About Me

My fascination with computers started young, probably younger than I even realized at the time. I remember sitting at my desk as a kid, pretending to type on a computer we didn't have. We'd had a Commodore 64 once, but it was stolen, and for many years after that, having a computer was just a dream.

So you can imagine my excitement when we finally got a PC running GeoWorks—this quirky knockoff of Windows that nobody remembers anymore. That machine opened up a whole new world to me. I'd spend hours tinkering, tweaking the autoexec.bat file just to free up enough RAM to run Wolfenstein 3D. Looking back, those early experiments were my first real taste of problem-solving in computing. I was hooked.

That curiosity extended beyond computers. I was the kind of kid who wanted to understand how everything worked— not just accept that it did. Why does the sky turn colors at sunset? How do magnets work? What's happening inside a light bulb? This constant questioning eventually led me to pursue a degree in Physics, where I could dig into the fundamental rules that govern our universe.

My entry into the tech industry came through quality assurance. I started as a QA engineer in the early 2000s, and honestly, it was a perfect fit for someone with my particular brand of curiosity. My job was essentially to break things—to find the edge cases, the weird interactions, the scenarios that developers hadn't anticipated. And I was good at it.

Over the course of more than a decade in QA, I developed a sixth sense for where bugs might be hiding. I learned to think like an adversary, always asking "what if?" What if a user does this action at exactly the wrong time? What if they enter unexpected data? What if the network drops out mid-transaction? I became an expert in creative destruction, finding wonderfully odd ways to make software fail.

But something interesting happened over those years: the more I dug into codebases to understand and report bugs, the more I started thinking about how to fix them. I'd file a bug report and find myself mentally sketching out solutions. I'd see a crash and think, "I bet that's a null pointer exception in the authentication handler." The itch to not just find problems but solve them grew stronger with every passing year.

Eventually, I couldn't ignore that itch anymore. I decided to make the transition from QA to software engineering. It wasn't an easy shift—there's a big difference between understanding how code works and writing production-quality code yourself. But my background in QA actually gave me an advantage I hadn't expected.

As a QA engineer, I'd spent years thinking about edge cases, error handling, and user experience. I understood the importance of defensive programming because I'd seen what happens when developers don't think about error states. I knew how to write testable code because I'd struggled with untestable code. My QA experience made me a more thoughtful developer from day one.

The transition taught me that there's no wasted experience in this field. Everything I learned in QA—about systems thinking, about edge cases, about the user's perspective—has informed how I approach software engineering. I write code with empathy for the person who'll test it, maintain it, and ultimately use it. And I've never looked back.

I'm Deaf, and that's been a significant part of my journey through the tech industry. Being Deaf in tech comes with unique challenges, especially in an industry that often relies heavily on verbal communication, meetings, and conferences where accessibility is an afterthought rather than a design principle.

I've experienced firsthand what it's like to attend a conference where live captions are broken or missing entirely. I've been in workplace situations where communication accessibility wasn't considered until I explicitly asked for it. These experiences have shaped not just how I navigate the industry, but what I advocate for within it.

That's why I got involved with the CNCF Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group . I want to help create a tech industry where Deaf and hard-of-hearing professionals don't have to fight for basic accessibility. Where captions and sign language interpretation are standard, not special accommodations. Where our voices—however we choose to communicate them—are heard and valued in the spaces that matter.

I'm passionate about American Sign Language and Deaf culture. ASL isn't just a language to me; it's a rich, expressive way of experiencing the world. Deaf culture has taught me about resilience, community, and the importance of advocating for yourself and others. These lessons have made me not just a better engineer, but a better person.

These days, I'm diving deep into cloud native technologies. I'm particularly fascinated by eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) and its potential for observability and performance monitoring. There's something beautiful about being able to write programs that run in the Linux kernel without modifying kernel source code or loading kernel modules. It's like having superpowers for system observability.

I'm also spending time with Kubernetes and the broader CNCF ecosystem. Container orchestration, service meshes, distributed tracing—these aren't just buzzwords to me. They're tools that let us build more resilient, scalable systems, and I love getting my hands dirty with them.

My tech stack these days includes Vue.js and Nuxt for front-end work, Python for backend services and scripting, C/C++ when I need to work close to the metal, and Ruby on Rails when I want rapid development. I've also spent considerable time with C# and JavaScript over the years. I believe in using the right tool for the job, and I'm always curious to learn new languages and frameworks.

But honestly? Some of my favorite work is the stuff I do just for fun. Tinkering with new frameworks I've never used before. Building small utilities to automate my own workflows. Experimenting with technologies just to see how they work. That curiosity I had as a kid, sitting at a desk pretending to type—it never went away. It just found more interesting outlets.

I've always believed that being a good engineer means being a well-rounded person. You can't solve complex problems if you only ever think in one dimension. That's why I try to maintain interests outside of technology, even though—let's be honest—many of them circle back to it eventually.

I'm an avid reader and writer. There's something about the written word that captivates me—maybe it's the precision required, the way you have to choose exactly the right words to convey exactly the right meaning. Not unlike writing good code, when you think about it. I read widely: science fiction, physics, history, philosophy, whatever catches my interest.

I'm a sports fan and enjoy watching games when I can. There's a beautiful strategic element to sports—the chess match between coaches, the split-second decisions, the way individual excellence combines with team dynamics. Again, not unlike software engineering projects.

I love spending time with my family. They keep me grounded and remind me that there's more to life than the next debugging session or deployment. They're also endlessly patient with my tendency to explain technical concepts at dinner, even when nobody asked.

And I love having conversations with people about whatever they're passionate about. Whether it's art, cars, plants, politics, cooking, music—whatever. I've found that passionate people have interesting insights, and you can learn something from everyone if you're willing to listen. The world is a fascinating place, full of amazing people with wonderful stories to tell. I try to collect as many of those stories as I can.

I've always aimed to be my own version of a Renaissance person—someone who's curious about everything, competent in many things, and always learning. In this industry, that mindset isn't just helpful; it's essential. Technology changes so quickly that the specific tools you know today might be obsolete in five years. But curiosity? The ability to learn? Those never go out of style.

I approach problems with a mix of rigor and creativity. My physics background taught me to think systematically, to break complex problems into manageable pieces, to question assumptions. My QA experience taught me to think adversarially, to consider edge cases, to never assume the happy path is the only path.

But I also believe in the importance of empathy in engineering. Code isn't just for computers—it's for people. The next person who reads your code (who might be you in six months) deserves clear, thoughtful work. The users of your software deserve interfaces that make sense and error messages that help rather than confuse. The teammates who maintain your systems deserve documentation and architecture that they can understand.

I'm passionate about accessibility, not just because I'm Deaf, but because I believe technology should be for everyone. When we build systems that work for people with disabilities, we often end up building better systems for everyone. Curb cuts were designed for wheelchairs, but they help parents with strollers, delivery workers with carts, and travelers with rolling luggage. Accessibility improvements are like that—they make things better for everyone.

After more than 20 years in this industry, I'm more excited about technology than ever. We're living in an incredible time—the cloud native revolution is changing how we build and deploy software, machine learning is opening up possibilities that seemed like science fiction a decade ago, and accessibility is finally becoming a first-class concern rather than an afterthought.

I'm excited to keep learning, keep building, and keep contributing to a tech industry that's more inclusive and accessible. I want to help create technologies that empower people, solve real problems, and maybe—just maybe—make the world a little bit better.

If you've read this far, thank you. I hope you've gotten a sense of who I am and what drives me. And if you ever want to chat about tech, swap stories, or collaborate on something interesting, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm always up for a good conversation.