ABOUT
Business owner. Software builder. Explorer of the larger system.
I build systems that have to work, and I keep asking what larger system they belong to. Running a business, writing software and writing about consciousness all come from the same habit of looking for the structure underneath.
Where it started
I have always been selling something. As far back as elementary school I was running my own garage sales and setting up a lemonade and iced tea stand in front of the houses going up nearby, because the construction crews were thirsty and had cash. At about ten I started a lawn service with a friend, two mowers and half our street. At twelve I washed cars until a Florida drought shut me down. In middle school I bought candy and resold it.
Around then I got my first PC and started in DOS. I grew up with dial-up, upgrading modem after modem as each faster one came out. In 1993, in high school, I started EnCrypt BBS (opens a new tab) in Hollywood, Florida, a dial-up bulletin board with its own custom-coded software, before the internet reached most homes. That project pulled me into building software, and I have been doing it for my coffee business ever since.
I also DJed at a skating rink through high school and kept it up well into early adulthood.
Building things that have to work
In 1996 I put a coffee store online, years before e-commerce became commonplace, and I have been selling coffee online ever since. San Marco Coffee has been based in Charlotte, North Carolina since 2006. I have worked with teams of developers on its automation over the years, and I stay hands-on with the software and the servers it runs on.
San Marco Coffee runs on more than 40 custom Zen Cart modules built for it. Most stay in-house, but a few that any shop could use are published as open source under the name Marcopolo, each one proven on San Marco Coffee first.
Almost nothing at San Marco Coffee runs off the shelf. From checkout to the label on the bag, we've built custom software around the way the business works, and the order system has evolved from a Visual FoxPro program into a modern web application.
A real business is the test. Customers, edge cases and the cost of getting it wrong are always there, so every change to my systems is tested before it goes live and can be undone if it does not work.
The writing
Since 2015 I have experienced what I call downloads: whole pieces of logic that arrive complete instead of being worked out. I don't treat them as my ideas or as something to defend. I work through each one and see how it reads from other positions. Most of the writing here starts with one.
The logic running through these essays is that our reality works as a system. We live in it, grow in it and know things inside it, and we also dismiss things that should matter, because a system has to limit what the part inside it can see in order to keep working. The larger system is all of the logic that sits outside the state we have realized. Ours is one state among an infinite number of others, each reflecting onto the whole from its own position, all at the same time. Each of us holds our own perspective while functioning inside all of the others. No single essay holds all of that. Each one is a piece of it, seen from a different position.
I work with AI every day, building and testing software and exploring what it can show us about intelligence and consciousness. I test every framework across different models and fresh sessions. Agreement doesn't prove a framework, and disagreement doesn't settle it. Each perspective holds its own combination of logic, and seeing how one reads from several of them shows more of its shape. I keep the archive open so anyone can read it and check it.
What keeps me grounded
My wife of 28 years and our three daughters are my anchor points. They keep me focused on what matters most and remind me that exploring the outer edges of reality only counts if you bring something back that makes life here richer.
I'm not looking for a final answer or a final state. What I'm after is balance. Every thought follows a path, a logic that has to play out, and I can see that path while also seeing what sits around it at the same time. Knowing more than the path shows, and still living inside it as if I don't, is the work. If you are asking deeper questions yourself, you are in the right place.