Introduction
I’m Matt Connley, a technology professional in Chicago. If you’d like to learn more about my professional background, please have a look at my homepage: https://connley.net
My intention with this blog is to share my thoughts and experiences regarding my work in technology and maybe some other topics here and there.
A blog? Why a blog?
Well, a few reasons I guess. First off, I enjoy writing and sharing my experiences with working in tech; I figure this will be a good outlet to share some things I might not otherwise be able to and keep my writing skills fresh. Also it gives me the chance to run a “real” service in my homelab — which itself will likely be the topic of a number of posts here. And finally, I think it’ll give my colleagues and others in the industry insight into my professional experience, my approach to technical problem solving and solution implementation, and some of the technologies and concepts I work with both at my day job and in my spare time.
I’m not sure of the frequency with which I’ll post. When something comes to mind that I think might be interesting to people, I’ll post it.
Why not use WordPress for the homepage?
The short answer is that I wanted to write it more or less on my own. The longer answer might be a topic for a later post, but the gist of it is that front end web development is not among my strengths, so it’s an opportunity to do some self-directed learning in that area. It’ll also give me a chance to do some tracing/APM work with an app that involves real (although probably a very low volume of) end user interactions. One downside is that at least at the moment, the themes don’t align between the homepage and this blog. Fixing that is on my list of TODOs and will be an opportunity to do some CSS stuff, which is not in my wheelhouse — which means it’ll be fun, right?
Overall, that’s the real theme of this blog: a place to share my thoughts, sure, but also a place to tinker with and share some things I don’t typically get to work on in the course of my day job. I hope maybe you’ll find some things of value here and there!
One last note
I don’t intend to post anything that I can imagine to be at all controversial, and I’m certainly not going to share any information that is even vaguely proprietary to my any of my employers, current or past. So just to be clear, the views expressed here are mine and mine alone.
If you’d like to talk to me about any of my on-the-job experience, please reach out to me at [email protected]