About Me

How I Got Here

My career started at a small company doing white-label computer assembly that had branched into running a local dial-up ISP. As the first systems administrator on staff, there was no playbook. I learned what I needed to learn, when I needed to learn it. That pattern stuck. Over the past 30 years in IT I've built expertise in OS administration, network engineering, IP telephony, virtualization, and containerization, driven equally by necessity and genuine curiosity.

The thread that runs through all of it is automation. I get deep satisfaction from taking a manual, error-prone process and turning it into something reliable, repeatable, and invisible. My other signature skill is troubleshooting, specifically digging through logs, correlating events across systems, and finding the actual root cause rather than just silencing the alert.

What I Work With

• Windows Server & Linux administration
• IP networking & IP telephony
• Virtualization & containerization
• Automation, scripting, and infrastructure as code
• Security, hardening, and compliance
• Alerting, observability, and log correlation

Lately I've been exploring artificial intelligence, particularly running local models and building specialized automation pipelines around them. There's a lot of noise in the AI space right now; I'm interested in the parts that actually reduce toil.

Amateur radio (K1DUG)

I've held an amateur radio license since 2011. As an introvert, I gravitate toward digital modes. FT8 on the HF bands is where you'll most often find me. My current antenna is an off-center-fed dipole covering 10 through 80 meters. Beyond personal operating, I'm involved in public communications, which connects neatly with my background in public safety.

Volunteering & Service

For two decades I volunteered as an EMT alongside my full-time IT career. Serving others isn't something I do on the side. It's a core value. I continue to put my medical training to use volunteering with public health initiatives, and I look for opportunities to help those who need it most. If I have a useful skill and someone needs it, that's reason enough.

Outside of Work

I spend time in my yard, tinker with home electronics projects, and decompress by gaming with my brother. I approach the world with a neurodivergent perspective. I notice patterns others miss, go deep on things that interest me, and prefer directness over small talk. It's shaped how I troubleshoot, how I communicate, and how I show up as a volunteer.