Hi! I'm Dean. I'm a web developer with a lot of passion - for music, tech, astronomy, and life. ## Work I'm a web developer with years of experience building applications. Check out my [tech skills](/skilled-in-tech) and the [tools I use](/working-with-tools), or view my full [resume](/working). ## Life

I live in Grand Rapids, MI with my partner Kelsey, our daughter, and our dog Odie. Kelsey is a talented designer, potter, gardener, blogger, and partner. She is in charge of [Sigsbee Street](https://sigsbeestreet.co). Odie is a mini-Bernedoodle and spoil him by playing frisbee and making him dog treats. I also keep a planted aquarium with yellow neocaridina shrimp and ember tetras. Nature is always calling, and it drew me to western Michigan. While I appreciated the tree-lined streets of my 20's hometown Chicago, the trees and snow bring a certain peace that was hard to find in the steel and concrete of the city.

## Music I have a strong love for music - it is a large part of my life, my self expression, and problem solving. I have a hard time sticking to genres, instead focusing on artists. Whether it's disco, funk, acoustic, blues, classic rock, jazz, or ambient, I can find something fascinating in almost anything with rhythm. I've done over 30 concerts in a year, as well as two concerts in the same night - I live for live music. I've been tracking my listening history on Last.fm since 2010: - [Listening to Music](/listening-to-music) - Overview and stats - [Artist Eras](/listening-to-music/artists) - Top 50 artists over time - [Album Eras](/listening-to-music) - Top 50 albums over time Check out my [Spotify Wrapped](/listening-to-music/wrapped-by-spotify) collection to see yearly highlights. ## Computers I've been fascinated with computers since I was a kid. Growing up browsing the internet in the 90s, I got hooked early. Managing a digital music library taught me about files and folders, metadata, and encoding. Installing new CD burner drives and hard disks got me into hardware. Breaking things got me into reinstalling operating systems. That curiosity led me to Linux in high school, and I've always kept at least one Linux server running at home since. Whether it was a repurposed desktop or a headless box in the basement - there's something deeply satisfying about building and maintaining your own infrastructure from scratch. Running Linux as my daily driver laptop was the real gauntlet, though. If you know that pain, you know. Every broken WiFi driver, every botched X11 config, every dependency nightmare taught me something. I owe a huge amount of my debugging instincts, command line fluency, and problem-solving approach to those years of wrestling with a system that made you earn every convenience. These days, the home server is still going strong. I run Home Assistant for home automation, Nextcloud for file sync and photo backup, Jellyfin for media, and Dokku for hosting my own apps - including this website. Owning the full stack from hardware to deployment keeps me sharp on networking, DNS, reverse proxies, backups, and all the operational work that makes software actually run. While I've traded the pain of a Linux laptop for a MacBook, I still spend some time each day SSHed into my home server or Raspberry Pi, tinkering away. ## Cooking

I love to baking - finding recipes I love and repeating them endlessly. There's something deeply satisfying about understanding a recipe through repetition - knowing exactly how the dough should feel at every step, how to work with timing, and watching it turn out delicous every time. My favorites: - **PB&J** - A personal staple throughout my life, and the inspiration for starting to bake bread. I make my own jams from farmers market fruits - strawberry, raspberry, peach/apricot, and concord grape, in that seasonal order. - **[Pain de Mie](https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/a-smaller-pain-de-mie-recipe)** - King Arthur's smaller pain de mie recipe. I've made this bread countless times. It's perfect for PB&J, sandwiches, toast, and French toast.

Dean is Pretty Cool