About

I am a software engineer, operations generalist, and data guy with core experience in contact centers, open source communities, technical writing, process/reporting automation, business intelligence, time series forecasting, and IT. I have a strong background in Python and SQL with experience in JavaScript.

Interests

Health and nutrition

• Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
• Gluten-free → Paleo → Autoimmune Paleo (AIP) → carnivore.
• Four pillars of health: Nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management.
• Weird carnivore work-around recipes:
  • Egg-white pancakes
• Trail running

Sustainable agriculture

• Animal welfare with the understanding that animal protein is a necessary component in the optimal diet for most people.
• Farming practices that are a net environmental benefit (regenerative agriculture).
• Voting with our wallets to support both of the above.

Rationalism

• Learning to think and reason effectively.
• Helping with organization of the local LessWrong community.
• Inasmuch as I identify with rationalism at all, it's probably with the post-rationalists, having been slightly disillusioned by the tendency towards narrow focus on modelling and systematizing in rationalism proper, though this isn't much of a complaint and there's a ton of overlap in these spheres and 'post-rationalism' as label doesn't mean much.

Photography (GeneralAntilles on Flickr)

• Wildlife, mostly birds, macro, mostly spiders and insects, and landscapes, mostly plants.
• Gear ideas (DIY macro flash bracket)

Politics

• How to protect oneself against.
• Decentralization and federation.
• Legal Systems Very Different From Ours
• Self-organizing systems.

Space

• I've always been fascinated by space and rocketry (probably genetic—my grandfather worked in rocketry).
• Particularly interested in SpaceX's exploits and reusable rockets.
• Watching two Falcon Heavy launches in person were some of the coolest experiences in my life.

Open source

• I'm a huge proponent of open source technologies and open source philosophy.
• I believe it's one of the more important developments in modern technology. It has enabled a huge amount of innovation that would not have been possible with a closed-source model.
• I used to be deeply involved in the Maemo community back before Nokia got Microsoft'd.

Automation

• Home (lighting, comfort, status monitoring).
• Task, process, and data collection (mostly work-related).

Remote work and how to develop a remote work culture.

• How does culture enable effective remote work?
• What tools enable remote culture?
• Asynchronous communication, comprehensive documentation, knowledge management.

Writing and the written word

• Editing written English.
• Technical writing. I used to contribute extensively to the Maemo community wiki and the, since lost, E-Flight Wiki. Lately my efforts here have been limited to editing training materials and SOPs at work.
• Oxford commas.
• rm -rf en_GB

Python

• Largely for data wrangling and reporting, some for process automation.
• It's just fun to work with.

IT administration

• Home lab experimentation.
• Self-hosted services (privacy concerns and decentralization).
  • Nextcloud not Dropbox, Gogs not GitHub, Grav not Medium, Mumble not Discord, and Zulip Matrix not Slack.

Data wrangling

• Mostly work-related. KPI tracking, forecasting, budgeting, identifying areas of opportunity for improvement.
• Time series forecasting models.
• Rectifying my deficient statistics background is currently a focus.

Contact centers and retail, a fact that surprises me to this day.

• Contact center organizational structures and staffing.
• Effective management approaches that maximize customer experience while balancing employee (development, morale, engagement) and business (cost, agility, effectiveness) needs.
• How to support and enable effective structures and management with technology.