About Me

Hi! I'm Ray. I'm 42 and live near Rochester, NY with my wife, Crystal, and daughter, Lily.

By day, I work from home as a software engineer, cloud architect, and DevOps engineer for Magnopus. I write server-side .NET code, provision AWS infrastructure using Terraform, and manage CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions and TeamCity for their VR/AR products, Connected Spaces Platform and OKO. So expect to see some posts digging into the gruesome details of all that.

On the side, I am a volunteer firefighter for our village. I joined about two years ago in an attempt to get out of the house and do something physical. I usually go on 2-3 calls per week and I'll share some interesting stories as they come up (protecting people's privacy, of course.)

Joining the fire department has also motivated me to get my physical fitness back on track. I am 5'11" and as of the start of this blog I am 235 lbs, 32% body fat, have a 40" waist, and high cholesterol. Not great, I know. Now I'm no fitness expert. I'm not going to be selling you some snake oil or fad. But I will be writing about my experience and my journey to slim down, build strength, and gain stamina.

A couple of years ago, my wife got into credit-card-points hacking and has racked up a ton of points that we used to travel for (nearly) free. Since she started, we have been to London, Paris, Costa Rica, Florida, NYC, Chicago, and more. We have gotten 10's of thousands of dollars of travel paid for with credit-card points. I'll share some of our adventures and some of her hacking tips.

Politically, I'm a libertarian. I have criticisms of both the Democrats and Republicans, which means I am so fun at parties🥴 But I really dislike the divisiveness, rhetoric, and bad-faith arguments that are pervasive in online discourse. That's why you won't find me on many social media platforms and I will keep political posts here to a minimum.

Under the libertarian umbrella, I love cryptocurrency, but not in the way you're probably thinking. Most "crypto bros" are all about pumping the next bull run, lambos, and dank memes. I'm not here for that. I'm a bit of a fiscal policy nerd. I think one of the biggest issues of our time is fiat currency and the negative impacts the mismanagement of that currency has on everyday people. I see cryptocurrency as the answer to that by allowing folks to step off the inflationary treadmill and maintain financial stability without having to learn the complexities of the asset economy. But more on that in some posts.

Another topic you'll probably hear me yammering about is personal cybersecurity and digital privacy. Many people brush this off saying things like "What do I care if Meta and Google know everything about me? I have nothing to hide." It's still creepy AF. And for a pregnant woman in Texas looking for an abortion or a gay man just existing in Saudi Arabia, privacy is everything. I'll probably write some posts about the threat models that interest me and tools you could use to mitigate those threats.

Religiously, I'm what you might call a possibilian. I don't claim to know what runs the universe. But we know far too much to commit to the stories from any ancient text and we know far too little to commit to a stance of pure atheism. I'm open to all possibilities, but the more outlandish your claim, the more evidence you're going to have to bring to the table.

For fun, I enjoy video games, tabletop games, manga, anime, sci-fi and fantasy books and TV, Stoic and Buddhist philosophy, and cooking so you'll also see some posts on those topics peppered in there.