Experience

Principal Software Engineer at Simple Thread, 2020 – present

  • Interconnection and hosting capacity
    Grid data models and testing for software that helps utilities study where new generation and load can connect.
  • Facility ratings database
    A versioned database of grid equipment ratings that finds the most limiting component across a section of the grid, as of any date.
  • Generator performance monitoring
    Helped turn a national lab research tool into a commercial product.
  • Outage planning
    Modernized a utility's outage planning software and worked with its engineers on modern development practices.
  • Study performance
    Made long-running utility studies much faster with distributed computing.
  • Developer at OccasionGenius, 2019 – 2020
    Built web scrapers at an early-stage startup.

Skills

Domain and engineering

  • Power systems
    Siemens PSS/E, PowerGEM TARA, CIM (IEC 61970/61968), interconnection studies, hosting capacity, outage planning, dynamic modeling, EMT studies, SCADA, PMU / synchrophasor and time-series data, generator monitoring
  • Engineering
    Python, Rust, Ruby on Rails, Django, Vue, React, PostgreSQL, AWS, distributed computing, API design, Claude Code (Certified Architect)

How I work

What I believe about building software

  • Simplicity is the final achievement
    "After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art." — Frédéric Chopin
  • Good design feels obvious in hindsight
  • Docs should be written by people
    Generated docs bloat, drift, and bury what matters. Someone should own every claim.
  • Don't be a jerk

Writing

Favorites are marked with *

Talks

Conferences and podcasts

Reading

Books I've read, newest first

Favorites are marked with *

  • Moby-Dick, Herman Melville *
  • Ada or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
  • How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill
  • A Ballet of Lepers, Leonard Cohen
  • The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov *
  • Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
  • The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
  • Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton *
  • Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
  • The Complete Stories, Flannery O'Connor
  • Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
  • Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, Bertrand Russell *
  • Just Enough Research, Erika Hall
  • End of the Affair, Graham Greene *
  • The Confessions, Augustine of Hippo *
  • The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton *
  • The Fifth Season, NK Jemisin
  • Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, Matti Friedman
  • The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, John H Walton
  • God, Technology, and the Christian Life, Tony Reinke *
  • Polished Ruby Programming, Jeremy Evans
  • Peopleware, Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco
  • Magic Kingdom for Sale -- Sold!, Terry Brooks
  • Dawn of the New Everything, Jaron Lanier
  • Gilead, Marilynne Robinson *
  • Reforesting Faith, Matthew Sleeth
  • The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis *
  • A Timbered Choir, Wendell Berry *
  • On the Road, Jack Kerouac
  • East of Eden, John Steinbeck
  • Spurgeon's Sermons Vol 1, Charles Spurgeon
  • Thoughts for Young Men, JC Ryle
  • SQL Cookbook: Query Solutions and Techniques for Database Developers, Anthony Molinaro
  • The Unbroken Thread, Sohrab Ahmari
  • A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles *
  • Dune, Frank Herbert
  • Raging River, Lonely Trail Tales Told by the Campfire's Glow, Vaughn Short
  • There's This River... Grand Canyon Boatman Stories, Christa Sadler
  • Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
  • Infinite Reality: The Hidden Blueprint of Our Virtual Lives, Jim Blascovich
  • Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
  • The Emerald Mile, Kevin Fedarko
  • The Bible, multiple authors
  • A Small Porch, Wendell Berry
  • The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
  • Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
  • Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance
  • Evolution, Carl Bergstrom
  • The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
  • Welcome to Nightvale, Joseph Fink
  • The Martian, Andy Weir
  • Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks
  • The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
  • The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
  • The Lion and the Jewel, Wole Soyinka
  • The Piano Lesson, August Wilson
  • Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
  • Perfume, Patrick Suskind
  • The Assault, Harry Mulisch
  • The Stranger, Albert Camus
  • Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
  • All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
  • Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
  • Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
  • The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
  • Rappaccini's Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The Narnia Series, CS Lewis
  • Antigone, Sophocles
  • Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
  • A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
  • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Animal Farm, George Orwell
  • Anthem, Ayn Rand
  • Everlost, Neal Shusterman
  • Peak, Roland Smith
  • Hatchet, Gary Paulson
  • The Wizard Heir, Cinda Williams Chima
  • The Warrior Heir, Cinda Williams Chima
  • Eragon, Christopher Paolini
  • Graceling, Kristin Cashore
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, JK Rowling
  • The Divide, Elizabeth Kay
  • The Ranger's Apprentice Series, John Flanagan