About Me
Hi! I'm Dan. I like figuring out how things work, then fixing them or making them a little better. Sometimes that's a computer. Sometimes it's a bike, a grill, or something around the house that broke at the worst possible time.
I'm happiest learning by doing: poke at it, break it, read the manual, try again.
I made this page because the web used to be a place where regular people had their own corner of it. This is my corner. No algorithm, no feed, no ads. Just a page.
Character Sheet
- Class
- Tinkerer
- Alignment
- Practical Good
- Main skills
- Troubleshooting, automating boring stuff, grilling
- Loot preference
- Cheap, durable, fixable. Hype is not accepted as currency.
- Side quests
- Kayaking, cycling, hiking, fishing, woodworking
- Party buff
- Finding something fun to do on a free weekend
- Soundtrack
- Rock & alternative
Away From the Keyboard
Believe it or not, I do go outside. Current rotation:
- kayaking
- cycling
- hiking
- fishing (mostly a patience simulator)
- exploring new places, near or far
A lot of weekends are about finding something fun to do with the family. And when we get home, the grill comes out. Cooking is just tinkering you get to eat.
The Workshop
When something breaks, my first instinct is to open it up, not buy a new one. Around here that means DIY home projects, some woodworking, keeping the equipment running, and plenty of practical repairs.
I also have a soft spot for older toys. Some of them deserve a second life, and I'm happy to give them one.
The Basement
Down in my basement there's a small cabinet that hums. Inside lives a homelab: a little computer that runs a whole bunch of smaller pretend computers. Right now it:
- keeps ads off every screen in the house
- listens when I tell it to turn off the lights
- runs a few AI helpers I chat with, some of them entirely on my own hardware
- keeps a log of everything those AI helpers do, just in case
The rule down there: nothing gets exposed to the internet unless there's a very good reason.
Upstairs at the keyboard I'm into cloud stuff: Kubernetes, AWS, infrastructure-as-code, deploy automation, and monitoring. I like hands-on networking and hardware, building small web prototypes (hi, you're looking at one), and trying out AI coding assistants. If a task is tedious, I'd rather spend the afternoon automating it.
Games
Counter-Strike 2 when I want to sweat. Fallout 4, heavily modded, when I want to build a settlement nobody asked for. I spend more time tuning configs than playing, and I'm at peace with that.
Lately I'm back on SimCity: zoning neighborhoods, laying power lines, and losing arguments with my own traffic.
Also in the library: Cyberpunk, and pretty much any strategy game that lets me overthink every move.
The Arcade
Insert coin. Three classics you can play right in your browser:
The original SimCity engine, which EA released as open source in 2008. Zone your city, balance the budget, and hope the monster stays home.
> PLAY Playing on its creator's site for now. Coming soon to this site.Prince of Persia, rebuilt for the browser by fans as PrinceJS. You have 60 minutes to escape the dungeon and save the princess.
> PLAY Plays on princejs.com.Knee-Deep in the Dead, the shareware episode that ate every office LAN in America. Runs right here on this site, with a CRT filter for that warm monitor glow.
> RIP AND TEAR Hosted here. ~4.7 MB, loads only when you click. Arrows move, Ctrl fires, Space opens doors. Engine is GPL (source & license).Sign My Guestbook!
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Hot Links
- Wibya search engine for the old-style web
- NeocitiesGeoCities' spiritual successor
- Space Jam (1996)still online, still perfect
- The Wayback Machinethe internet's attic
Privacy Policy
This is the whole thing: this page has no cookies, no trackers, no analytics, and no ads. It doesn't load anything from social networks. When you visit, I don't know you were here, and I like it that way.