CV-ish Stuff
Education
I’m likely going to pursue a masters after I get a few years of work experience related to IT/development. Thinking of Georgia Tech’s OMSCS.
- Bachelors of Science, Computer Science, from Western Governors University (graduated in July 2024)
- Low Voltage/Telecommunications Training Cohort, by Per Scholas with TEKsystems (from April to May 2022)
- Associates of Arts, Liberal Arts with Communication Studies Concentration, from Northern Virginia Community College (graduated in May 2022)
Certifications
I’ve obtained the CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+ (links to Credly page) certifications, as well as LPI Linux Essentials and Axelos’ ITIL certifications.
I want to obtain more, but my approach will be different; I will take a much longer time studying for them since I aim to go in depth with the technologies and not just study for the exam. Will do both of AWS and Azure’s entry level certifications to start off. I’m also interested in doing Red Hat since I learned to love Linux when I was developing, so I will try to do that down the road.
Relevant Experience
This section is short since I’ve been in the food service industry since 2018 and as of November 2024, just started a career within IT/technology. It’s been good for finishing school without debt, though! That was my main concern.
Currently, I am an Associate Solutions Architect @ Amazon Web Services (AWS) in their Tech U program.
From food service, I picked up some very useful customer service skills, and by proxy, communication. Working with a team to crank out a hundred drinks in an hour non-stop forces you to focus. Pressure? Don’t know her. Actually I do; she’s my bestie.
Since I was a barista most of the time in that industry, I’ve also learned a lot about tea and coffee!
You’ll see most of my technical experience on this blog.
- My CS Capstone that dealt with image classification worked with Python, Numpy, Pandas, TensorFlow, Keras, Streamlit, Docker, and Hugging Face to create a solution.
- The first “capstone” at app/Academy Open, from when I dabbled in web development, was a very simple static website.
And there are some projects on my GitHub:
- A Java/JavaFX (ancient!) CRUD application for an appointment scheduling app.
- A simple nearest-neighbor solution for a delivery route problem.
Looking to add more… once I figure out what I want to create… I honestly love data and I want to do more with data analytics, so I’ve been slowly working on a Data Analyst course on Codecademy. Programming-wise, with the abundance of business software, I think I will take on something that combines my talents and try out game development! That’s the very thing that made me want to start programming.
But enough of that… let’s look at what makes me, me!
Current and Past Passion Projects
Aistrex (forever ongoing)
2016-now
Skills learned: documentation, file management, markdown, research (you’ll never know random topic you have to write about in detail…)
The idea for this popped up at the height of my Percy Meets ArcheAge blog (shown above); at that time, I was watching an anime called The Asterix War and joined a Dungeons and Dragons group at the local comic book store, which is where I came up with the initial name for this project: “Aster-X”.
During school lunch, I had an idea to create a list of classes and their traits, much like the D&D Player Handbook had. I came up with 21 of them, most of them similar to the ones in the D&D Player Handbook. After that, I created multiple versions of the “background lore” for the world, but it wasn’t until mid-2018 that I found a version that I liked, for I’d been busy with school. I created a wiki (now defunct) on Miraheze, but due to their dormancy policy, it got removed since I became inactive for a while.
It wasn’t until mid-2018 that I created all of the characters that I have now. I moved that summer, and I was bored, so I began drawing a lot and tried to have an attempt at finally writing a full-length story. This story would originally be called “Mygan-X”, but the original plot I intended did not provide enough substance for a whole novel.
Near the end of 2020, I did finish the novel. Around April-June 2020, I finally found an exposition for the story that I liked. An exposition that could lead the protagonist on a longer adventure. This novel became titled Saviors.
I’ve done a lot more worldbuilding and character exploration thanks to that book. I’m working on another book, set within the same universe, called Konvert.
Out of the passion projects listed, this one is probably the least “technical” since it’s mainly been research, creative writing, and artwork.
I have to admit I’ve lost a good amount of the initial worldbuilding when my wiki hosted on Miraheze was deleted, but that taught me that I should’ve saved my work elsewhere in the event something else failed. Organization-wise, keeping track of all of the ideas that pop up in my head is a lot of work, so I try to jot them down and keep them in their appropriate sections I have in my Obsidian vault.
Percy Meets ArcheAge (archived)
2015-2017
Skills learned: CMS (WordPress), time management, graphic design, video-editing (Vegas; check out my channel for AA here!), documentation, interacting with the community
Percy Meets ArcheAge was the blog I kept while playing the game ArcheAge. I started it in 2015, right before I began high school.
You can find this relic here: https://percymeetsarcheage.wordpress.com/
It started out as a diary or journal of my own activities, but upon finding out about the Korean website (where the game was first published), I wanted to share update information with the English-speaking community. I did not know any Korean other than the writing system, but by checking dictionaries and cross-referencing parts of the game, I was able to provide some of the information.
I often responded to comments and player emails as these were often requests for more information about the Korean version of the game. I also participated in the Trion Worlds Creator Program; my content was geared more towards updates so I wasn’t an official “creator”, but perhaps a broader, more prominent member of the community (which garnered both good and bad attention, haha).
I began going to community college in 2018, so I couldn’t keep up with the game anymore. I no longer post on there since as of 2024, the NA/EU version of the game has gone offline.
This is what first sparked my interest in development. One day, I had a dream to make a video game (which was the premise for my Aistrex project). After I looked at the files I extracted for ArcheAge, I was intrigued by what was there: all of the models for objects and characters, images, databases, and more.
Yearbook (completed)
2016-2017
Skills learned: Photography (DSLR), InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, copywriting, journalism, project management, a little bit of social media management (as we used it to promote book sales)
In high school, I joined the yearbook club. Our school did not have a robust staff, but I found the work fun, although sometimes, tiring. Creating 200+ pages of content is tough work, but very rewarding when you see it get printed out and bound into a book!
From 2017-2018, I had unenrolled from public school and took the rest of high school online. I still helped out with the yearbook club. I had more time when I did this, and it was a rewarding experience.
Why did I make this site?
I aim to make this site a bridge between a portfolio of my work and a blog. The blog will mainly be a record of my IT/coding journey, but I’ll mention some details about the Aistrex project I have within some posts. I plan to give Aistrex it’s own website down the road because there’s so much that I want to share about it.
