About

Hey. I’m Jim. 👋🏻

First and foremost, I’m a born again Christian and have been since my late teens.

Fear not… I have no plans to bash you over the head with a bible, or wag my finger in your face as I tell you how you’re living your life all wrong and going to hell.

That’s not what a real Christian does. My calling is to be an example for others, and to share the reason for my hope when I’m asked. My faith doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, but if it does for you, that’s okay and I understand.

With that out of the way, here’s the rest of the story…

The Site

I’ve been blogging on this domain since early 2004. The site has gone through many style and platform changes since it launched way back then.

In 2014, I “decluttered” all of the irrelevant content, leaving the posts which received the most traffic. I then chose to start over with a focus on writing about living a simpler, more meaningful life.

Less but better.

This site runs on a proprietary CMS system I’ve developed with the assistance of Claude Code. It’s a php-based backend that outputs posts as static html, optimized for speed.

All code for it has been written using VS Code. Posts are written and published using MarsEdit. I’m working on an iOS app for mobile posting. Image manipulation comes from several different sources, with the important compositions being put together in either Acorn or Pixelmator.

My History

Like many other Mac users, I got my start on the Apple platform as a graphic design artist back in the ’90s.

My love affair for all things Apple began with a road-worn Mac SE/30. It was during those early years working with Aldus PageMaker, Macromedia Freehand and Adobe Photoshop that I learned the importance of keeping a computer system in tip-top shape.

This led me to create the simple Mac OS X utility Yasu in 2002, which is short for “Yet another system utility.” Yasu became popular in the early 2000s, leading to featured articles in Mac magazines and getting me invitations to speak at user groups. In 2017, I turned the app over to another developer. If you’re looking to download the latest version that works with your macOS, visit the Yasu for Mac site. If you’re lucky, maybe it will be up today…

Today

Today, I work as the Director of Application Engineering for VIZIO, a well-known US-based TV manufacturer now owned by Walmart, where I run the IT applications development teams (wrangling nerds and herding cats). Since this is my personal blog, all thoughts and ideas expressed here are strictly my own and in no way reflect those of my employer(s).

I’m a Salesforce certified administrator, developer, and consultant. Other nerdy experience includes Microsoft SQL, MySQL, HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, and just enough Java to make me dangerous to my peers. I can still get decent results out of Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop when I have to.

I’m fortunate enough to have found and married an extremely patient woman that I’d be completely lost without, and I have some pretty neat adult kids because of it. In my spare time, I like to write code, spend time with friends and family, and play music. I like getting outdoors on a SoCal hiking trail when the weather is nice too.

I enjoy hearing from visitors, so if you’d like to ask a question, share something, or just connect in general, you can email me, or follow on either Mastodon or Bluesky. I’ve stopped doing all other social media, so these are the only ways to connect with me now.

If you’d like to see what I’m currently up to, check out my now page.

Thanks for dropping by.