I grew up in Ames, Iowa. My father drove a truck as a Teamster; my mother worked in a USDA lab. I was
interested in computers long before there was a founder identity attached to that interest. The work
later moved through property, construction, cars, inventory, and
e-commerce. Every chapter was still about the same thing: understanding a system well enough to make
it work in the real world.
Computers first. Then physical businesses. Then back to computing—with two decades of operating
experience coming along for the ride.
Field notes, 2008—2024Computers never left. The systems just became heavier.2008 — computers never really left.
Act I / early computing
Learning the whole machine.
Before professional technology came cornfields, a restaurant, garden centers, a greenhouse, and a
freight dock. Outside work, I spent as much time as I could around computers.
At Rave Studios, I learned around serious media equipment for the era. In London at e-buy.com, I
worked in software testing and Windows NT administration. At the Iowa Energy Center, I handled nearly
anything computer-related across three locations—from physical cabling to usable machines.
2000—03
Citrix
Build verification and ThinWire performance work put me beside exceptional engineers—and taught me
that technical status and actual competence do not always travel together. Ownership energized me.
Repetitive corporate machinery did not.
Act II / the physical world
Buildings have error messages, too.
Leaving professional tech did not mean leaving systems. It meant finding out what happens when a bad
system leaks, ships the wrong part, wastes a crew’s time, or disappoints a real customer.
The Waverly, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.2019 — salvage work.
A / Gulf Coast
Property became an operating system.
Silver Hammer Construction and Little Pink Houses meant crews, trades, tenants, vendors,
materials, maintenance, and the physical cost of weak decisions. After Hurricane Katrina, that work
included rebuilding damaged properties. The Waverly—a 128-unit apartment property in Bay St.
Louis—remains a project I am proud of.
The design choices were about durability, not decoration: long-lived cabinets and counters, hard
floors, tile, and plumbing details meant to prevent the recurring failures I had already seen.
B / Junkyarder
Software moved inside the work.
A used-car operation led to online used auto parts. Ten Motors and Junkyarder became an education in
vehicles, compatibility data, inventory, photography, listings, shipping, customer service, and
e-commerce.
This was not time away from technology. It was technology embedded in a physical operation, where
data quality determined whether the right part reached a real person.
2024 — still happier with a system to understand.
Act III / the return
AI made computing interesting again.
I did not spend the years outside professional software becoming a better software engineer. I spent
them learning what work actually looks like: employees, customers, buildings, inventory, vendors,
deadlines, capital constraints, mistakes, and consequences.
I came back to computing carrying all of that with me.
Now / FlashForce
A workplace for AI employees.
FlashForce is my primary focus: a system where a business can hire and manage AI employees with
identity, roles, scoped memory, permissions, tools, authority, and workplace communication.
The interesting problem is not another isolated assistant. It is management: what should an AI
employee know, what may it do, who gave it authority, and how does its work become visible and
reviewable? Those are old systems questions in a new medium.
