Designing
Creating
Building
Developing
Deploying
Delivering
A bar conversation about the importance of having a plan when doing things like signing up for a half marathon.
This is a website I regularly contribute to, showcasing one of my favorite hobbies outside of web development! It is a site dedicated to sharing some of my favorite 4x4 and off-road related work. Check it out at the link below, or you can also follow @closeenoughfabrication on Instagram for more frequent updates on what’s happening in the shop.
Built a deterministic daily task and rewards system centered around task priority and same-day completion. Tasks are grouped into daily priority levels and rendered through a custom calendar interface. Completing all tasks for a given level on the day they are due earns a reward for that level. Rewards follow a full lifecycle (earned, redeemed, completed) and are tracked immutably for historical reference. The system prevents retroactive reward creation, avoids cross-level reward leakage, and allows for redemption whenever I feel like treating myself to an hour of gaming, etc. Recurring goals generate daily tasks automatically, and rewards are redeemed manually without overwriting prior state.
Built and launched the official Pickled Pirates Racing site from scratch using Rails. Implemented a full product system with variants, PayPal checkout, orders, admin dashboard, authentication, rewards, and database-driven content pages. The project focused on keeping the stack simple, backend-first, and easy to extend for future fulfillment and merch drops. Ongoing updates include UI polish, admin tooling, and storefront improvements.
A quick, practical feedback section added to capture ideas while the work happens, tie these to commits, and keep the changelog honest.
I was able to create some pretty neat images of my favorite Toyota trucks with the help of AI image generation. It’s been a fun experiment blending technology with my automotive passion, and I cannot wait to continue to explore this aspect of AI as the technology progresses. Take a look at the results and see what you think!
Ryders World is a dynamic Rails application, tailored toward event management and sharing, combining a calendar view with an integrated photo gallery powered by AWS S3. Featuring user authentication through Devise, it simplifies organizing events with my son while offering powerful search capabilities with pg_search to reflect on past memories.
In this last sprint I focused on stability: upgrades, safer rendering, and fewer crash paths across the public site.
A stability pass with a Rails 8.1 upgrade, cleaned UI, fixed CI failures, and safer admin updates.
A full walkthrough of the car show at Estranged Drags 2025. Most every car, front to back. Gassers, classics, LS swaps, muscle cars, and everything in between. Pure POV style, like you were there walking the aisles.
Episode 1 from Estranged Drags 2025. Rolling in, setting up camp, cracking the first beer, and hitting the strip for the first run of the weekend. Plenty of laughs, burnouts, and a shameless Pit Viper plug to kick things off.
Strapped into a Baja race truck and let loose on the SpeedVegas dirt track for 10 laps of jumps, drifts, and pure chaos. This is (mostly) unfiltered footage. Intro’s sped up a bit, but the rest is raw and gritty, just like the track. Originally featured in my Vegas 2025 reel on Instagram, here's the full story.