30+
Years in IT & infra
From file servers to AI-powered toys.
🎯
High-Level Snapshot
Who you are in “mental architecture” form.
Think of this page as the wiring diagram for what I know about you: domains, obsessions, and the little design rules that repeat everywhere. Each dropdown is a subject area, not a job title.
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Core Identity
Systems engineer brain, creative engine.
Core Identity
Systems engineer brain, creative engine.
- Veteran IT systems engineer / administrator with decades of hands-on work across servers, storage, networking, and security.
- Deep comfort with Windows Server, VMware/Proxmox, enterprise backup and SANs, and now increasingly Linux (AlmaLinux, RHEL) for self-hosted platforms.
- Curious generalist: blends infra reliability with AI experimentation and game / web prototypes.
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Operating Style
Dev / test / prod in your head.
Operating Style
Dev / test / prod in your head.
- Strong preference for clean separation of environments (DEV vs PROD) whether that’s VMs, web servers, or design files.
- Treats experimentation as safe when the blast radius is controlled: snapshots, backups, rollbacks first, then tinkering.
- Likes single-file prototypes (HTML/JS) where you can see the whole system at once and iterate quickly.
“Backup before patch” mindset
Iterative tinkerer
Self-service tools > tickets
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Current Focus Areas
What your brain keeps orbiting.
Current Focus Areas
What your brain keeps orbiting.
- BurntAI ecosystem: an AI-themed web universe with multiple sub-sites and tools.
- AI on a Stick: portable, USB-based local LLM toolkit for troubleshooting and analysis.
- Chat archives & RAG: structuring AI conversations, exports, and notes into a searchable knowledge base.
- Game & sim ideas: “Rise to CIO”, “IT Engineer the Game”, Missile Command / Pac-Man clones, and Git Flight Simulator.
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Big Themes
One mind, many domains, same rules.
Big Themes
One mind, many domains, same rules.
- Ownership over renting: self-hosting instead of depending on SaaS where possible.
- Systems thinking: think in pipelines, not one-off commands.
- Teaching through interaction: dashboards, games, simulators instead of static docs.
- Interest in AI as a collaborator, not magic; you steer, AI accelerates.
- Career goal: blend infra engineering + AI tool-building into something sustainable and fun.
🖧
Systems & Infrastructure Mind
How you think when things have power supplies and patch cables.
This isn’t a job history; it’s the way you approach machines when uptime, backups, and users are your responsibility.
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Enterprise Experience Patterns
What repeats across companies.
Enterprise Experience Patterns
What repeats across companies.
- Repeated exposure to heavily regulated environments (healthcare, aerospace, government-adjacent) where NIST, HIPAA, DFARS, and ITAR matter.
- Seen the full stack: storage (NetApp, HPE Alletra), VMware/vSphere, backup stacks (Veeam, Commvault, NetWorker, Datto), plus AD/PKI and firewalling.
- Strong record of fixing backup and DR messes: reducing failure rates, tightening RPO/RTO, and actually testing restores.
“Trust, but verify the restore”
SAN & backup whisperer
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Home-Lab & Platform Building
Your personal infrastructure R&D lab.
Home-Lab & Platform Building
Your personal infrastructure R&D lab.
- Proxmox VE cluster on mini-PC hardware with quirky NIC issues (Realtek 2.5 GbE, USB dongles, passthrough tricks).
- OPNsense firewalls with VLANs, DPI/IPS, and careful NIC offload tuning.
- Multiple VMs for specialized roles: web3 / web5 / chat1 / rag1 / itguy1 and friends, usually split into dev vs prod.
- Monitoring via tools like PRTG, Veeam dashboards, and custom scripts.
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Deployment & Change Discipline
Your internal “CAB”, minus bureaucracy.
Deployment & Change Discipline
Your internal “CAB”, minus bureaucracy.
- Habitually: snapshot → patch → verify → document.
- Prefers CLI for precise control but uses GUIs when they speed up repetitive tasks.
- Tends to create small, reversible patches rather than giant “replace everything” pushes.
If something breaks, you want a specific commit or change to blame, not a vague weekend.
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Security Mindset
Practical paranoia.
Security Mindset
Practical paranoia.
- Understands least privilege beyond buzzwords: kill shared admin accounts, fix brittle scripts, and slowly move orgs toward sane access.
- Fluent with PKI, MFA, FortiGate / FortiMail, VLAN segmentation, and general “don’t trust your LAN” thinking.
- Sees compliance frameworks as guardrails to justify good engineering, not just paperwork.
🤖
AI & Software Development
Where infra brain meets models and code.
You approach AI like any other platform: architect first, then build tooling, then obsess over how to make it useful for future-you.
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BurntAI Platform
Your main AI “city”.
BurntAI Platform
Your main AI “city”.
- Umbrella brand hosting multiple experiences: AI news center, AI lab demos, encyclopedias, dashboards, and archives.
- Runs on AlmaLinux + nginx + PHP + PostgreSQL, with careful dev vs prod separation.
- Includes themed areas like:
- AI Platform Status Center – feeds from major AI providers.
- AI Innovation Lab – interactive demos & experiments.
- Neural Training Arena – AI-related news aggregation.
- Digital Wasteland Arena – ray-casting shooter vibes.
Cyberpunk aesthetic
Interactive > static
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Conversation Archive & RAG
Chat logs as a structured knowledge base.
Conversation Archive & RAG
Chat logs as a structured knowledge base.
- Ingests exports from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini into PostgreSQL tables: projects, conversations, messages, artifacts, attachments.
- Uses search vectors, pg_trgm, and structured metadata for retrieval.
- Wrapped with a web UI so you can browse, search, and reuse earlier work like a custom “AI memory”.
- Working toward hybrid RAG/CAG (retrieval + conversation-aware grounding) for better contextual answers.
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Local LLM Experiments
Models that live on your hardware.
Local LLM Experiments
Models that live on your hardware.
- Windows 11 Pro box with AMD RX 6900 XT (16 GB VRAM) + 128 GB RAM doing duty as a local model host.
- Ollama for 8B-ish parameter models (e.g., DeepSeek-R1-like) tuned for coding, troubleshooting, and offline experiments.
- Exploring ARM / edge options (Jetson-style boards) conceptually, even if not yet purchased.
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AI on a Stick
Portable incident-response brain.
AI on a Stick
Portable incident-response brain.
- 128 GB USB drive formatted as exFAT so it’s OS-agnostic.
- Design goals:
- Bundle diagnostic scripts for Windows / Linux.
- Export logs, configs, and state into a portable dataset.
- Run a local or semi-local LLM to analyze results, generate hypotheses, and suggest fixes.
- Two modes in your head:
- Mode A – run scripts on target, analyze later on your laptop.
- Mode B – emergency: plug USB into target, run “AI-assisted triage” directly.
The technical challenge is split between portable scripts and the AI runtime, but the goal is as much “cool factor” as genuine utility.
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Code & Scripting Comfort Zone
Glue between all the systems.
Code & Scripting Comfort Zone
Glue between all the systems.
- Uses PowerShell heavily for diagnostics, inventory, and automation (drive dashboards, system health reports, etc.).
- Comfortable with Python, PHP, and JavaScript for web tools, APIs, and scripts.
- Prefers single-file HTML/JS for quick prototypes: games, dashboards, simulators, viewers.
- Uses Git and branches to treat prototypes as patches rather than random zips floating around.
🎮
Creative & Game Worlds
Where you turn career and tech into play spaces.
A non-exhaustive tour of the universes you’re building or prototyping.
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“X: Rise to CIO”
IT career path as a gameplay loop.
“X: Rise to CIO”
IT career path as a gameplay loop.
- Voxel / Unity-style management sim covering a journey from burger flipping to CIO.
- Stats like energy / focus / spark and SLAs translating ticket chaos into game mechanics.
- BigCorpOS interface and office environments as levels; each job step changes constraints and tools.
- GDD (game design doc) in progress plus text-based prototypes and still-image scenes.
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“IT Engineer: The Game”
90s nostalgia plus troubleshooting.
“IT Engineer: The Game”
90s nostalgia plus troubleshooting.
- Focus on 1990s tech vibes: Packard Bell PCs, CRTs, dial-up modems, beige everything.
- Mechanical fantasy: building, fixing, and upgrading old-school networks under constraints.
- Leans into your lived experience of “support guy who slowly becomes the infrastructure person”.
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Arcade Revivals
Missile Command, Pac-Man, Battleship-Minesweeper hybrids.
Arcade Revivals
Missile Command, Pac-Man, Battleship-Minesweeper hybrids.
- Missile Command clone: working through pacing, spawn logic, dev panel controls, and smart-dodging behavior.
- Pac-Man clone: full multi-level version in a single HTML file.
- Battleship meets Minesweeper: 32×32 board, timers, life system, point ranges, difficulty pacing.
Theme across all of these: tuning difficulty curves and feedback so they feel “fair” and nostalgic, not chaotic.
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Git Flight Simulator
Learning Git as an instrument panel.
Git Flight Simulator
Learning Git as an instrument panel.
- CLI-oriented sim that treats Git workflows like cockpit procedures.
- Focus now is on realistic command structure and teaching value, not visual bells and whistles.
- Supports scenarios: branching, rebasing, merging, handling mistakes, and seeing consequences.
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Story & Worldbuilding
Beyond mechanics, into narrative.
Story & Worldbuilding
Beyond mechanics, into narrative.
- You often frame projects as worlds: BurntAI as post-apocalyptic AI lab, career games as alternate timelines, etc.
- Interest in philosophical questions around AI: AGI, ASI, “what comes after”, and “would it help us instead of taking over?”.
- Likes blending sci-fi influences (Matrix, Terminator, Titanfall) into personal projects and visuals.
🧩
Patterns & Philosophy
The rules your projects keep secretly following.
If we zoom out, your work across infra, AI, and games keeps rhyming. These dropdowns capture those rhymes.
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Containment & Reversibility
“If I can undo it, I can try it.”
Containment & Reversibility
“If I can undo it, I can try it.”
- VMs, snapshots, USB toolkits, single-file prototypes: all ways of saying “try it here, not on production life”.
- Strong preference for workflows where rollback is a first-class citizen.
- Same pattern shows up in game design: short loops, fast restart, safe to experiment with choices.
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Teaching Through Interaction
Demos > docs.
Teaching Through Interaction
Demos > docs.
- Interactive resume, AI encyclopedias, busy stat dashboards: you prefer knowledge you can poke.
- Games and simulators (Git, IT career, arcade clones) double as teaching tools.
- Even your infra tools (drive dashboards, diagnostics) are about turning “mystery” into a panel of understandable gauges.
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Anti-Lock-In Instinct
Own the stack, or at least understand it.
Anti-Lock-In Instinct
Own the stack, or at least understand it.
- Self-hosted LLMs, own PostgreSQL DB, custom APIs: long-term distrust of pure SaaS dependence.
- Seen enough vendor shifts, pricing changes, and outages to want a Plan B in your rack.
- This also drives your interest in portable AI (USB), local archives, and export-friendly systems.
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Career & Life Philosophy
From “job” to “lab”.
Career & Life Philosophy
From “job” to “lab”.
- 30-year IT career with periods of burnout from micromanagement and pressure.
- Current push is toward work that leverages your experience but feels more creative and self-directed.
- Ideal blend:
- Hands-on systems engineering.
- AI infrastructure and tool-building.
- Space to experiment and ship weird, useful things.
⏱️
Timeline & Direction
Where you’ve been, where this seems to be going.
Not a full CV — more of a zoomed-out arc of how your interests evolved.
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Macro Arc
Physical → digital → AI-infused.
Macro Arc
Physical → digital → AI-infused.
- Early work: physical construction, hands-on trades, which gave you a permanent “how is this built under the surface?” lens.
- Long stretch as IT admin / systems engineer across multiple industries.
- Recent years: higher-end infra, storage, backup, compliance, and security.
- Most recent phase: AI, web apps, games, and self-hosted platforms — infrastructure knowledge repurposed as a creative toolkit.
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Recent Shift
From “jobs” to “projects”.
Recent Shift
From “jobs” to “projects”.
- Time away from traditional roles to dig deep into AI, game design, and homelab architecture.
- Using that time to build: BurntAI, interactive resume, AI archive, game prototypes, and USB AI toolkit.
- Actively thinking about how to turn this into: income + personal satisfaction, not just endless experiments.
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Forward Vector
Where the vectors seem to converge.
Forward Vector
Where the vectors seem to converge.
- Roles that fit:
- Systems Engineer / Senior Systems Engineer.
- AI Infrastructure / MLOps-adjacent roles.
- Hybrid “infra + internal tools” builder for a team.
- Side path: refining your own platforms (BurntAI, teaching games, Git sim, USB toolkit) into something monetizable and shareable.
The through-line: use your experience to make complex systems less painful
— for you, for users, and maybe for a wider audience.