Thirty years in: from the first line of HTML to the servers on the rack. Bring me in early to create your application — or late to rescue and sharpen what you already have.
The best work happens when it's a genuine fit — for both of us.
I'm lucky to be at a stage where I can choose the work I take on, so I look for projects that genuinely interest me — and in my experience, the interesting problems and the worthwhile ones tend to be the same problems. When the work excites me, you get my best, and that's better for everyone.
I've spent a lifetime learning how the internet actually works: how a site gets built, how it earns traffic, how that traffic converts into sales, and how those sales become a business. I've also been on the receiving end of plenty of threats, and learned to shut the door on them.
So this is really about fit, not gatekeeping. Tell me what you're working on. If it's something I can move the needle on and we click, I'm all in. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so and point you somewhere better. Either way, you'll get a straight answer.
What I bring is rare: a single operator who can do all of it, has done all of it, and has the receipts to prove it. Instead of assembling a team, you bring in one person who's already worn every hat — and still loves the work.
Two ways most people use me, and one that runs underneath both.
Architect and ship a new internet application end to end — product and design, the code beneath it, the infrastructure it runs on, and the acquisition and conversion engine that makes it pay.
Inherited something slow, leaking money, or under attack? I diagnose it honestly, fix what's broken, harden what's exposed, and lift what's merely underperforming until it earns its keep.
Strategy and a second set of expert eyes across traffic, conversion, infrastructure, and security — for teams who want a sharper edge than the one they currently have.
Most projects need a developer, a sysadmin, a network engineer, a security hand, a copywriter, a marketer and a designer. I've been every one of them — and I keep the whole library current.
I'm an optimist about it. I think AI can solve big problems, answer questions we couldn't answer before, and quietly improve nearly every corner of life. What excites me most is the practical side: helping businesses and governments actually use it — turning the hype into tools that do real, useful work.
Most organizations know AI matters but aren't sure where it fits, what's real, or how to ship something that pays off instead of sitting in a slide deck. That's the gap I like to close — pairing the technology with three decades of knowing how things actually get built, marketed, and run on the internet.
Useful AI tools, built for the real world, by someone who's shipped real things. That's the work I want more of.
It's serious enough to me that I'm doing graduate research in AI at Florida State University, focused on large language models. I love a sales machine that hums just as much as I love the technology underneath it — and the work I'm drawn to is usually both: something genuinely useful, that also makes money.
It started the way the good ones do — selling. Rubber-band rockets in the fourth grade. Magic cards in middle school. Then I found eBay and never looked back. I'd buy a bulk lot from a flat, ugly text listing, then turn it around with beautiful HTML, real photographs, honest salesmanship and the right category. Same product. Better margin. Positioning is everything.
That pulled me into building websites, winning traffic, and converting it into money. When host after host failed me, I learned to host it myself — and got hooked keeping other people online. More than 50,000 of them, in the end.
To deliver the service I wanted, we built our own servers, racked them, and ran our own networking hardware — partnered with 123Net for power, cooling and transit held to the same standard we held ourselves to. We joined the Detroit Internet Exchange and connected our network directly to the giants:
I learned to defend against DDoS the hard way — by being on the receiving end of it. That's why my respect for the people who solved it is earned, not theoretical.
Not theory. Patterns I've run enough times to trust. Here's the shape of how I think.
I'd buy a bulk lot off a flat, ugly text listing — then resell the very same goods with clean code, real photographs, honest copy and the right category. Nothing about the product changed. Everything about how it was presented did. That gap — between what a thing is and how it's sold — is where most of the money on the internet still hides.
Host after host let me down — slow, offline, excuse after excuse. So I stopped waiting on them. We built our own servers, racked our own hardware, ran our own network, and peered directly with the largest companies on the internet at the Detroit Internet Exchange. More than 50,000 people ended up depending on it. If something between you and your customer is broken, I've almost certainly had to fix one like it — from the rack up.
You understand an attack differently once it's pointed at you — once it's your network going dark and your customers watching. I've been there, weathered it, and come out knowing the threats, the vectors, and what it actually takes to keep the lights on. That kind of knowledge doesn't come from a manual.
By this point you know I can do the work. Here's the part that doesn't fit on a résumé — what I do outside it, and how it shaped the way I think.
I'm drawn to hard things that change how I see — skills you can't fake your way through, where preparation is the whole game. Flying taught me that at altitude, where a checklist is the line between a good day and a fatal one. School sharpened a different muscle: how to learn quickly, what to question, when to be skeptical, and how to tell real evidence from noise. I'm still at it — a graduate student today, and I expect a perpetual one. Each of these gave me a new vantage point, and the work is better for all of them.
Single-engine land. A high-stakes skill learned under real pressure — where checklists, training, and experience are the difference between life and death. It teaches respect for preparation, and rewards you with a view few people ever get.
Reserve / auxiliary status. It put me face-to-face with people in a way a screen never can — and it rekindled a service mindset I carry into the work. Businesses and government both exist to serve people. We owe them our best, and an obligation to keep raising the bar on what our best is.
Married, with a son and a daughter. The reason any of the rest of it matters — and the standard I hold the work to.
If you've got something interesting — the right project, with the right people, on terms that work for both of us — I'd love to hear about it. Tell me what you're building and where you're stuck. The worst case is a good conversation and an honest answer.