About Me

I am an IT leader, network engineer, problem solver, and lifelong tinkerer based in the Dallas area.

My career started with structured cabling and physical network infrastructure, back when troubleshooting often involved a cable tester, a ladder, and occasionally questioning someone else’s labeling decisions. From there, I moved into network operations, service-provider engineering, data centers, enterprise systems, and technology leadership.

Over the years, I have worked on everything from fiber installations and metro networks to server infrastructure, security, cloud platforms, application modernization, and large technical projects that were all described as “simple” at the beginning.

I still approach technology much the same way I did when I started: understand how it works, figure out why it is broken, and make it better. Preferably without creating three new problems in the process.

Outside of work, I am a husband and father of three boys. I enjoy building things, taking things apart, experimenting with new technology, and disappearing into projects that absolutely should have taken one afternoon.

What This Blog Is

This site is where I document what I am working on, what I am learning, and what I think is worth preserving before I forget how I fixed it.

Most of the content centers on topics such as:

• Networking and infrastructure
• Windows and Linux administration
• Security and operational resilience
• Cloud and application architecture
• Coding and automation
• IoT, amateur radio, and satellites
• Technical leadership and project delivery
• Lessons learned from systems that did not behave as documented, expected, or remotely reasonable

Some posts are detailed technical references. Others are project notes, opinions, experiments, or stories from more than two decades of working in IT and discovering that the phrase “nothing changed” is rarely accurate.

I write primarily to organize my own thinking and create the kind of practical documentation I wish I had when troubleshooting a problem at 2:00 a.m., with 60 SSH sessions and browser tabs open, while someone insists that nothing changed and it was working fine that afternoon.

A Few Disclaimers

The opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent my employer, clients, or anyone else unfortunate enough to be associated with me.

Technology changes quickly. A solution that worked when I wrote about it may now be outdated, unsupported, renamed, moved behind a license tier, or replaced by an entirely different product with nearly the same name.

Test carefully, understand the risks, and do not blindly paste commands from a stranger’s blog into a production environment. At minimum, read them first.

Elsewhere

You can also find me on the platforms linked below, where I occasionally post useful things and more frequently disappear for several months at a time.