Searching

It has been a few months since my last post and I do have a small update.

Sadly, I have not found a new role and company to call home since Blizzard; however, I remain optimistic in my search. It is a difficult market right now and many of us are trying to figure out how to navigate it. My hope for myself, and others in the same boat, is to find our way back to stability soon.

In the meantime, I have looked into volunteer positions with a couple of budding game studios. I have joined both Astrarium Games as a C# Programmer and LowKeyHighEntertainment as a Back-End Developer. So far everyone has been very kind and gracious! I am really looking forward to learning new technologies and diving more into gameplay engineering. 😁

As for my personal life, it still remains a little on the rough side. Shortly after my last post, my house ended up flooding! Looking back, it is a little humorous since I was playing Ubisoft's new Skull and Bones demo at the time. I was sailing the seven seas in-game and then suddenly my house became the eighth! 

Even though we got the water up quickly, the damage had already been done: All the floors had to be ripped out and replaced. Insurance luckily paid for most of the repairs, but the construction process was long and painful. I just have half of the living room and dining room that need further flooring -- both of which I plan on having put in when I am back on my feet again. So for now, my house does look a little silly with only about 88% new floors and a giant empty patch, but my dogs do not seem to mind and that is all that matters for the short while.

Now that (most) repairs are done and (most of) the after-construction cleaning is done, I am looking forward to finally fixing my website (in addition to my volunteer duties, of course). I last migrated the code over from Blazor Server to Blazor WebAssembly and that fixed the old Blazor Server bug mentioned in the previous post, but now there are a few other errors that are popping up. If you happen across a "reload" notification, please feel free to refresh the page to continue; I am going to try to get this fixed as soon as I can. I truly apologize for the inconvenience!

In summary, I can say that life has indeed been a little strenuous, but I continue to learn, grow, and persevere!

Hello Again

Hello again! 👋🏽😊 It has been a while since I have posted any updates here. 

Originally I left off with the hope of creating another tutorial -- specifically written for utilization of the Blogger API with Blazor Server. And start it, I did! But as you have probably noticed, it was never published. Not to make any excuses (if I may be honest, I am rather disappointed in myself), but life just got so out of hand.

First, I made the transition from Symetra to Blizzard Entertainment in November 2022. It had been a long-standing career goal of mine to enter the gaming industry and what a massive blessing to have made that leap with the Blizzard. I was (and still am) so incredibly grateful. Unfortunately, after the Microsoft acquisition last year, some roles had to be cut and mine was on the list; I was laid off this past January. The experience though, was immeasurable. I had so much fun and got to do a deep dive into Python, APIs, hardware, data manipulation, etc. I also, of course, met so many incredible people that I will be sure to carry with me moving forward. I am eternally thankful for all of it!

My personal life, though, has been a bit more difficult to process. Since my last post here, there has been so much loss in my family. In such a short time we have lost two aunts, two uncles, a cousin, and a grandmother. It felt like every other month someone was gone; I don't think I have ever been through so much heartbreak. 

Because of this, I can't say I have spent as much time updating my blog/website as I should have. A lot of things in my life have been put on hold (like house repairs, going back to school for a master's, etc.) I know there is a new Blazor Server bug introduced to my website (now updated to Blazor WebAssembly, but am still tinkering), for example, that I need to work on (it is a SignalR disconnection issue that forces the user to reload the page -- I deeply apologize if you have experienced this). Now that my schedule is a bit more open, I can try to fix that and restart my personal life again. Searching and applying for a new position is indeed a bit stressful, but I will make sure to keep my head up and use this extra bit of time wisely.

As for any more tutorials, I suppose I should remove the option from the "blog menu," so to speak, haha. I would love to post more of them, but I must be more honest with myself when it comes to my time going forward; I have so many plans and goals I want to achieve both in my career and personal life. I do, however, want to push myself to create more general posts here and keep this line of communication open (even if no one is actually reading this and I am just talking to myself 😂).

Here's hoping for a healthier year moving forward for all of us!

And We're Off!

 

amyshadixon.com is finally open for business -- if you're into the business of just reading and not buying anything that is (I don't know, maybe I'll have some random merch one day; I do indeed have the power to create stickers... Would anyone buy them, you ask?... Alas). 🤓 As promised, it is a custom-built skeleton site with a few basics, created with Blazor and .NET 6.0. Admittedly, it took a bit longer than I had hoped since it is now being hosted through Godaddy + Plesk instead of Azure. I loved Azure, but it was a pretty cool experience to try something new and a little bit lighter on the wallet. And I can say that I definitely learned quite a bit through the trial and error of trying to get the site up and running. 😂 

I have also knocked out a couple of Coursera courses as well! I currently have two down and two more to go of a full segment. Right now they are just refreshers in C# and Unity, but it is nice to re-practice some code and concepts I might have forgotten or just haven't gotten to use in some time. Along with these, I have been looking into online schools as well. Originally, I wanted to go for my master's, but now I am thinking more about doing another bachelor's. I do want to eventually go for my master's again, but I am wondering if it would be a better decision for me to take things a little more slowly and go the secondary route; I feel like I would learn and absorb way more content that way. The only issue is that a second bachelor's in my name wouldn't be nearly as cost-effective. Decisions, decisions.

Rambling aside, the point is that I have been making some light progress. I have a huge list of things to get done, including stuff for the house (I moved in back in November and still haven't painted anything or installed some much-needed shelves, curtains, etc. I am beginning to feel like I owe this house an apology...), more learning, and more coding. As such, my next post here will probably be the Blazor + Blogger API tutorial. I have already started planning it in my head, but I guess I should put it somewhere more accessible. That would be nice right? 😆

Guess it's full speed ahead!