Hello everyone, not much to report this month, but otherwise I felt like I’d been too quiet, so here we are.

Improving Health

After the two episodes of hospitalisation in late March, I eventually got seen by both the usual diabetic nurse and also the endocrinologist at Basingstoke hospital. As far as the diabetes is going, after all these years, I finally have it fully under control! So that’s something to celebrate!

As far the hip goes, I was referred to a specialist here in Newbury and he thinks it could be a labral tear rather than arthritis. He’s referred me for an MRI on the 15th of June to confirm it one way or another. If it is, then at least it’s something that can fixed, so fingers crossed.

Check out my new walking stick though!

my walking stick

Learning and Technical Stuff!

But anyway, I don’t want to turn this into an old-man-moans-about-health blog. Given the state of the job market, I’ve been keen for some time to augment my skills and renew my certifications as they all expired in Covid times. So, every week day, I’m spending an hour studying to renew my AWS Certified Solutions Architect (associate) using a training course from Udemy.

After I renew that one, I’ll then shift to renewing my AWS Certified Sysops Administrator (associate), before going for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer (professional), and then maybe the AWS Certified AI - Practitioner. I’ve got courses lined up for all of these.

I then use another hour going for a Professional Certificate in Computer Science for Python Programming from Harvard University on edX.

On the weekends, I’m working to finish the DevSecOps Bootcamp. To sort-of give myself a lab environment for this one, I’ve built a couple of microservices using Python and Flask. In just 3 days I’ve:

  • Created a very simple set of Python Flask microservices and a html/javascript front-end with simple json data structures for data. Then, modified the code to connect to a PostgreSQL database, create the schema, and work from that instead.

  • Got the PostgreSQL database running under docker compose, ensured both microservices were using it fully, made the error handling much more rigorous, stopped the apps from just printing errors and instead using normal Python error handlers, converted the error output from plain text to JSON, added both a /status endpoint (that makes sure the database is accessible), and a /metrics endpoint that exposes metrics in Prometheus compatible format.

  • Containerised both microservices, and also the front-end web page under nginx, and put the lot into docker-compose. Prettied up the code with Black and Pylint.

Check out a screenshot! This is the front-end web page and it talks to both an order and products microservice via APIs.

screenshot of the microservices

Still to do:

  • Enable Tracing, setup a pre-commit hook run check before committing code, build some CI/CD, add SAST and DAST security scanning, add dependency scanning, devise a proper testing strategy, build a plain yaml manifest to run it in Kubernetes, convert that to a helm chart, use some sort of data/schema management tool like Liquibase. Add a Grafana dashboard, and maybe deal with secrets properly. I’d also like to setup proper authentication and authorisation with the Keycloak system I have running in my home lab.

As an aside

I re-read the above section, and wonder why I have impostor syndrome sometimes? Such mind-boggling technical stuff!

Travel

We’ve booked a trip to the US in August. Gonna spend a day or two in Nashville, Tennessee, visit the Grand Ole Opre and Music Row, then drive down to Odessa, Texas and spend a week with my family there.

And Last But Never Least - Work

My current contract is due to end on the 20th of June and no renewal’s been approved yet. I’m expecting to be extended, but even if I am, various conversations suggest that it’ll be the last one - and end in September. Which means, I’ll need to immediately start looking for a new role in about 2 weeks.

If anyone’s looking for a DevOps Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, or Cloud Engineer, please do get in touch. I have a lot of experience with AWS, Azure, and GCP. I’m also very experienced with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and Ansible just to name a few. Mostly I’m looking for outside IR35 contracts, but for the right role, I might consider a permanent position. Frankly I keep thinking it would be nice to have a strong lead or technical management role again.

As always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Chris