About Me
Hi! My name is Austin Steepleton, and I am the maintainer/author of What's In A Day.
As much as I dislike photos (particularly of myself), I feel that it is necessary in an "about me" page especially for a personal blog. I promise that I am happy in the above photo; I just missed the "how to smile without looking dead inside" day of school unfortunately.
Background & Education
I was born in 1997 in the small city of Alexandria, Louisiana to my parents Gary and Rose Steepleton. I have an older brother Eric Steepleton who is two years older than me.
The first eighteen years of my life were spent in Alexandria doing the typical American childhood things: school, sports, and games. After graduating high school, I moved to Baton Rouge to attend college at Louisiana State University (LSU). As a kid, I always had a heavy interest in electronics/computers, so I declared for the major of Electrical Engineering to further pursue that interest into a career. In a story told a million times, despite being an excellent student in high school, I struggled in my first year due to the relaxed structure that college has compared to high school and my lack of discipline at the time. I often skipped class to watch movies, play tennis, or just sleep. Due to this, I barely passed most of my classes the first two semesters (Note: due to the prerequisite nature of many of the classes, a C or higher was needed to pass the class).
Around this same time, I also got what I consider to be my first job (I had other small jobs in high school but nothing that gave me a W2 or steady hours) and met Maddie (my future wife). During the winter break of my first college year, I interviewed for a help desk position for the department that managed on-campus housing for LSU. They decided to hire me for the spring semester which allowed me to work up to 20 hours per week due to a university restriction on the amount of hours a full-time student could work. I was ecstatic to get that first job and start making some money ($8.10/hour) as well as learning more for what I believed to be a starting point for a future career for me. Many of my coworkers were majoring in either Electrical/Computer engineering or Information Systems and Decisions Sciences (ISDS) which I had not heard of before. Ultimately, I decided to change my major to ISDS for the following school year as I believed it would allow me to pursue my interest in computers and that I was not cut out for an engineering major.
I spent three semesters in the ISDS curriculum and maintained a solid A-average the whole time. While the curriculum was interesting, I felt that the challenge was missing and that I was selling myself short by not really allowing myself to try at an engineering major. I made the decision to change my major yet again to Computer Engineering which seemed to be the best of both worlds for my interests: computers/programming and electronics.
I decided to "buckle-down" and give it my best effort the following semester and spent countless hours in the library. I ended up doing just as well that semester in my engineering curriculum as I did in the previous three semesters in ISDS. I am happy to say that I spent the remainder of my time at LSU in the Computer Engineering major and managed to graduate with a 3.8 GPA in 5 years.
After graduating, I began working at a company called Champion Technology Services in Baton Rouge, LA as an automation engineer which I had found through the career fair at LSU. The crux of the job was to automate plant processes by programming Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). Despite the company being great to work for, I knew that I did not enjoy the work and decided to look for other jobs.
After ~1.5 years working that role, I found a new position working as a cloud engineer at a large federal contractor where I have been working for the past ~4 years.
Interest & Hobbies
Tennis
I've been playing tennis since I was very young but only really started playing often my sophomore year of high school. I actually started playing as a form of exercise to help lose weight which I have always struggled with (only recently have I gotten it mostly under control)
Walking
It feels weird to put walking as a hobby since its such a basic activity, but it is one of my favorite parts of the day. I typically try to walk for ~1 hour each day preferably as a way to break up the work day.
Reading
This is a relatively new hobby of mine that I started last year. I try to read for 30 minutes - 1 hour each night before bed to help wind down. I'll be including the book that I am currently reading in each post (and potentially create a separate book review post type upon completion)
Self-Hosting
I like the idea of having control of the applications/services that I use, so I enjoy self-hosting these applications on my own home server when I can. I currently self host the following:
- This Blog (powered by Ghost)
- Jellyfin
But I am on the lookout for more services to add!
Contact
I can be reached via email at the below address: