About
I've always liked solving business problems with code more than writing code for its own sake.
Work
My first job after college was building a Django website. I cared more about the problem than the code, so I quickly ended up as the lead engineer, managing the project and working directly with the customer. From there my career moved through more code and more management, but it was always customer-facing.
At Exosite I saw that customers needed a better support model, one that would add value on both sides of the relationship, so I built the Customer Success team. Then I watched how much modeling and inference work was moving onto GPUs, and I wanted to be in that industry. Today I lead a team of software, infrastructure, and network engineers at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, doing next-generation development for HPC and AI on the infrastructure bring-up side. I'm still solving business problems.
Bikes
I ride mountain bikes almost exclusively. I do a few bigger events each year, but I don't race much anymore.
Mountain bikes have changed a lot in the last twenty years. When 29ers were catching on, I wasn't a fan of the bigger wheels and slacker geometry. I ride a lot of tight Midwest singletrack, where you're constantly braking and accelerating and the climbs are short and punchy, but most modern bikes are designed around Southwest trails and backcountry riding. So I decided to be a purist and build a simple 650B (27.5-inch) titanium frame, and for about ten years I did that as SENEX Cycles.
It had some success. I still ride mine, and I know people who still ride theirs, and 650B has found its place since. I stepped away because of life changes and COVID-era supply problems.
Photography
Before it was ever paid work, my interest in photography was science and math: focal lengths, apertures, ISO, how they work together to make a picture, and how much range of light a camera can handle. I paid attention to the details, the foreground, subject, and background. Then a friend of a friend saw my photos and asked me to shoot their wedding. I took on the challenge, and that was the start of Andermic Photography.
It was a fun era, and I learned a lot. I got very focused on one-light photography, using the environment to make the picture I wanted. I had a set of lenses I loved: a 24mm, a 50mm, and an 80–200mm f/2.8 with beautiful bokeh.
Since the D700 and those screw-drive lenses, I haven't had the same feeling with newer equipment. It's like driving a modern car: it's so good it becomes clinically boring. The new lenses are so good they seem to be missing the character that made each photographer's approach unique.
Projects
Lately I've been finishing projects I've wanted to build for a while: a macOS photo importer and a set of options-analysis libraries.
Highlights
- Built a working prototype of a guided cluster-management experience that shaped a broader product rearchitecture at HPE.
- Led a nine-month effort to open source HPE's HPC system-management stack, supporting acceptance for two large contracts.
- Built local development environments that cut engineering feedback loops from days to minutes, without dedicated HPC hardware.
- Helped dozens of engineers adopt agentic development practices and the repository patterns that support them.
- Turned Exosite's support services from a cost center into a profitable operation.
- MBA in Corporate Finance and International Business, UW–Whitewater.