"How little of who we are shows in what we do." — Pascal Mercier
Growing up sick and stuck inside, I gravitated toward computers pretty early on. I started out playing Halo and similar games, but eventually moved on to more strategic ones. Nowadays I play chess, train Muay Thai, and have a hard time leaving a pattern alone once I've spotted one.
That's what eventually led me to network security. There's real strategy to it, it's pretty clear when you're victorious and when you lose, and on top of that the pay ain't too bad either.
At my best, I'm a vigorous worker, and will bite down on a challenge until I've completed it. At my worst, I slam into a wall over and over until I fatigue myself, but fortunately for me, I have a knack for finding good people who always build me back up and help me get back on the right track.
I aim to demonstrate real knowledge, not just memorization. Built through doing things, breaking things, and looking up what I forgot. Learning is a lifelong journey.
When I learn something, I do my best to not just retain cab driver knowledge of the topic, but learn the building blocks of it. I refine the concept down into small pieces that can be used to build it back up into practical usage. This method is great for engineering, as most concepts take a brief note to jog my memory. This method does not work as well for conversational, or explanatory usage, so I try to prepare for those situations when necessary.
I don't like feeling like someone is looking over my shoulder, and I've spent enough time on the other side of that to know how easy it actually is to do so. Most people have no idea what they leave out in the open. That sticks with me when I'm building anything. I'm not going to collect data I don't need, hand out access I don't have to, or throw together something sloppy that becomes somebody else's problem later. People deserve the decency of privacy, and I'd rather just build it in from the start.
Social media is toxic, it's all engagement bait, a desperate attempt to get you to keep interacting. It's so ingrained that it feels like you have to engage just to get anywhere these days. They've exploited a human vulnerability, and there's no patch in the works.
I needed a workaround, some place to host what I want to express, without the meaningless fluff. The only solution that made sense was to create this site, and so I did. I own this space, no ads, sponsored content, or influencers. I have total control, beholden to nobody, and nobody owns my attention.
It also just makes sense that someone who thinks about attack surface would try to cut down on what they put on the web. Handing your identity off to some platform that you don't own, can't audit, and didn't build is the exact sort of laziness I would call out while doing a security audit. So I didn't.