About Me

I live with my wife Katie and son Conall in the Green Mountains of rural Vermont. After years of living and working remotely, it’s fair to say I’ve gone feral. Not that I don’t like to visit a city; it’s just that I begin to chafe within a few days. I find I’m a country mouse, and my perspective in blog posts here will certainly reflect that.

I make my living as a software engineer, but as many developers will tell you this is more than a way to pay the bills. This is a “lifestyle” profession, where to some degree it takes over large parts of my day to day. I’m forever learning and tinkering, adding to my toolkit. There are frustrations, to be sure, but I generally love what I do.

Outside of coding I’m a total petrolhead. Cars and trucks of any variety or vintage will interest me. I follow Formula One religiously, having been a fan since the Schumacher era. And driving -- even with no real destination in mind -- may be my favorite thing to do. My son Conall, about to turn 4, seems to have inherited this. On the daily we’ll play with his construction vehicles or make our own sweet rides from Lego. I’m not wishing away the years here, but I can’t wait to get that kid into motorsports and take him to car shows. He’s already starting to enjoy four wheeling on Vermont class IVs.

In addition to automobiles, I’m an avid reader: history, fiction, poetry, philosophy, current affairs. I read broadly, if not as much as I once did with the demands of career and family life being what they are. I give it what time I can though and look forward to reading in bed each night.

So that’s where I live, what I do and what I love, yet I haven’t touched on what I believe. The heart of my belief is Amor Fati. We’re born into a place, a family, a body, etc, and then we must go forth in circumstances largely out of our control. Nevertheless, we can choose how we want to live in this predetermined context, and perhaps the most fundamental part of that choice involves the attitude with which you want face the day. I don’t know of any life but this one, so I choose joy. This word is not too much.