There you are!

I’ve been looking all over for you. Here, sit down, and let’s talk.

I’m Bradley. I’m the fellow who runs this little collection of pages. You’re reading my words right. now. How cool is that?

Maybe you’re here because you want to know something about me. Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Education

I graduated from the University of Maine in May 2017 with a B.S. in Engineering Physics. That basically means that I took a bunch of physics courses involving what my high school band director used to call “small math”, and then I’d occasionally get kicked out of the Physics Department so I could go take an engineering course instead. I did end up doing a lot of small math, and along the way I also did a lot of programming. I also more or less taught myself the basics of Linux and system adminstration, with some a great deal of help from that Oracle of Programmers, StackOverflow.

Employment

After graduation, I started working as a federal defense contractor in systems engineering. Not as much small math there, but a lot more programming in VBA—which I strongly recommend you avoid if at all possible—and sending lots of emails. While I was there, I continued learning Linux and eventually earned the title of Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCSA). I also became a licensed Private Pilot.

In June 2019, my girlfriend and I (along with our cat) moved to northern Virginia, where I’ve continued my career in defense contracting. There’s less VBA around now, but more diagrams and drawings with small print. It also takes me between three and ten times longer to get anywhere. It’s not so bad, though, what with the whole American Dream thing I’ve got going on.

Other Things

I basically spend all of my free time configuring systems to do things I find interesting. For example, I recently decided that it would be too much work to turn out the lamp in my room at night, since I’d have to get out of bed to do it. To fix that, I bought a smart plug. To make things interesting—and a little more secure than using some random cloud service—I learned how to stand up my own openHAB server on one of my machines, disassemble the smart plug and flash some open source firmware to it, and get it all talking so I could control the lamp from my phone. After a weekend of tinkering, I went to bed and tapped the little slider I’d made to turn off the light, and I slept quite well.

That kind of stuff is what I spend a lot of my time doing.

I also recently remembered that I’m a licensed ham radio operator (Technician class), so I pulled out my old handheld and started tuning around. I spend some time every once in a while trying to see what I can hear.

I used to play a lot of games, but I don’t as much anymore. Lately, my girlfriend and I have been playing on a shared Minecraft server (running on one of my machines, naturally), and that’s been fun. I also played a fair amount of Stellaris and Factorio at one time, but it’s been a while. Kerbal Space Program basically taught me orbital mechanics in high school, so it’ll always have special place in my heart. Before that, I was a Civ III, Runescape, Spore, and Minecraft kid.

At some point, I intend to get flying again. I stopped after our move, and flying in this area is tough on account of the security. Still, it’s supposedly not too bad, so maybe I’ll finally sit down and get started on it one of these days. If I do, I’ll post any neat photos or ground tracks.

So that’s me.

More or less. Feel free to reach out if you have interesting words to say. Send me an email at [email protected], or shout out a window. (I might not get back to you right away if you do that, but I’ll try.)