Hi, I'm John.
You've (somehow) managed to stumble upon my dark corner of the internet1.
I've enjoyed tinkering with computers and their code since discovering I could alter variable values in GORILLA.BAS↗ on my dad's work computer to imbue the thrown bananas with enough explosive power to level the entire city. I thought, "hey, that's neat," and then spent much of my childhood free time learning how else I could bend computers to my will.
Once I grew up2, I found a career in system administration, and I leveraged my passion for coding to write scripts to help manage systems more efficiently. While managing a global-scale VMware environment, I was tasked with implementing vRealize Automation (now called "Aria Automation"). I didn't realize it at the time but that was the start of my DevOps transformation. I started thinking about infrastructure-as-code, and began using HashiCorp Packer and a CI/CD pipeline to automatically build fully-up-to-date VM templates on a weekly cadence.
I'm now a platform architect at a smaller corporation, focused full-time on leveraging the DevOps mindset to streamline IT operations and enable software developers with automation and self-service tooling. It's a great blend of my virtual infrastructure operations background, hobbyist development experience, and hunger for solving problems, and I really enjoy applying these skills to solve interesting challenges at scale.
On my off time, I tinker with new projects in my little homelab (and share some of those adventures here). I love experimenting with new (to me) technologies, and I've found that actually using something is typically the best way to learn it.
On weekends, I race my daily-driven 2014 Subaru BRZ in local autocross events↗ or wrench on my 1974 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
And in the free time I have left, I game on my Steam Deck.
