I used to explain the French Revolution to teenagers. Now I explain to a computer why two services won't talk to each other, genuinely not that different a job. Turns out that teaching maps onto software better than you'd think: explaining a confusing concept five different ways until it clicks is basically what debugging feels like to me now.

I work mostly in Java, building service-oriented systems: REST APIs that let services talk to each other, ActiveMQ queues that let them do it asynchronously, and a SQLite/DAO-backed layer underneath to persist it all. I like the kind of problem where a few small, well-designed pieces have to cooperate to do something bigger than any one of them could alone.

Outside of code, I'm probably reading about history, out hiking, or chasing a new hobby to see if it sticks.