You've (somehow) managed to stumble upon my dark corner of the internet[^1].
I've enjoyed tinkering with computers and their code since discovering I could alter variable values in [`GORILLA.BAS`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_%28video_game%29) on my dad's work computer to imbue the thrown bananas with enough explosive power to level the entire city. I thought, "hey, that's neat," and then spent much of my childhood free time learning how *else* I could bend computers to my will.
Once I grew up[^2], I found a career in system administration, and I leveraged my passion for coding to write scripts to help manage systems more efficiently. While managing a global-scale VMware environment, I was tasked with implementing [vRealize Automation](/categories/vmware) (now called "Aria Automation"). I didn't realize it at the time but that was the start of my DevOps transformation. I started thinking about infrastructure-as-code, and began using [HashiCorp Packer](https://github.com/jbowdre/packer-vsphere-templates) and a CI/CD pipeline to automatically build fully-up-to-date VM templates on a weekly cadence.
I'm now a platform architect at a smaller corporation, focused full-time on leveraging the DevOps mindset to streamline IT operations and enable software developers with automation and self-service tooling. It's a great blend of my virtual infrastructure operations background, hobbyist development experience, and hunger for solving problems, and I really enjoy applying these skills to solve interesting challenges at scale.
On my off time, I tinker with new [projects](/categories/self-hosting) in my little homelab (and share some of those adventures here). I love experimenting with new (to me) technologies, and I've found that actually _using_ something is typically the best way to learn it.
On weekends, I race my daily-driven 2014 Subaru BRZ in local [autocross events](https://l.runtimeterror.dev/my-autox-vids) or wrench on my 1974 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
