I’m a small-town Ohio kid who joined the Navy’s nuclear power program at 18 and spent my early life running nuclear reactors on submarines. That mostly taught me that if something can go wrong it will, so you build things that hold up without someone hovering over them.

I spent the next 30 years in corporate learning and development, putting that same systematic streak to work helping organizations make work make more sense. I retired in 2025.

My Pops repaired antique furniture. He was really good at it. He was forced into it after being medically pushed out of his career as a long-haul truck driver. Today, I do a digital version of the same thing: I build small, simple tools that help people with specific problems, because I find it satisfying. And it keeps me busy.

Right now the main one I’m tinkering with is TrackMySymptoms – a tool that helps people log health symptoms over time in a way that’s actually usable.

I’ve been battling Multiple Sclerosis for more than 30 years. Many MS patients (myself included) struggle with heat. I wrote a simple little app to help myself – at a glance – know if it was OK for me to take my Basenji’s for a walk. I’ve shared it with other MSers. Some other folks saw it and wanted to try it. They seem to like it too. Who knew?

It doesn’t have a fancy name – I just called it “Walk Check“. How original. Try it if you want.

I also made a silly Bartender scheduling app for a buddy so his patrons knew when he would be working.

Simple things that help with specific problems.

A few things I still believe, left over from the L&D years:

  • Clarity beats clever
  • If people can’t use it in real life, it’s not good design.
  • The problem is usually the design, rarely the person.
  • If it already works, don’t overengineer it.

That’s about it. I’m not looking for work. It’s a lot more fun just building things that interest me.