Work

I am the founder and president of Renkara Media Group. Renkara created AccelaStudy, an accelerated learning platform with millions of users. AccelaStudy was launched in 2008 and was one of the first 500 apps in Apple's new App Store. It has been in the App Store continually for over 15 years and serves over 30,000 student sessions every month.

I have a consulting practice - Vantalect - through which I provide consulting services to a wide variety of Fortune 1000 clients. I specialize in cloud governance and compliance, cost-effective scalable and resilient cloud architectures, data and machine learning pipelines, and operational automation.

I started Acumen Defensive, an organization focused on cybersecurity and compliance. Acumen Defensive provides comprehensive audits of cloud infrastructure for the purposes of achieving HIPAA, GDPR, GxP, NIST, PCI-DSS, and SOC2 compliance. Acumen Defensive is also partnering to help clients reach compliance readiness for FedRAMP, StateRAMP, HITRUST, and other frameworks.

I am an expert in iOS development and in building scalable and highly-available infrastructure, primarily in the AWS cloud. I am highly proficient in Node.js, Python, Golang, Swift, and C#. I am particularly proud of the multi-master replication engine I designed that powers AccelaStudy and synchronizes data between clients and servers across multiple AWS regions in real-time.

I am an AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional and an AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional. I also have several specialized certifications including Advanced Networking and Security. I participate in creating new AWS certification exams and am an authorized AWS instructor.

I am a strong proponent of remote work and am the editor of the Remote Technologist publication on Medium. I've exclusively worked from home in a well-furnished office since 2010. When the COVID pandemic happened, it had zero effect on my work.

I maintain GitHub repos for the articles I write and a collection of CloudFormation and Terraform resources for provisioning AWS infrastructure.

My résumé can be found at cloudops.consulting. Copies are available online in PDF format.

Other Work

I am an avid professional woodworker and design, build, and sell limited-edition furniture through my company Burl & Beam. Rather than specializing in custom furniture or one-off pieces, or mass-produce a bunch of common items, I research and design epic, heirloom pieces and construct a limited quantity of them, usually less than 100. Pieces are announced in the spring, orders accepted, and deliveries arrive in late fall, in time for the holiday season.

I also have interest in several other startups: Apex Predictive, Verumdare, Static, and Heroic Machines.

Education

I was an Eagle at Carlock Elementary School and a Python at Parkside Junior High School. Based on my school aptitude tests, I was invited to attend the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) but my parents persuaded me into attending and graduating from University High School.

I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from DePaul University. I was given permission to attend a number of graduate courses as electives and particularly enjoyed studies in cryptology with Dr. Schaefer and distributed computing.

Moving Around

I grew up in a neighborhood called Sunset Lake outside of the town of Carlock, Illinois, population 400.

I've lived in the Illinois cities of Bloomington, Normal, and Peoria. In 1999, I moved to Chicago. I lived downtown in a condo at 600 South Dearborn for a year. It is also known as the Transportation Building and was the headquarters for Eliot Ness and the Untouchables during Prohibition. I was living at Presidential Towers on 9/11.

I became a Texan in 2014 and have lived in Westlake, Amarillo, and now currently make my home on 3 acres in Keller.

Personality

I've taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test many times and am, invariably, an INTJ, also known as the Architect personality.

My IQ has been formally estimated by the Stanford-Binet test several times to be between 150 and 165. In high school, my Otis–Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) score was in the 99.99% percentile and was used for admission to Mensa.

As an adult, I have been clinically assessed as having low latent inhibition, which sounds disturbing but is actually advantageous and pretty awesome.

Sports and Fitness

I've been a bodybuilder, a track cyclist, a triathlete, a rock climber, and an Olympic weightlifter. I've come to appreciate the benefits of hot yoga and have completed 3 Tough Mudder events.

I have been an avid snowboarder for over 20 years. I tried skiing for a few years and it didn't take. My sons and I try to find powder every year during Spring Break, most recently at Winter Park, Colorado.

I was a Red Cross-certified lifeguard at the Four Seasons Club in Bloomington, Illinois in high school.

Although I completed the coursework, pool sessions, and open water session to become a PADI-certified Rescue Diver, my certification paperwork was not filed due to a missing CPR certificate and so I have to retake the course. Until then, I have current PADI certifications in Advanced Open Water and Deep Diving. I received excellent instruction from Midwest Diving Specialists in Normal, Illinois. I am a member of the Divers Alert Network (DAN).

I am an autocross enthusiast and haved raced in a 2012 Porsche 911 S, a 2015 Porsche Boxster GTS, and currently drive a 2013 Porsche 911 4S Cabriolet. I'm a member of the Porsche Club of America - Mavericks Region and I occasionally do autocross events with the Equipe Rapide sports car club in Dallas/Fort Worth. In 2022, I did the Triple Crown Rally with the Park Up Front community.

I've driven on the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas and hope to one day do some hot laps on the Nürburgring in Germany. In preparation for that day, I am working towards the necessary 1,000 laps on the virtual Nürburgring track in Forza.

Social

You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Tumblr.

The most popular posts on my blog are The 10-Year Hoodie, On Telecommuting, and My Life as a Bodybuilder. The Christmas card made with my sons when they first moved to Texas is still a favorite.

This website is stored in a Git repository at Github, generated with Static Rendition, built with CodeBuild, copied to an S3 bucket, and is served by a CloudFront distribution in the AWS cloud.

The "I never lose. Either I win, or I learn." quote at the top of this page is attributed to Nelson Mandela.