How it began
I got kicked out of high school during my senior year for hacking grades and attendance records.
I had turned it into a small business. I charged $25 bucks for each grade or attendance record someone wanted changed.
My punishment came from the school. At the time, schools throughout the area were still adopting technology, and I was considered a threat. I was kicked out, barred from enrolling in any other school within roughly 50 to 60 miles, and had to earn my GED to receive a high school equivalency credential.
While the school was deciding what to do with me, the principal told me I was a screwup and would never amount to shit. He was not the first person to say something like that to me. By then, I had heard worse.
That story is not a badge of honor. I crossed a line and lived with the consequences. It is part of my story because it exposed something about me that has remained consistent. I wanted to understand how systems worked, where they broke, and what people assumed nobody would question.
I never accepted that anyone else got to decide what I would become.
Before all of that, I spent late nights building computers, taking things apart, learning how networks worked, and developing an instinct for social engineering. I had curiosity, persistence, and technical ability. What I lacked was judgment about where to direct them.
I eventually learned to point those traits somewhere useful.
From house calls to technical leadership
My technology career began in 1999, when I founded and ran Imagine-IT. The company served home users and small businesses. I repaired computers, installed and troubleshot networks, and made on-site visits whenever a customer needed help.
It was hands-on work in the most literal sense. I had to diagnose the problem, explain it to someone who might not understand the technology, fix it with the resources available, and stand behind the result. There was no larger team to hand the problem to when something became difficult.
Since then, I have worked across systems engineering, network engineering, network security, cybersecurity, consulting, architecture, and technical leadership.
Today, I lead a Center of Excellence at Optiv. The role gives me an unusual opportunity to build and lead a team without giving up the part of the work I still love. I remain close to both my team and the engineering, architecture, and problem-solving instead of managing from a distance.
Networking and network security remain my strongest technical areas. They gave me the foundation for understanding how systems communicate, how environments are designed, how failures spread, and how security controls behave outside a diagram.
Much of my career has been spent assessing, designing, and improving customer environments. That work taught me that identifying a technical problem is often the easy part. The harder work is understanding the surrounding system, explaining the real risk, and helping someone make a decision they can implement.
I have spent much of my career translating between different groups of people. I can move from a packet capture or architecture diagram to a customer conversation or leadership discussion without losing sight of the technical reality underneath it. I care about whether something works in the actual environment, not merely whether it looks correct on paper.
Since 2014, I have also operated Security Titans as its founder and principal security consultant. It gives me another place to apply what I know, take on interesting problems, and stay connected to hands-on consulting.
Teaching and learning
From 2011 through 2019, I taught undergraduate and graduate technology and security courses as an adjunct instructor at Fort Hays State University.
Teaching forced me to understand subjects well enough to explain them clearly. It also reminded me that expertise does not mean having every answer. Some of the most useful conversations happen when someone asks a question that makes you reconsider what you thought you understood.
I was named Adjunct of the Year by the university’s College of Business and Entrepreneurship. That recognition meant a lot because teaching was never something I treated as a side obligation.
Learning remains a daily habit. I can disappear into a subject for hours when it catches my attention. Cybersecurity is a major part of my background, but it is not the boundary around my interests. Networking, artificial intelligence, automation, privacy, open-source intelligence, and infrastructure can all send me down a worthwhile rabbit hole.
How I approach problems
I tend to live a few steps ahead of the present. I look for patterns, imagine what a system or technology could become, and consider several paths before choosing one.
Once I see a direction, I want to move. Endless discussion without action wears me out.
I am direct, independent, competitive, and comfortable making decisions when a situation is unclear. I am also willing to challenge an accepted answer when the evidence points somewhere else. Those qualities have helped me lead teams, advise customers, and make progress when a project was stuck.
They have downsides too.
I can move faster than other people are ready to move. I can take on more than I should. When a problem captures my attention, I can become so focused that hours disappear. I also have a documented tendency to over-engineer things that could have been much simpler.
I recognize those tendencies, even if I have not eliminated all of them.
Outside of work
I married my high school sweetheart, and we have two adult children.
Our son works in technology, with a growing focus on cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Our daughter works in healthcare and has built a career around helping people and improving the communities she serves. I am proud of both of them and the lives they are building.
I chase storms when I have free time. I turned my truck into a high-tech mobile command center with communications equipment, weather technology, and enough gear to make it clear that I over-engineered the hell out of it.
Building it brought together several things I enjoy, including systems design, networking, communications, situational awareness, and solving problems in unpredictable conditions. Chasing extreme weather also puts me in an environment where information changes quickly and decisions have consequences. Apparently, even my hobbies need architecture and risk management.
Why this site exists
This site is where I document the things I build, investigate, learn, and occasionally get wrong.
Some of the content I share will be detailed technical research. The rest may cover projects, experiments, videos, demonstrations, commentary, or subjects that caught my attention long enough to become worth sharing.
View my résumé