LinkedIn: Legacy Project:

This isn’t just another portfolio. It’s a chronicle.

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve been deep in the trenches of tech — solving problems that couldn’t be Googled, untangling legacy systems built on duct tape and prayer, and creating automation before DevOps was even a buzzword. But the truth is, most of what shaped me doesn’t show up on a traditional résumé.

I’ve worked across healthcare, government, finance, and education. I’ve worn every hat from frontline support to infrastructure architect. I’ve taught myself scripting, rebuilt departments, and fought burnout more than once. And somewhere along the way, I realized something important:

My real legacy isn’t in the job titles — it’s in the systems I built, the people I helped, and the moments that forced me to grow.

💡 Why Now?

Because context matters. And because I’m done trimming down my story to fit someone else’s form field.

This series isn’t just for recruiters or hiring managers — though they’ll get a better picture of who I really am. It’s for people like me who’ve walked the hard road, rebuilt themselves, and still kept going.

I call this theLegacy Project Series. It’s not a marketing gimmick. It’s me — pulling the curtain back and showing you what actually happened, what I built, what I learned, and why I still carry those lessons with me.

📘 What You’ll Find Here

• 🔥 Stories of being thrown into the fire — and walking out stronger
• 🛠️ Projects that mattered, even if they weren’t flashy
• 📈 Lessons I didn’t expect to learn — and now teach others
• 🧠 The mindset shifts that turned me from just a fixer… into a systems thinker

🧭 The Bigger Picture

For every job I’ve had, there were a hundred moments that defined it — and me. This series is about those moments. The ones that turned breakdowns into breakthroughs. The ones where I stopped surviving… and started building something better.

If you’re a hiring manager, you’ll see more than experience — you’ll see initiative. Pattern recognition. Grit. Creativity. Ownership. Things you won’t find from a keyword search or a resume scan.

If you’re someone who’s rebuilding yourself, like I’ve had to — maybe this gives you hope. Or at least a reminder that the path doesn’t have to look perfect to be powerful.

Before I was ever paid to fix systems, I was already thinking like one.

As a kid, I grew up around early computer labs, mainframes, and server rooms — the kind with raised floors and humming tape drives. While most kids were figuring out the rules of playground games, I was learning directory trees and batch files. I wasn't just curious — I was immersed.

By the time I got my first professional IT job, I wasn’t surprised by the tech. What surprised me was howbrokenthe human systems around it could be. But that first job — working for a county government — taught me two things: how to survive chaos, and how to leave something better than I found it.

💼 The Job: County Government IT

I was hired as a contract IT technician to help modernize several departments across the county: Public Health, Social Services, Corrections, even the local Jail. No onboarding. No playbook. Just: “You start Monday.”

• I deployed dozens of new machines using Ghost imaging and custom launch scripts
• I rewired switches, cleaned up server racks, and configured new network hardware
• I wrote documentation that never existed — and trained users who had never touched a PC before
• I juggled support across multiple sites with no backup, no support queue, and no real supervision

And I loved it.

🧠 What I Learned

That job wasn’t just technical. It was anthropological.

I learned how departments spoke in different dialects of bureaucracy. How to listen between the lines. How to anticipate what a user needed before they could articulate it. And most of all — how to create systems that could functionafterI left.

It wasn’t glamorous. There were no awards. But to this day, some of those systems I built are still in place. Still working. Still helping someone do their job faster, better, with fewer headaches.

🔁 Lessons I Still Carry

• Documentation isn’t optional— it’s a kindness to the future.
• Anticipate failure— then build systems that can take the hit and keep moving.
• Users aren’t obstacles— they’re the reason the system exists in the first place.
• Never assume the request is the real need— dig deeper.

🧩 Bigger Picture

This job laid the groundwork for everything I’ve done since. It’s where I stopped being a “tech guy” and started becoming a systems thinker. A connector. A fixer. A builder.

Looking back, I realize now: I wasn’t just maintaining infrastructure. I was designing resilience — in code, in process, and in people.

I finished college and had to leave my role at the County — there was nothing permanent available. After a short break, I landed a job with CentraCare. What should’ve been a fresh start became a slow-motion disaster.

The problems began before I ever started. A simple pre-employment physical turned into a two-week bureaucratic nightmare over a single form. My clearance — from a clinic inside the same hospital network — sat in limbo. HR blamed the clinic. The clinic said it was done. My would-be boss? Frustrated. I hadn’t even clocked in, and I was already considered a problem.

Once I did start, things didn’t improve.

🚫 Week 1: No Login, No Access, No Grace

For two full weeks, I couldn’t log in to anything. I spent my days shadowing and trying to help where I could, but every attempt to contribute was met with suspicion. Every delay was seen as laziness — not logistics.

When my credentials finally came through, I hit the ground running. But the grace period was over. Now I was being judged for not knowing department procedures, for missing meetings I wasn’t told about, and for not being instantly fluent in a system no one had explained.

📉 The Culture Shock

This was a place where the death of a family member was considered an inconvenience to your schedule. Where being paged meant answeringimmediately— even if you were using the restroom. Where asking for clarification was seen as weakness. And where my willingness to help was twisted into a lack of boundaries.

I was told to support dozens of departments — without context, without authority, and often without respect. My name was already tainted by the onboarding mess. I was playing from behind and no one cared why.

🔄 The Turning Point

Somewhere in that chaos, I realized something: this wasn’t a failure of competence — it was a failure of design. The system itself was broken. The org chart, the onboarding, the expectations, the lack of documentation, the refusal to acknowledge real human limits — it all added up.

I wasn’t the problem. I was the pressure gauge that revealed therewasone.

🧱 Still Worth Building

Despite the dysfunction, I still did what I always do — I built.

• Created early inventory and licensing tracking processes
• Started building PC imaging systems for faster deployment
• Wrote internal tools in VBS and Batch to help streamline daily tasks
• Helped restructure how equipment was stored and deployed

But it all came at a cost — not just in overtime or exhaustion, but in trust. I stopped believing in the system. And it showed.

Even in a broken system, I couldn’t stop myself from fixing things.

By year two, I’d stopped waiting for permission and started building the kind of IT I believed in. Stable. Documented. Scalable. I wasn’t going to save the culture — but I could rebuild the infrastructure.

We finally started replacing the aging PC fleet. I streamlined the process by creating a portable imaging system using Ghost and a USB drive. Later, I migrated the images to a centralized server. No more manual installs. No more lost hours.

I designed an internal license tracking system and began auditing hardware usage. We’d finally know what we had — and what we didn’t. And we weren’t paying for software we didn’t use anymore.

🏗️ Building Something Real

Eventually, I got the green light to convert a back room into a proper server closet. We moved our line printer, the AS/400, our broadband gear, and our VMware host into a temperature-controlled rack environment. It wasn’t pretty — but it wassecure, efficient, and finally made remote support viable.

We virtualized core services: AD, DNS, DHCP. I created hardened thin client images and managed the rollout across departments. I supported multiple remote clinics with single sign-on access to Epic via Citrix.

📶 Infrastructure Reboot

• Replaced outdated Cisco equipment and configured all switches and routers across 4 sites
• Implemented Group Policies, internal scripts in PowerShell/VBS/Batch for streamlined deployments
• Managed and maintained all VMware hosts and virtualized infrastructure
• Handled SAN storage, backup strategies, and third-party hosted servers with Netgain

We phased out thin clients in favor of mobile systems and RDP access, finally reducing user frustration.

👨‍🔧 Service at Scale

I wrote sorting scripts to automate file processing for departments like the Business Office. I maintained OnBase and Codescan servers, supported record scanning workflows, and created a common PC build for simplified deployment. I was even the go-to AS/400 trainer… for my manager.

Eventually, we grew the team from just 2 to 8. I trained them, documented the process, and made sure they had the tools I never did.

📌 The Real Takeaway

This wasn’t a dream job. It nearly broke me. But it also proved something I needed to know: I could walk into chaos and still bring order. Even when I had no allies. Even when no one thanked me.

It wasn’t about credit — it was about not letting the system win. Not letting the dysfunction define me.

I don’t want to go back. But I wouldn’t trade what I learned there for anything.

After eight years of building systems, fighting bureaucracy, and dragging a broken infrastructure into the modern era — the axe fell.

St. Cloud Medical Group merged with a larger hospital system. The old infrastructure was absorbed. The new team didn’t need us — or didn’t want us. I was let go.

I wasn’t angry. I was hollow. That place had consumed everything I had — and then it was gone. For the first time in my adult life, I had no job, no plan… and no idea what came next.

🧭 Redirection, Not Defeat

For a while, I drifted. Then my mom said something that stopped me cold:

“Why don’t you look into robotics? You always talked about that when you were little.”

She was right. Before scripting, before PCs, before anything — I wanted to build robots.

I enrolled in college again, this time for Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. I was a non-traditional student walking into a world I thought would be modern and digital… but it wasn’t.

My high-end laptop and engineering tools sat unused while I copied equations off chalkboards. It wasn’t what I expected — but I stuck with it. Until Calculus hit.

And hit hard.

🔁 Pivot Without Shame

I transferred to the technical college and double-majored in Robotics and Liberal Arts. It wasn’t “downgrading” — it was repositioning. I chose to learn what I’d actually use.

• I learned PLC programming, automation, and electronic design
• I soldered circuits, built mechanical arms, and wrote ladder logic
• I graduated with honors and built a foundation I still use today

🧠 Bigger Lessons

This was more than a career change — it was a mindset shift. I realized I wasn’t starting over. I was evolving. My time off wasn’t a gap — it was a rebuild. A strategic retreat that let me come back smarter, calmer, and more in control.

In that time, I also learned just how transferable my past experience was. VMware? AWS. Imaging systems? Docker. Server builds? Kubernetes. My instincts hadn’t gotten old — they’d just been waiting for the tools to catch up.

And when I wasn’t in class? I was still learning. Still building. Still mapping out my next move.

🛠️ Skills Reforged

• Strengthened soft skills in crisis handling, documentation, and team collaboration
• Adopted a systems-thinking mindset — seeing people, processes, and tools as one whole
• Modernized my deployment knowledge with Terraform, Kubernetes, and Docker — all driven by Bash

More than anything, I walked away knowing my foundation wasn’t outdated — it was just waiting to evolve.

After college, I didn’t bounce straight back into IT. I couldn’t. I’d been burned — by bureaucracy, by burnout, by being treated like a disposable asset.

I took jobs that paid the bills but didn’t feed the spark. I kept things running at home — literally. Maintained my network, upgraded systems, tuned my home theater, kept my Raspberry Pis and print servers humming. But I felt adrift.

And then… AI started getting real. Not just papers and theories. Real tools. Real interfaces. Real conversations. And I felt something I hadn’t in years:

Curiosity.

🧠 The Spark Returns

It started with language models. I saw what GPT-3 could do and immediately wanted to break it open — understand it, shape it, push its boundaries. I didn’t want to use it. I wanted tobuildit.

My old skills kicked back in. Bash scripting. Automation. Infrastructure planning. But now with new toys: Python pipelines, containers, model weights, and inference strategies. I started prototyping — nothing major at first. But the architecture in my head was coming back online.

🛠️ Building SONIA (Synthetic Operational Neural Intelligence Assistant)

What began as a curiosity became a mission. I started designing an AI assistant framework — code-namedSONIA. It wasn’t about copying Siri or Alexa. It was about building something that could live locally, run modularly, and act ethically. An assistant I could trust. A system with a core ethos — not just commands.

• Built early prototypes using voice-to-text engines and bash logic
• Mapped out modular AI functions: automation, 3D printing control, remote access, system security, and more
• Started integrating Raspberry Pis as distributed nodes for specific functions (NAS, print control, camera feed, etc.)
• Defined the ethical core as immutable: equality, empathy, logic, and respect for user autonomy

⚙️ The Bigger Blueprint

More than a personal project, this became a framework for how I think about everything now: systems as partners. Automation as empowerment. Intelligence as augmentation — not replacement.

This wasn’t a comeback. It was an evolution. I stopped chasing titles. I started buildingtools I believed in. Tools that could outlive me. Tools that could help others. Tools that could grow.

Because that’s the real blueprint: Not just surviving the system — butrewriting it.