Just your average human, trying to do more. Wrestling not being a morning person with trying to find more hours in the day and get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Finding I can’t do everything at once and settling for adding a few good things at a time. Life is a lot and you can’t do it all, but I want to.

My tech journey sparked early. Fascinated by computers and eager to share my interests, I designed websites to share my thoughts on favorite TV shows and musicians. These projects established a foundation and propelled me into software engineering. After graduating with a CS degree, I started my professional career as a Quality Engineer, where I learned to spot hidden flaws, refine development processes, and understand how design decisions ripple through product functionality and user interactions.

After my stint in quality engineering, I moved into a full stack role that broadened my technical horizons. In addition to building the Javascript front end and Ruby on Rails back end, I familiarized myself with CI/CD pipelines, learned about event driven architectures, handled manual production deploys, and successfully led major Ruby and Rails version upgrades. Beyond technical skills, I developed crucial soft skills by routinely presenting our team’s sprint work and running sprint meetings, enhancing my ability to communicate effectively and lead collaborative efforts.

These days, I focus primarily on backend development and infrastructure. Time flies when you’re leading a team, architecting systems, developing new features, addressing technical debt, enhancing the developer experience, and providing support for critical issues as needed.

When I’m not immersed in code at work, you might find me working on personal projects that push my boundaries. Recently, I built a Go application that allows quick access to a GitHub repo’s releases (just add “dl” after “github” in the URL – pretty cool, huh?). I’ve also explored the internals of Jellyfin, a home media server, to add smart playlist functionality based on a video tagging system, and I’m using an old ThinkPad as a learning playground for Nix and Home Manager, all while juggling the endless projects that come with first-time homeownership. It’s a delicate balance of professional growth, personal projects, and figuring out what I can safely store in the attic.

At my core, I’m just a professional googler with attention to detail, the foresight to write everything down, and a knack for picking up new things. The last 10 years have flown by, and I feel such privilege to have landed in a career that I not only enjoy, but also excel in.