About TheIrishGeek ☘

Engineer by profession. Geek by nature. Student of just about everything.

I decided I wanted to become a software engineer when I was seven years old.

Not only that, but I'd already decided where I wanted to attend college, what I wanted to study, and that I would eventually pursue a master's degree.

I suppose I've never been particularly inclined toward modest ambitions.

More than three decades later, I've accomplished quite a bit of what that little boy set out to do, although my interests have expanded considerably along the way.

Of course, somewhere in there, I also decided I wanted to design and build a spacecraft, fly myself to the Moon, land on its surface, and return safely to Earth.

Apparently, I never quite outgrew the habit of dreaming big.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. :)

Hello, and welcome to my little corner of the internet!

I'm a software engineer, solutions architect, entrepreneur, United States Air Force veteran, father, and rather unapologetic lifelong student with an almost insatiable curiosity about how things work, why they work, and, perhaps more importantly, whether the way we've chosen to do something is necessarily the best way to accomplish it.

I've spent more than two decades working in technology, but my interests have never been particularly content to remain within the boundaries of a single profession.

Software engineering, electronics, aerospace, automotive mechanics, artificial intelligence, business, medicine, philosophy, education... the list is rather extensive, and it seems to grow longer every year.

I have a habit of encountering something I don't understand, deciding I ought to understand it, and subsequently disappearing down an intellectual rabbit hole for an unreasonable amount of time.

Sometimes that leads to a useful technical insight.

Other times, it's how you end up teaching yourself an entirely new subject at three in the morning.

From the Forests of Oregon to a Broken Computer

I grew up in rural Oregon, surrounded by forests, farms, logging communities, rivers, and people who generally considered working with their hands a proper profession.

Much of my childhood was spent wandering through the woods with my brother, fishing, swimming, building dams in creeks, and occasionally remembering that we were expected home for dinner.

We didn't have smartphones, GPS tracking, or particularly reliable means of contacting our parents while we were out exploring. If we happened to have a walkie-talkie, that was about as technologically advanced as our communications got.

Yet despite that rather analog upbringing, I developed a fascination with electronics and computers.

My uncle gave me my first computer, a broken TRS-80, affectionately known as the "Trash 80."

There was just one problem: it didn't work.

If I wanted to use it, I needed to figure out how to repair it.

And so began what would become a lifelong relationship with technology: taking things apart, trying to understand what was wrong, making mistakes, learning something new, and eventually getting them working again.

Later, I received an Epson Equity IIe from my grandfather, whom I'd met only once, and entirely by accident.

That computer became my introduction to programming.

Initially, I attempted to reverse-engineer executable files by opening them in an editor and experimenting with ALT codes. Not exactly the most sophisticated approach, but I didn't know what I didn't know. :)

Eventually, I discovered machine code, assembly language, and DEBUG.COM under DOS 5.0.

I was hooked.

Looking back, I think there's something wonderfully appropriate about learning to program by trying to understand software that was never intended to be read that way.

I wasn't particularly interested in simply following instructions.

I wanted to know what was happening underneath them.

A Seven-Year-Old With a Plan

As I mentioned, I decided at seven years old that I wanted to become a software engineer.

But what makes that memory particularly interesting to me is that I had already chosen the Oregon Institute of Technology as the college I wanted to attend, and I'd decided I would eventually earn a master's degree.

I knew remarkably little about how the world actually worked at seven, of course, but apparently that wasn't going to stop me from making plans.

I eventually attended Oregon Institute of Technology, earning degrees in Software Engineering and Information Technology with a focus on Management.

There's something rather satisfying about looking back at the plans I made as a child and realizing how much of that path I've actually followed.

Of course, life rarely unfolds exactly as we imagine it will, and there have been plenty of unexpected detours along the way.

But that early fascination with computers, engineering, and understanding how things work has remained remarkably consistent.

And the graduate education I'd envisioned as a child?

Well, I'm still working on that part of the adventure, although I've become considerably less content with limiting my education to a single discipline.

Electronics, Aviation, and the United States Air Force

My fascination with technology eventually led me into military service.

I served eight years in the United States Air Force, working with F-15 avionics and electronic warfare systems.

It was an extraordinary environment in which to develop an appreciation for engineering, particularly the relationships between hardware, software, reliability, precision, and the people whose lives depend on those systems working correctly.

There is something rather different about troubleshooting equipment when failure has consequences extending well beyond an inconvenient error message.

My military experience reinforced lessons I've carried throughout my professional career: take responsibility for your work, understand the systems you're maintaining, question your assumptions, and never accept that something is correct simply because someone says it is.

And, whenever possible, learn from people who know considerably more than you do.

I've been fortunate to encounter quite a few of those people over the years.

From Repairing Computers to Architecting Systems

My professional journey has taken me through computer repair, technical support, software development, infrastructure engineering, systems administration, DevOps, site reliability engineering, and enterprise architecture.

I've worked with everything from individual machines and embedded systems to large distributed platforms supporting complex business operations.

These days, much of my professional work involves cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, automation, software delivery, platform engineering, systems integration, and the challenges of making complicated technologies reliable, secure, maintainable, and useful.

But I don't find technology particularly interesting in isolation.

I'm fascinated by how systems interact, how organizations make decisions, how people adapt to the tools they're given, and how seemingly reasonable design choices can produce entirely unexpected consequences.

I've encountered more than a few situations where the technically impressive solution was not necessarily the most useful solution.

And I've become increasingly skeptical of complexity introduced simply because someone has discovered a fashionable new way of doing something.

Sometimes the best engineering decision is to build something extraordinary.

Sometimes it's to recognize that the supposedly obsolete solution already does the job remarkably well.

Knowing the difference is part of the craft.

I've also come to appreciate that technical problems are rarely just technical problems.

They involve people, processes, organizational constraints, competing priorities, and sometimes a rather remarkable collection of assumptions that nobody has thought to question.

Understanding the technology is important.

Understanding the system in which that technology operates is often considerably more important.

Entrepreneurship, Aerospace, and Building Things That Don't Exist Yet

I've spent a considerable part of my life pursuing entrepreneurial ideas.

Through various ventures, I've explored custom software, hardware, business systems, retail, entertainment, and technology solutions spanning a variety of industries.

Some of those undertakings have been primarily technical. Others have introduced me to the rather different challenges of operating physical businesses, managing resources, and discovering what customers actually want.

I've learned that designing something, building it, operating it, and convincing someone else that it's useful are often four entirely different experiences.

And there's something quite educational about being responsible for all four.

One of my more ambitious undertakings is Patriot Aerospace Corporation, a venture born from my longstanding fascination with aviation, spaceflight, propulsion, robotics, and the possibility of expanding humanity's presence beyond Earth.

My interest in the Google Lunar X Prize helped inspire those ambitions, along with the remarkable engineering challenges associated with reusable launch systems, spacecraft development, and making access to space more practical.

But there's another ambition behind my interest in aerospace, and it's considerably more personal.

One of my life's goals is to design and build a spacecraft capable of taking me to the Moon, landing on its surface, and returning me safely to Earth.

That last part is particularly important.

I would very much prefer to survive the experience.

And I don't simply want to purchase a ticket aboard someone else's spacecraft, although I certainly wouldn't turn down an opportunity to visit the Moon!

I want to participate in designing, engineering, developing, testing, and building the vehicle that takes me there and brings me home.

I recognize the extraordinary technical, financial, and organizational challenges involved. A spacecraft capable of a crewed lunar mission is an undertaking of an entirely different magnitude from most engineering projects.

But I've never been particularly interested in limiting my aspirations to things that already appear easily achievable.

Some of my aerospace interests remain long-term ambitions, while others provide opportunities to investigate technologies, develop skills, and explore practical engineering problems along the way.

Whether I'll ultimately accomplish the lunar mission remains to be seen.

In the meantime, I intend to keep learning, designing, experimenting, and building.

After all, if you're going to dream, you might as well dream beyond Earth. :)

Forever a Student

One of the few things I can say with confidence is that I will probably never be finished with school.

Not because I particularly enjoy collecting credentials, although formal education certainly has its place, but because I genuinely enjoy learning.

I have an almost immeasurable appetite for knowledge, and I've never been particularly good at restricting that appetite to one subject at a time.

I'm pursuing graduate education in computer science through the Georgia Institute of Technology's Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, with particular interests in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.

I'm also pursuing graduate business studies through Eastern University's MBA program, exploring the organizational, managerial, and strategic dimensions of the systems and businesses I've spent so much of my career working with.

And those aren't necessarily the only subjects occupying my attention.

I've also spent time studying pharmacy and pharmaceutical science, revisiting mathematics, exploring engineering disciplines outside my professional specialty, and considering questions about law, organizational behavior, and the ways institutions shape human activity.

My approach to learning has never been especially linear.

I tend to move between subjects, identify relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas, and ask questions that occasionally lead rather far beyond the original topic.

I also have a habit of spending an unreasonable amount of time considering questions that other people might find mundane or entirely uninteresting.

What can I say? Some rabbit holes are simply too interesting to ignore.

One of the experiences I find particularly satisfying is independently arriving at an idea, beginning to research it, and discovering that someone considerably more knowledgeable explored the same question decades, or perhaps centuries, earlier.

Some people might find that discouraging.

I find it reassuring.

It means the question was probably worth asking.

The more I learn, the more I become aware of how much I don't know.

And I think that's a wonderful reason to keep learning.

Artificial Intelligence: A Tool, Not a Replacement for Thinking

I've worked in technology long enough to see more than a few revolutions, disruptions, reinventions, and supposedly transformative innovations.

Some genuinely changed the world.

Others disappeared, only to return years later under a different name and a substantially larger marketing budget.

Virtual reality comes to mind.

Artificial intelligence is particularly interesting because I believe it has tremendous potential to improve how we work, learn, create, and solve problems.

I also believe we should be extraordinarily careful about confusing the adoption of a technology with the value that technology actually produces.

I've become increasingly frustrated with the tendency of organizations to embrace technological change simply because it's fashionable, or because their competitors are doing it.

Progress for the sake of progress isn't necessarily progress at all.

Sometimes it merely introduces additional complexity, new dependencies, and problems we didn't previously have.

That doesn't mean I'm opposed to artificial intelligence.

Quite the opposite.

I use large language models extensively.

They help me investigate unfamiliar subjects, evaluate competing explanations, challenge assumptions, develop software, and clean up my frequently disorganized writing.

I'm a rather enthusiastic stream-of-consciousness writer.

I tend to produce lengthy philosophical tangents, anticipate objections before they're raised, qualify my arguments extensively, and sometimes bury perfectly reasonable ideas beneath several paragraphs of explanation.

An LLM can help make that mess considerably more readable. :)

But I don't believe using a tool should mean surrendering responsibility for the thinking behind it.

I challenge its conclusions, question its sources, reject interpretations that don't represent my position, and sometimes spend longer arguing with it than I would have spent writing the original material.

I don't always want someone—or something—to agree with me.

I want to understand where my reasoning might be wrong, what assumptions I may have overlooked, and whether there's a better explanation for the problem I'm trying to solve.

To me, the important distinction is between augmenting our capabilities and outsourcing our judgment.

I want technology to make us better at what we do, not gradually make us incapable of doing it ourselves.

And I think that principle applies far beyond artificial intelligence.

A Father, a Builder, and an Advocate for Getting Your Hands Dirty

For all my enthusiasm about technology, I'm equally enthusiastic about stepping away from it.

I'm a father, and one of the things I enjoy most is sharing my curiosity with my son.

We work on cars, build things, explore the outdoors, experiment with electronics, and have recently ventured into amateur rocketry.

I enjoy teaching him how mechanical and electrical systems work, but perhaps more importantly, I want him to become comfortable encountering problems he doesn't immediately know how to solve.

I want him to experience the satisfaction of figuring something out through persistence, experimentation, and occasionally getting it spectacularly wrong.

Some of my most valuable lessons came from broken equipment, failed experiments, and people willing to let me make mistakes.

I think children deserve opportunities to learn that way, too.

Having grown up spending most of my free time outside, I also worry about how easily technology can consume the attention of children and adults alike.

There's a tremendous world beyond the screen.

I hope my son develops an appreciation for both.

And I hope that, whatever interests he eventually chooses to pursue, he'll develop the confidence to investigate the unfamiliar, question what he's told, and recognize that not knowing how to do something is often simply the beginning of learning how.

Philosophy, Debate, and Questioning the Obvious

I enjoy a good debate.

Not the sort where everyone arrives determined to win, but the sort where people are genuinely interested in understanding something and are willing to reconsider their positions when presented with a better explanation.

I'm particularly fascinated by the unintended consequences of well-intentioned systems.

Why do organizations sometimes reward behavior that undermines their stated objectives?

Why do educational institutions occasionally seem more concerned with measurable demonstrations of learning than the learning itself?

Why do companies adopt technologies because their competitors are adopting them, without establishing whether those technologies actually solve a problem?

Why do we sometimes mistake doing more work for accomplishing more?

And why are we so often content to accept an answer simply because it has become conventional?

These questions aren't necessarily new, and I certainly don't claim to have invented them.

But I enjoy working through them, discovering the research that already exists, and occasionally finding someone willing to wander down the same rabbit hole.

I've always believed there's tremendous value in surrounding yourself with people who know more than you do, particularly when they're willing to challenge your assumptions.

I don't require agreement.

In fact, thoughtful disagreement is often considerably more interesting.

And if you can show me where I'm wrong, I'm generally delighted to learn something new.

What I find less interesting is performative agreement, arguments conducted merely for the sake of winning, and conversations in which nobody is particularly interested in understanding anyone else's perspective.

Life is far too short, and there are far too many interesting things to learn.

So, Why TheIrishGeek? ☘

Well, the Geek part probably doesn't require much additional explanation at this point.

The Irish part, however, is rather more personal.

My family heritage is quite mixed, with ancestry tracing back through several different cultures and traditions.

But of all those branches of my family tree, it's my Irish heritage that I've always felt the strongest connection to, and that I take particular pride in.

I've always appreciated the history, resilience, humor, storytelling, and rather stubborn independence I associate with that heritage.

And, given my own propensity for philosophical ramblings, spirited debate, questioning authority, and occasionally refusing to leave well enough alone, perhaps the connection is particularly fitting. :)

It's not that the other branches of my ancestry are unimportant to me. They're all part of the story that eventually produced the rather curious individual writing this page.

But my Irish heritage is the part I've always identified with most strongly.

So when it came time to give my little corner of the internet a name, TheIrishGeek seemed particularly appropriate.

The Irish represents the heritage I most closely identify with.

The Geek represents a lifelong fascination with computers, electronics, engineering, science, and just about anything else I can take apart, investigate, or learn something from.

Put them together, and you've got a reasonably accurate description of the person behind all these ramblings.

And, as an added benefit, it gives me a perfectly reasonable excuse to decorate things with shamrocks and Celtic knotwork.

Not that I particularly needed an excuse. ☘

What You'll Find Here

TheIrishGeek.com is, ultimately, a place for my thoughts, experiments, projects, discoveries, and occasional philosophical detours.

Some posts will be deeply technical, exploring software engineering, infrastructure, cloud computing, automation, electronics, or some obscure problem I've spent far too much time investigating.

Others will explore aerospace, spacecraft engineering, propulsion, robotics, or the long and occasionally improbable journey toward my lunar ambitions.

Still others will examine broader questions about technology, society, education, artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship, and the ways we design systems that influence people's lives.

And some may simply document something I've built, broken, repaired, studied, or discovered.

I don't promise that every idea will be revolutionary, every experiment will succeed, or every philosophical tangent will arrive at a particularly satisfying conclusion.

I also can't promise that every post will be short.

In fact, given my propensity for rambling, that's probably a promise I'd be particularly ill-advised to make.

But I do promise genuine curiosity, a willingness to challenge my own assumptions, and an appreciation for anyone interested in doing the same.

I don't pretend to have all the answers.

And I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with me.

In fact, I rather hope they don't.

So, whether you're here for the technology, the philosophy, the projects, the aerospace ambitions, the occasional bit of Irish flair, or simply another geek's ramblings, welcome!

Pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee, and feel free to challenge something I've written.

You might change my mind.

And I rather enjoy it when that happens. :)

— TheIrishGeek ☘

Keep learning. Keep building. Keep questioning.

And perhaps, someday, I'll send a postcard from the Moon.