I'm Michael Horton, an operations professional turned aspiring cloud engineer, currently building the skills and credentials to make that transition official.

By day I'm a Team Leader at FedEx Express, working in aircraft operations where I manage people, processes, and logistics under pressure. It's taught me a lot about accountability, problem solving, and getting things done in high stakes environments. But technology has always been where my curiosity lives.

I've been building PCs since 2005, tinkering with home networks, and chasing down whatever problem needed solving, long before I had the vocabulary to describe what I was actually doing. I started formal IT coursework at Strayer University years ago, but life had other plans. Recently I picked it back up at El Camino Community College, and I'm on track to graduate with a 4.0 GPA in Cloud Computing and Information Systems in Fall 2026.

In March 2026 I earned my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. My AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam is next.

This site is part of that journey. It runs on AWS with S3, CloudFront, and ACM, deployed automatically through a CI/CD pipeline I built in GitHub Actions. The blog documents what I'm learning in real time, including a homelab I run on bare metal at home where I get hands on with the infrastructure concepts I'm studying.

I'm looking for opportunities in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, or systems administration where I can keep growing and contribute from day one.