Hi There!

If you've gotten here, you're likely interested in my database or programming expertise. Apart from that, here's a little about my history and perspective as it relates to my professional skills. My family is the most important component of my life - my wife and two teenagers.

I'm into technology, in-so-much as it can improve business efficiency. I grew the son of depression-era parents, frugal and conscious of cost. My father was self-employed mason and had a hand in many of the buildings in the small town in Wisconsin where I grew up. The motto he passed along to me: 'There's always a better way'. Without knowing it, he put continuous improvement into my DNA. I spent many summers helping my Dad build basements, driveways, and brick facades in my younger years. I've been 'employed' since I've been about 11 years old.

I'm into sustainability, more than likely due to my parents frugality. I would rather ride my e-bike to the store than drive a car and I would rather make waffles at home than buy them at the store. I'm into renewable energy and I'm a beginner solar enthusiast.

My son earned his Eagle Scout in the spring of 2020, and we've been involved with scouting since he's been about 6 years old. I've been an assistant scout master with his troop for the past few years, helping with Eagle projects and other service projects.

My first evaluation into a technical problem is to evaluate it's efficiency over throwing hardware at it & thus increasing costs. I'd much rather solve the root problem than delay the inevitable. There are short-term and long-term fixes to many technical challenges we encounter as IT professionals - to which I've matured to understand over the years.

I started as your typical Microsoft app-dev type, learning visual basic and access, and then migrating to SQL Server. Over the years and projects, I found a central problem with many of the projects I encountered. Bad design, which became difficult to scale, repeats itself over and over. The component most likely to choke an application - the database. Over the years I became a little disenchanted with SQL Server and then learned PostgreSQL and realized that most database platforms are pretty much the same - just slight syntax changes. OLTP design is one of my favorite technical things to do, along with OLAP design. Getting those components correct, goes a long way in determining the success of an application. Fast-forward into 2018 and recently, I've learned ElasticSearch, Logstash, and Kibana while working at a fortune 500 company. I'm pretty much a self-taught programmer & enjoy writing API's using NodeJS more as a pass-thru allowing the database to do most of the work. I enjoy GIS and the complex data types involved along with the functions used in doing spatial analysis.

I'm transitioning in my current role from a technical resource to a managerial resource, but hope to keep a foot in technology. Managing people, encouraging and providing frameworks and guidance is a skill I strive to improve. I enjoy working with open-minded self-starters, and also realize the world has many types of people which all need a different level of interaction. Understanding someones motivation is key to being able to effectively manage them.

That's a little about me,