Who I am
I'm Zachary. Thanks for checking out my little corner of the internet. By day I'm a Business Development Director specializing in technology staffing and solutions. I'd always wanted to learn how to code but never really knew where to start, so this site is me jumping in and figuring it out as I go. I started with no hands-on coding experience, leaned hard into AI-assisted development, and have been learning by trial and error, not just using AI to build, but to genuinely understand how technology and code work. Curiosity has been my biggest asset so far.
My approach is practical: I'd rather build something real and imperfect than plan something perfect and never start. That mindset has led to projects like my Pegasus application, my home server setup, and this site. If you've got questions about anything here, or ideas for projects I should tackle next, drop me a note through the "Get in Touch" button below.
I use AI tools heavily. Vibe coding is a real thing, and I'm not shy about it. But I've found that to use AI well, you have to understand what you're building. So every project teaches me something new about how software actually works.
Most of what I build runs on my own homelab: a multi-machine, self-hosted setup with Postgres and Supabase behind my apps, Docker for services, a private Tailscale network tying the machines together, and automated pipelines that build and deploy my code on every change. On the front end I work in plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and increasingly in SwiftUI for native iOS apps. I even run my own AI gateway, so every app's AI usage and cost is tracked in one place.
I've almost always got a home project going: renovations, builds, and the occasional thing I probably shouldn't have attempted myself.
I live in Minneapolis, which means I love hockey, a summer bike ride involving a brewery stop, and rooting on my Minnesota sports teams... while continuously holding out hope that I get to see them win a championship one day.