All essays
Tech, leadership, life, and the occasional tangent about Saturn. 7 so far.
2026
Tech
The Model Needed a Map, Not a Search Engine
I built a small assistant that answers questions from a wiki of procedures, running on llama.cpp. The best decision I made was deleting the search tool and handing the model a catalog instead.
5 min read
2026
Tech
The Analyst I Built for Myself
I've spent years making monitoring data actionable through AIOps and integration pipelines. Building a personal market research tool turned out to be exactly the same problem.
3 min read
2025
Wisdom
The Invisible Architecture: What 21 Years in Enterprise IT Taught Me About Patience
The most important systems are the ones nobody notices until they fail. A reflection on building invisible integrations — and the leadership lessons hiding inside.
5 min read
2025
Tech
Migrations Are a Mindset, Not a Project
After multiple data center migrations, I've learned that the technical work is the easy part. The real migration is always the one happening in people's heads.
4 min read
2025
Life
What Saturn's Rings Taught Me About Systems Thinking
Billions of ice particles, each following simple rules, producing something vast and intricate and beautiful. There's a lesson here for anyone who designs systems for a living.
4 min read
2025
Wisdom
Twenty Years, One Lesson: Change Slowly, Think Fast
What does institutional knowledge actually feel like? After two decades in enterprise IT — across four companies — I have some thoughts on what staying in a field teaches you.
4 min read
2024
Tech
ServiceNow as a Philosophy
Most people think of ITSM frameworks as bureaucracy. I've come to think of them as a philosophy about how work should flow through an organization.
4 min read