Who am I?  I’m a guy with a lot of passion for learning billions of things with not enough time to do it.   With the broad strokes, I’m someone that has two master’s degrees (MS Cybersecurity, MBA) and a bachelor’s in IT.  My passions these days are all over the place, but I wanted to attract potentially a broader type of audience to this.

At a quick glance, I like learning and understanding how things work.  Puzzles, if you will.  Just about everything you do in life has a “best practices” document somewhere, a standard operating procedure – I like to find the gray areas where people have not gone and add to best practices.

My most recent interests have gone towards stocks and investments.  Why?  Well, I also describe myself as a wannabe futurist like Michio Kaku.  I loved watching him on TV all the time talk about what is to come.  It’s thought provoking.  I used to have conversations like that with my friends in high school, and I miss having those kinds of discussions with people.   Fun fact – one of my friends from high school invented YouTube.  I’d say it was more accurate to say we shared a close friend and ran in the same circles – but he was a pretty shy dude.  Happy for him!

The site was setup to appeal to people who have a background in a lot of different areas.  Here are a couple bullets about me and why I have been called “the renaissance man” a few times.

  • Math olympiads awards in elementary school.  Math county-wide competitions in junior high.  Mother was a CPA and math major.  My aptitude with math concepts is strong.
  • IT manager over large contract.  No, I can’t fix your PC.  My engineering area of expertise was cyber defense in hardening systems.  That sounds fancy.  I was a glorified IT security guard who ran tools to close windows in a giant warehouse is more appropriate.
  • Took my first college class, BASIC programming, as an 11 year old at the local community college – Reading Area Community College.  So yeah, my IT background goes back to 1985 or so.
  • Played trumpet all through grad school in orchestras and was voted “most musical” in high school.
  • Played varsity baseball and was a varsity wrestler.  Sucked at wrestling.   Strong baseball player.  4th flight on my college tennis team as a freshman until I got thrown off for pledging a fraternity and missing practices.
  • Played golf for years – terrible at it, but fun to go whack the balls around and have fun with the guys.
  • Founded a small weight lifting club in high school
  • Did a sprint triathlon in 2019 and came in 138th out of 238 in my first ever event.  COVID 40 has me sidelined now from running.  The most I ever ran was 8.4 miles, the most I ever biked was 45 miles, and the most I swam was for an hour straight.  Had some back issues from too much running that sort of put the brakes on this for a bit.
  • Prolific writer as a hobby.  The second someone would try and pay me to do it, it wouldn’t be fun anymore.
  • Amateur investor and chartist – I try and find patterns and value.  I don’t chase things.  I am usually early and patient.
  • World-level chess competitor in my teens.  Played in World Open 1990 and went 5-2-1 in Class B.    No, I was not playing grandmasters.  Yes, I can beat you at chess.  No, I rarely play anymore due to time constraints of a family.  This will be what I do a lot in my 60s and older.  Team was county champions when I was an 8th grader.  HS team got 3rd in states when I was in 8th grade. Transferred in 9th grade to a school without a team.
  • I like “futurism” as mentioned above.  What are likely outcomes based on known inputs?  Probability.  A lot of this led me to my “silver metrics” to gain inputs on what is brewing.
  • Amateur DIY around the house – finishing my basement.  Building walls, drywall, mud, prime, paint, flooring, drop ceilings – good to get new skill sets.
  • Lost 175 pounds using low carb approach for last 100 pounds.  Found out a lot about nutrition and hormones most of you don’t understand or care to ever know about.  Our food is making our nation unhealthy, and what YOU think as healthy has probably been gaslit to you for 40 years rather than having a scientific foundation of being appropriate for you to actually eat.  Consider any study you probably have seen about meat deals with not meat our ancestors ate (grass fed, finished, organic) but cheaply raised animals with “feed” that has significantly increased their omega 6s.  So just about everything you know about health is most likely wrong based off of studies that are meant to channel you towards a cheaper diet that will most likely result in you getting obese and dying prematurely.
  • Fascination with business case studies and measurements.  Did my MBA as a focus in management studies.
  • Cyber security interests – fascinating field and where I got my other master’s degree.  99% of my country has very little concepts as to the bigger picture with cyber warfare, theft, and control.  I do not believe CBDCs are your friend, but a currency to be introduced to a very repressive communist regime to control you.  There might be a small percent on the planet that even understand the implications of the sentence I just wrote.
  • Interests in sound money.  I first took an interest in politics in 6th grade, and my parents got me a book on government waste.  Collected coins/silver as a child.  Dad was a silver dealer in 1979/1980, and my mom was a foreign exchange student to Peru and brought back home some silver trinkets I inherited.  In high school, I read a book called “Miracle in Philadelphia” by Catherine Drinker Bowen that went over how our Constitution was written, day by day, and the underlying conflicts that led to compromises.  While I am not a constitutional scholar, at one point I desired a career in the FBI/law and cannot understand how the “rule of law” no longer seems to exist.  The fabric of our society is being dismissed.  In the Constitution, it talks of “gold and silver” as the only money.
  • Investor in commodities – miners/explorers.  Top interest is silver miners, then gold miners.  Not willing to buy in to uranium or copper yet.  Want to get into battery metals, rare earther, and oil down the road with soon to be silver profits.

For career inquiries –

I possess the following degrees:

  • B.S. Informatics (1998)
  • M.S. Cybersecurity (2012)
  • MBA (2016)

I possess the following certifications:

  • Project Management Professional (PMP)
  • Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
  • Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA server 2008)
  • Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE server 2012)
  • Server+
  • Network+
  • Security+
  • A+
  • Microsoft Certified Professional (NT 4.0 + enterprise)
  • Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist – SCCM 2007
I live with my wife and children just outside of a small city in Pennsylvania.  I ended up in one of my colleges here, and it’s a blue collar type of city I like with access to white collar jobs.