuff. But it was fairly rainy, so it’s not like I missed too much, I guess.

Classes at UTM for the fall have started. I’m taking 4 upper division computer science classes with a philosophy class as well. This semester I’m taking my senior design class. For this class I’ll be working on a semester-long project. Then near the end of the semester I’ll take my project and present it at the ACM conference in Gatlinburg, TN. My group’s current plan is an idea I came up with over the summer due to a very common occurrence at home: trying to keep Dad from getting mad at me!

We have a fridge outside in the garage at home that we use mainly to keep drinks, and for more freezer space. Well this fridge sometimes will not shut all the way. Sometimes when you shut the fridge door, the freezer door opens. Then we come out the next day to a floor full of water, a fridge or freezer full of warm food, and a very (understandably) angry dad. My thought was why not just throw a Raspberry Pi on it and some sensors. Run a web server on the Pi and figure out a way to send me a call/text/email if the door is open for an extended period of time, or if the temperature drops. That is my senior design project. Eventually I’ll get a few of them and connect them with my AWS account and use an EC2 server to host a status page for all the connected Pis. Hopefully I can code something so I can get realtime updates to the temperature sensors and door sensors on the page. I’m really excited to get going on this!