About Me

Photoshop - 1990

Weird Al, Amish Paradise - 1996

Winamp - 1997

Napster - 1999

Y2K - 2000

At some point in the late 90s my parents bought an Acer desktop computer. I remember having the urge to take the cover off the computer, take everything apart and try to put it back together. I was curious about how the machine functioned, what the different parts were, what they did, and how they operated together. So I scratched that itch. Fortunately, I avoided the disaster of a static shock or a broken cable—I pressed the power button and, to my amazement, it still worked. A relief and a rush.

Those were the days of Winamp and staying up into the early morning hours waiting for Weird Al’s Amish Paradise and Ozzy’s Crazy Train to download on Napster. I became fascinated by what could be accomplished with computers. From playing games, to sharing things, and creating digital art with Photoshop, it became my playground.

A few years later, in college, I would lean into computer science and hardware before landing in philosophy. I know, it’s a strange switch, but my path was diverging to pastoral ministry at the time and philosophy was a good fit for seminary. After seminary I became a family pastor, pastoring children, youth, and their families. Even so, my love for tech never faded. I continued to explore and utilize skills in graphic design and web development. I built and maintained sites for youth groups and churches, and tinkered with hardware, modifying personal computers, repairing electronics around the house, and adding devices to my smart home setup.

By 2021, I was burnt out—I had become exhausted and depressed trying to do ministry during the pandemic and my personal beliefs were shifting. And so, I decided to pivot to a field that has always excited me, software and tech. After chatting with some friends, who are software engineers, about their experience and recommendations, I enrolled in Launch School, an online school for software engineers. I completed Launch School’s Core Curriculum and applied for their Capstone program.

During Capstone, I learned so much and got to work with some amazing engineers. We worked through data structures and algorithms, system design, research, development, and documentation. We learned how to learn quickly and apply that knowledge. We were placed into teams of three or four to research and develop a project. My team of four developed Willow, a framework that utilizes change data capture to keep a cache updated in near real-time with a source database. It was an interesting problem to solve.

Though the job search started at the end of Capstone, I have yet to land an engineering role. There have been some challenging moments in my personal life between then and now, and I have had a number of interviews but I haven’t quite made the cut. However, while I’ve been working non-tech jobs to pay the bills, I haven’t stopped honing my skills, building software, and learning.

I recently built an MP3 Fleet Manager for the non-profit organization I work at. This was a really interesting and meaningful problem to solve and I’m still adding features and squashing bugs. The organization is a residential treatment program for teenage boys. A therapeutic device the clinical directors wanted to introduce was a way to provide each client with an MP3 player on intake for them to have their music as a coping skill. They were looking to implement this right after I was hired but they needed someone to own the project. I volunteered.

This project became a weekly task and a point of frustration for me as clients found ways to get around the included parental controls. But rather than continuing to be frustrated I took this as an opportunity to use my engineering skills and learn something new. So, I did some research on the device and discovered Android Open Source Project. I learned how to use Android Debug Bridge to send commands to the device, disable applications and features. Iterating on this, I developed a Device Owner application to manage restrictions on the device. This led me to develop a dashboard in which I could plug the devices into a hub and manage them all at once. Now, whenever a client tries to bypass the restrictions, I sit down and invite them to show me. I treat it as an invitation to learn and improve the product. It’s part of my feedback loop that informs my iterations.

And, while open source and pro bono work for non-profits is meaningful, I am seeking a full-time, paid role as a software engineer. So, shoot me an email or message me on LinkedIn.