theJacer

I'm a Catholic husband and dad of five kids (six in T-5 days), those are really the most important things about me in their correct order. I also raise chickens, who I love dearly, with the help of my kids. They provide ample eggs and we provide ample layer pellets (22% protein). I thoroughly enjoy just watching the chickens do chicken...stuff. I'm borderline obsessed with computers and technology. I got my first computer when I was 12 or 13 and quickly began to love tinkering with the hardware and some light coding. I attempted college as a computer science major and that didn't work out. Years later I've got at least 6 computers strictly speaking but with cell phones, tablets and questionably functional computing devices included the number jumps to ~36. I've built a handful of servers which I've used to deploy any service I'm interested in like local Google Photos alternatives, media centers, Oracle Primavera P6 (once upon a time), and most recently local AI. I did a lot with my Home Assistant stuff for a while but when I got into AI it really took over. I've recently gotten into AI assisted programming which has really been a lot of fun. It's enabled me to build some neat little personal projects I wouldn't have been able to even attempt years ago, like a weekly meal planner that I made for my wife, who refuses to use it and a global-project data converter for P6. Since my wife doesn't use the meal planning app i mostly just point new local models toward it to see if they break it or add features. Most of them break it. I recently pointed my local models at this website and let them make changes like the blinking cursors and soon I'll let them fiddle around with my smart home automations and some other things.

My favorite thing to do though, is be a dad. I don't mean the boring parts like being handy or responsible, I like grossing out my kids and generally being annoying. I like to think all the kids get a pretty good kick out of it, even if sometimes they act disgusted. It's always so nice when they interact with me or I get to just hang out while they do an art project or play an imaginative game. My kids are nerds, not sure if they know it though. They all also love animals and enjoy a little light gardening, and by light I mean planting then ignoring things. This year we're working on a few tomato plants, several pumpkin plants and one of them wants to plant some herbs. One of my kids also has a snake she calls Corny, its a corn snake, she never does anything with it. I do enjoy just looking at it though honestly so I'm not mad about it. I'm not a fan of putting ones kids on the internet so I'll leave it at that.

Since attending an ACTS retreat in 2024 I've teamed two retreats and attempted to team a third. I've been so blessed with an amazing wife, who has done the heavy lifting in raising 5.9 amazing kids, and said amazing kids and while I don't think I ever took them for granted ACTS definitely worked to highlight my blessings. I love the ACTS program, although it's a Catholic program and the content is pretty dadgum Catholic attendees need not be Catholic, which I think is cool. Didn't really matter for me as I am pretty thoroughly Catholic. I've attended a few different churches in my life and I'm definitely at home in a Catholic church. I did the Bible in a Year Podcast in about 4 months back in 2024, that was fun. I really want to do it again but I'm thinking I might skip Numbers...

I work for what I think is a big industrial construction and maintenance company but I don't know the rules around mentioning them on my personal website I won't. The company is a good one, even if not every one of the employees is good to their fellow man all the time, but the people at the top are good God fearing folks and I'm pretty happy about that. I'm a Project Controls Manager, which just means I do all the Project Managers work. My specialty is Scheduling but I do planning, estimating and cost...booooooring.