DevOps on David Cajio

Inside My Arch + Hyprland Setup: Building a Fully Reproducible Desktop Environment

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:00:00 -0400

How I built a reproducible Arch Linux and Hyprland desktop environment with modular config files, wallpaper-driven theming, Waybar, Ghostty, multi-monitor support, and machine-specific dotfile templating.

Managing Dotfiles with ChezMoi: A Fully Automated Infrastructure-as-Code Desktop for Arch Linux and Hyprland

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve landed on a fairly opinionated conclusion over the years: dotfiles management only works when it disappears into your workflow. The moment I have to “think about syncing configs,” I stop maintaining it.

That’s why I eventually standardized on chezmoi backed by a plain Git repository, with a fully automated apply model across my Arch + Hyprland environment.

This isn’t a “nice dotfiles setup.” It’s a repeatable machine bootstrap system.

Building a Second Brain for AWS Certification with Obsidian and AI

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I started seriously preparing for AWS certifications, I hit a familiar problem for anyone working in infrastructure: the volume of information isn’t the hard part — retention and structure are.

You can watch hours of training, build labs, and take pages of notes, but unless that information is continuously refined, it decays quickly. A few weeks later, the details blur: IAM evaluation logic, VPC routing behavior, the subtle differences between endpoint types — all of it starts to fade.

Practical Multi-Region E-Commerce Architecture on AWS (Without Overengineering It)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:46:15 -0400

When most people talk about multi-region architectures, they immediately jump to diagrams full of globally distributed databases, active-active replication, service meshes, and enough complexity to require a dedicated platform team.

That’s not the reality for most e-commerce companies.

At Rough Country, my responsibility is managing the infrastructure that powers our online storefronts while also leading development efforts, reviewing code, managing deployments, and supporting multiple business initiatives. Every architectural decision has to balance reliability, performance, operational complexity, and cost.