About Me

I've been taking things apart (and trying to put them back together) since I was a kid. My first car was my grandfather's old 1962 Plymouth Savoy that I started driving as soon as I got my license at 16. By the time I was 20 I had that car torn completely apart, painted, reassembled, and had many memorable adventures with it - cracked exhaust manifold, blown piston, engine rebuild, bad transmission, and the list goes on. I doubled down and bought two more 1962 Plymouths - a Belvedere wagon which received the same tear down and paint treatment, and a Savoy wagon which donated parts to the other two cars.

Dropping a fuel injected Dodge 5.9L in the 1962 Belvedere Wagon

I graduated college with a degree in mechanical engineering - which in retrospect is completely in tune with my character and aptitudes. I also spent several years in the army managing field maintenance organizations. Now, I spend my time doing industrial process engineering and construction projects. This website and blog started as a way for me to document some of my projects around the house, thinking that my experience sorting various things out may come in handy for others. I enjoy the satisfaction of helping out.

My undergraduate engineering project, turbocharging a Detroit Diesel 4 cylinder engine

My father started out as a tradesman, and his father was a tradesman, and I was fortunate to have my father show me a few things about plumbing, electrical and light construction. I've renovated three homes now, taking on the role of general contractor and performing various degrees of the hands on work. 

Home automation has become a bit of a hobby, my current home had a central general electric relay based lighting system that was controlled by an industrial grade programmable logic controller. I completely replaced that system with an Insteon based set of switches and dimmers controlled by the Universal Devices ISY-994i controller. A good number of my posts are related to Insteon and Universal Devices products.

I started writing about my projects a long time ago - I had a website dedicated to the 62 Plymouths up and running in the early 2000's - it left the web when technology surpassed it - it was an old Frontpage site that I never took the time to update. This blog started in 2013 as a bit of an experiment, and primarily, a way to document some of the home automation projects as a support tool for maintaining the systems in my own house.

This website isn't a full time project for me, it certainly doesn't pay the bills. I hope that some of the experience from my projects ends up helping others with their own exploits in the garage or around the house.