DECEMBER 25, 2024

RYAN VU

<aside> 🔖 Building tech for social good

</aside>

I really love animals. I used to watch sad animal videos on youtube and, maybe I’m just an empath, but I can’t help crying every time I see one lol. At some point, I wanted to see if I could build something that actually made an impact. Not something grand, and not something designed to look impressive. Just something real, where my skills could translate into food in a bowl and a little less stress for the people and shelters trying to do the right thing.

I built a system to find deeply discounted pet food on major retail sites like Amazon, Chewy, and Walmart. I wrote a web scraper in Python that continuously collected product information, including current price, historical ranges, and discount percent. When the current price dropped past a threshold I defined, the product was flagged and sent to a Discord bot I created so I could see the alert instantly.

12 pack of 13 oz. animal food cans for $1.99!

24 pack of dog food for 70% off!

The screenshots show what those alerts looked like. My Discord bot (“RockScraper”) posted the product name, retailer, and the price change. For example, a CESAR wet dog food pack dropped from $29.31 to $8.78, which was 70% off. A PURINA ONE can dropped from $23.63 to $1.99, which was 92% off.

Python handled the scraping and parsing, filtering logic, and scheduling so it could run consistently without manual effort. I structured the data so I could compare a product’s current price against rules I set, then formatted the result into a clean Discord message with the product name, retailer, and pricing breakdown. Once the alert came through, I would purchase at the discount before the deal corrected itself.

The result was not small. Over time, I was able to gather over 100 pounds of pet food at a fraction of its cost. I donated to animal shelters like Seattle Humane, and I also posted on Facebook Marketplace so people in my neighborhood could pick up free dog/cat food. Pet food is crazy expensive, and knowing that some owners are struggling financially, I wanted to make it easier for them to keep going.

Donating to Seattle Humane in Bellevue

Didn’t take pictures but I got to play with the shelter dogs and cats lol

All in all, there are many people in computer science who create technology that looks impressive, but does not truly touch the world. And I understand why. It is easier to chase what is flashy, easier to optimize for attention, easier to build something that earns praise but changes nothing. The harder path is to build with intention, because intention forces you to confront a question that many avoid.

“If you can build anything, why build what changes nothing?”

This project reminded me that impact does not require permission, and it does not require scale. Sometimes it is simply recognizing a problem in front of you and refusing to be useless in the face of it. I want to continue creating technology that makes a difference in real lives, even if it begins with something as simple as a Discord message and a bag of food placed into the right hands.

sleeping with trinket (jan 3, 24)

Bonus: Helping children get toys

donated $500 to the Toys for Tots foundation

Anyone who knows me personally knows I used to run a plush business. When my neighbors moved in, they had a daughter in elementary school. For Christmas, I gave her a galaxy Cinnamoroll plush, and the next day she brought it to school to show her class. Hearing that was genuinely so sweet because It was such a small gift, but it meant something to her, and it reminded me that not every kid grows up with much.

That moment stuck with me, and it is a big reason I donated $500 to Toys for Tots, so more children can have something to open on Christmas. I’m grateful that the money I’ve earned through tech made that possible, and I want to keep using what I build to create moments like that for people who need them.