Welcome to the Blog

Hi,

I’m Josh, and I’d like to welcome you to my corner of the web!

A few things first…

This blog is informal. That means I am not writing for the sake of seeking attention, building a brand, or any of the other self-seeking reasons people often use to build blogs today. I guess you could say I am old school. I write to reinforce my learning and challenge myself to grow in new areas. Said another way:

Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know—and what we don’t know—about whatever we’re trying to learn. — William Zinser¹

Why write publicly? Before social media, blogs were one of the primary ways to interact on the broader internet. They consisted of long-form content that was used to spur new ideas, move tech forward, and hash out important concerns. It is in this spirit that I write publicly. I encourage anyone who wants to engage further on any topics discussed here to reach out to me via email. I (intentionally) do not have any social media presence beyond LinkedIn (a necessity in this age, unfortunately).

This blog will always remain free and will never have a pay wall. It uses open-source and “free tier” technology behind the scenes, so the only cost is my time. If for some odd reason you want to subscribe to my writing, you can use the old-school RSS icon found at the top-right of the website.

About me…

When I’m not in a code editor, I spend most of my time serving my family and my local community. I have dedicated most of my adult life to serving in various roles dedicated to helping the less fortunate in my immediate area. This includes several non-profit organizations, with a special focus on troubled youth.

I am often cateorgized as a “natural leader.” I enjoy building relationships and working in a team. I particularly enjoy getting to meet and talk with people from diverse backgrounds. I have been very fortunate that the last few jobs have afforded me the opportunity to grow in relationship with people from all over the world. This has provided me a lot of opportunities to continue to challenge and refine my worldview.

I do not engage in politics. At least, I do not actively engage in politics. It seems in today’s world that most communication is now assumed to have some political motive, but rest assured that is not the case here.

I’m very introverted, which often surprises people as I’ve done a number of public talks. My “recharge” time usually consists of tinkering in my homelab or playing one of the dozens of automation games I own (Satisfactory being the favorite at the time of this writing). I’m also a voracious reader and generally have my nose in a book multiple times a day.

Finally, I am what you might call a “foodie.” I believe one of the main ways peopole from diverse cultures can communicate with each other is over food. People have been meeting over food for thousands of years. I enjoy traveling and immersing myself in the food of other cultures. I recently was given the privilege of experiencing the food mecca that is Thailand.

With that out of the way…

This blog will attempt to stay somewhat organized via the use of tags. If you’ve stumbled upon this and are looking for a specific topic, you can use the built-in tag filter to uncover posts. I’ll try to avoid ending up with a hundred tags, but I make no guarantee!

I consider myself an avid consumer of all things technology and this will be the primary category that I write on. In modern times, technology tends to intersect with many other disciplines, so these will also find themselves being discussed in the blog.

Beyond that, I am always trying to improve myself, and so a large portion of this blog is dedicated to following that journey. Rest assured, I am not a growth hacker, and I avoid the billion dollar self-help industry like the plague. I try to keep buzz words to a minimum.

I will tag posts about this self-improvement journey as journey. I typically only work on a single journey at a time, and with posts showing up in chronological order, it should be rather easy to follow a journey from start to finish.

Fin

That’s a wrap! It bears worth repeating: I love meeting new people, especially from diverse backgrounds. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me using the email icon found at the bottom of every page. I will make every effort to respond!