WELCOME

Welcome to the site! I created this space to capture my musings on three of my favorite subjects: fitness, music and technology. And of course, I enjoy the creative outlet of writing. Whether you're a fitness enthusiast, a music lover, or a tech geek, you'll find a variety of engaging content and insightful discussions here.

FITNESS

Like most people who get into sports, I received my first weight set when I was starting middle school. It was the standard plastic weights - made of sand or concrete mix coated in polyvinyl chloride. In my last year of middle school, I graduated to cast iron weights and even purchased a Soloflex in my freshman year of high school - yes, I bought into the hype.

I had tried the gym, but juggling a demanding career and a young family made it challenging to find time for training. And the equipment I wanted to use was popular with the other members, so it was always a crap shoot on whether it would be available - and yes, this was the case when going in the mornings at 5 AM before work.

Searching for a better way and after much research, I decided to try functional fitness. Functional fitness focuses on exercises that help you with everyday living - with movements that mimic daily activities. Movements like squatting, lifting heavy objects, pushing, and pulling things around.

At this the time, I switched to bodyweight conditioning and isometric exercises. The training style helped me tremendously, and I learned it has many benefits, such as increasing strength, improving balance and coordination, flexibility, and reducing the risk of injury.

Shortly after that, I came across pyramids. However, they focused their application on routines involving free weights. I thought the concept had some real potential, so I started to think about adapting the concept to my workouts using bodyweight exercises. Changing body weight is not feasible like with free weights; there are options like adding a weighted vest, but I wanted to avoid dependency on additional equipment.

The key to changing the intensity would be altering the number of reps or performing more challenging variations of the exercises when scaling the pyramid. I also discovered that pyramids were great for ramping up your one-set max (1RM). It's been a core staple in my routines ever since.

MUSIC

Music has always been my source of inspiration. My love of music started at a very young age with the introduction to 45s. This medium dates me a bit, but 45s are smaller vinyl records containing just two songs, one song per side. They were smaller than your standard LP, so they had limited capacity. There was an "A" side, containing the main song and represented "singles" sent to music stations for airplay. A "B" side generally had a lesser-known song or alternate mix. I remember spending hours spinning records, listening to all the sounds from the instruments, and enjoying being a DJ.

Regarding playing music, I was a late bloomer to the guitar. I had tried it once before when I was around 10. But it was an acoustic guitar, where I wanted an electric. At the time, I didn't have the patience to put in the time for practice to master the craft. The fever hit me again when I was 17 after a few friends had also purchases instruments. I saved enough from my summer job to buy a cheap Les Paul copy (Hondo II) from a friend with a tiny Gorilla amp. This time I was hooked.

Within just a few months, I joined a band with another guitarist I was friends with, and we started jamming with other talented musicians to piece together a complete band, writing original material. Finally scraped together enough money to buy a Gibson Les Paul and Marshall JCM 900 head and 1960 A cabinet. I was in that band for roughly three years before I had to move on to building a career in IT to support my expensive habits of needing a roof over my head and good food to easter_date.

TECHNOLOGY

I also got started with programming at an early age - I remember taking a class at school programming graphics on an Apple IIe and I was instantly hooked. Later on that year, I received a Commodore 64 and wrote a program to catalog my baseball cards.

Professionally, I've held various positions in technology since the mid-90s, from humble beginnings as a computer operator. I cut my teeth on the C programming language before moving to Data Processing. I have mostly been with smaller companies, so I am accustomed to wearing multiple hats in roles diverse as Systems Administration, Networking, Web Application Developer, Data Architect, and Analytics.

I got turned on to Linux very early on by a colleague. My first distro was with Slackware. Installation of the operating system required creating a boot disk, and there were no centralized package repositories. If you wanted a piece of software, you had to compile your packages - things sure have come a long way! But Linux proved to be the perfect operating system to grow and hone my skills and I still love using it as my daily driver still today.

In the early 2000s, as head hunters were pursuing me, I first heard the term "technical unicorn" when being recruited due to my deep exposure to the entire development stack and my willingness to jump in early on emerging technologies. Perhaps my favorite was being called a "Swiss Army Knife" because no matter the problem's domain, I was a trusted resource to find the solution. Exposure to so much has been beneficial, but does have the drawback of being a "Jack of all Trades." But drinking from the firehouse so early and often prepared me well for my current position as CTO of my company.

INVITATION

If you like what you've read so far, stick around! Bookmark the site, frequent the blog, and sign up for our newsletter below. Whether discussing the latest technology, or strumming a new melody on my guitar, or hitting a personal best while training, this space is where I plan to share my experiences with all interested. Consider this your invitation to embark on this journey with me and hopefully all will grow together.

Best wishes for your success!