I learned most of what I know by being confused first.

Ninth grade

Computers were the first thing I wanted to understand. I liked machines I could watch work, but electronics happen inside a box, and nobody could explain how. That drove me to figure it out. Thankfully, an opportunity presented itself in ninth grade. I traded my free periods, lunches, and homeroom to a school IT staffer who agreed to teach me in return. The principal okayed it as long as my grades held up.

Fixing computers is mostly a long stretch of not knowing the solution, followed by a rewarding aha moment. By the time I graduated, I had repaired hundreds of the school's machines, and that's where I got hooked on that moment of clarity.

Tech school

Another moment of clarity came in high school. A classmate and I taught ourselves HTML (new and exciting at the time). Web pages had seemed like magic until we saw the code behind them. But our computer teacher saw our enthusiasm and turned our new hobby into a senior-year project. As a result, the whole class built the school's first website.

After graduation

Not long after I graduated high school, the school district hired me part-time. During this time, I started teaching computer classes for the local township's Parks and Recreation Department. One class had 24 adults, ages 32 to 82. The oldest was a woman who baked cakes for a living and had never touched a computer. On our first day of class, she struggled with clicking the mouse. She was holding it up in the air in front of the computer monitor. Not long after, she became my star student and eventually ran her whole business from a computer. Months later, she sent me a letter that ended: "It's not your age that prevents you from learning; it is your attitude." She was right, and I've never forgotten it.

That's when I saw the other side of the moment I'd been chasing: watching someone else's confusion turn into clarity. It's still my favorite part of the work.

2000 and since

I went full-time with the school district in 2000, after earning my associate's degree in computer science. Since then, I've mostly met people where they get stuck. RdyToGo, which my brother Brett and I started in 2010, builds websites for small business owners who have better things to do than learn HTML. Pro-How AI, which I founded in 2016 as general technology training and which now focuses on AI, teaches business owners to use it without losing the human side of their work. I also co-organize the Myrtle Beach WordPress Meetup, where people bring their questions and leave feeling more confident about managing their own websites.

Passion projects

Some of my passion projects grew out of confusion in everyday life. For instance, roads and streets shape everyone's day, yet few of us understand why they're built the way they are, or how that could be better. So, as an enthusiast, I am developing the Commonway System, a guide meant to be understandable by everyone, yet still useful for engineers. The guide is built on published evidence and professional standards, with sources cited. English spelling is another example, and it's harder than it needs to be. Since I was about twelve, I've been tinkering with a clearer alphabet, now a hobby project I call the Living English Alphabet.

Why I write

I don't always have the answer. Life still challenges me and my assumptions, which is why I write things down. This site is where I do that, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and anyone is welcome to look in as I muse, rant, and imagine what could be.