Cloud Resume Challenge - Days 1-3 (up, up & away)
Tags: aws, cloudresumechallenge, showdev
Published: 2022-06-10 20:38:04

Day 1: I can't do this....  After deciding to jump into the challenge, I knock out the domain registration easy peasy with AWS & Route53. So far, so good.

Next, I start looking at webpage templates since I know that will be one of the hardest things for me to knock out.  I'm not a web coder/designer/site builder, so this is way out of my comfort zone.  As I start to look for templates, cause I'm not gonna re-invent the wheel, don't have the time nor the skillset, I find some free ones that look really nice. That's when the panic steps in....

I know it's as simple as changing the content, and at a basic HTML level, no problem - I can reverse engineer that with the knowledge I picked up 20-some years ago (sheesh....). Where I panic is seeing the challenge suggest/recommend using CSS and JavaScript and then not knowing what that really means or how it's used in the page code. I mean, I know that CSS is style stuff and JavaScript does stuff - but that wasn't a thing way back when - so I have ZERO experience with that. _(what have I started, how do I do this, I don't ..., I can't...)_

By this time, it's late, I'm tired and hungry and I call it a day.

Day 2: After a rough night of poor sleep due to brain churn over this challenge, I put on my big boy shorts (I work from home, no pants for me!) and sit down to re-evaluate. I decide that the templates I liked really aren't for me - too flashy, not my style, wouldn't be able to explain the code nor how it works if I had to.... So I decide to borrow a simpler design from someone who has already completed the challenge. His [page](https://www.dsresume.com/) is simple, informative, looks nice, and is the kind of page you'd expect from an engineer and not a web designer. I also decide to side-bar with someone from work to help me understand CSS enough to know what's going on with the content.

I spend several hours going through this new page layout. Doing some Googling to learn about YUI formatting/syntax, editing code to see what's what, learning how to use [FontAwesome](https://fontawesome.com/) for icons, and trying to shoehorn in code snippets from a completely different webpage layout that's using a completely different - well, everything.... Felt like I was in a self-directed 8hr HTML/CSS Webpage building workshop.

By the end of the day, I'd made some serious progress in my resume web page layout and content. I'm feeling much, much better about this - dare I say happy even! _(although that's likely to change when I get to the Python and Lambda parts in a few days)_ I have a page with working links, with a layout I like, and a lot of content changed to reflect my own info.  Just need to finish off the integration of the different layout, then this part is done.  My task list for the next day - finish web page code, setup this blog, and work on S3 bucket for the static web page.

Day 3: Off to a slower start, stupid work getting in the way.... But had my meeting with someone who actually worked with CSS, so learned a good bit from him about how CSS works and understanding the syntax for the file. Then more work. Then back to the integration, which partially works - gonna need more time and maybe some help with that. Since I was at a wall with the integration, moved on to the blog part of the day - which - as you can see - is going smoothly. Which brings you up to date to this exact point in time. 

Before calling it a day, I'll probably edit some more content & play around with re-doing the S3 bucket based on info I found elsewhere for a project to setup a static S3 website. I feel the need to get a little more accomplished today since I'm on another roll..

Wherever you are, whatever you do - enjoy it!