May 8, 2026
/whois phi1618

Hello, you can call me phi (pronounced by the Greek as "phee" but "fie" works too). I didn't select this name because I'm Greek or was in a fraternity, but rather because I thoroughly enjoy mathematics and engineering. Just a simple, short alias that can be used to reference the Golden Ratio (~1.618).

I'm in my early 40's and have been married around 20 years. No kids by choice, but we do have a spoiled cat. I think a dog or two might also be in our future plans once I stop traveling so much. That's no easy task because I caught the travel bug early in life and have been to around 100 countries. One day it would be nice to visit all the remaining countries, but many places require extra consideration for security and health. Last time I went to Madagascar was in between Ebola and Black Plague epidemics, which I didn't even know about until my flight arrival (no wonder why flights were so cheap)!

In my youth, I played baseball until high school as both a pitcher and catcher. I have many fond memories of playing Little League with my dad coaching and grandparents cheering me on. For a time played the trumpet in marching band and had an electric guitar and keyboard at home, but my secret passion was to be a drummer. This was absolutely verboten by my mother for being too loud and "not a real instrument". Now I think producing electronic music or being a DJ would be fun, but just can't find the time yet.

After a couple years in an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program, I had some reservations on whether it was right for me despite doing alright in my classes. I decided to enlist in the US Air Force as a signals intelligence analyst specializing in radar and electronic warfare. Time passed quickly, and I served for nearly a decade. I did the opposite of what you're supposed to do in the military by actually volunteering for additional duties and training. This led to further specialization in information operations/information warfare (like PSYOP and computer network attack), developmental missiles and satellites, and HUMINT interrogation in Afghanistan with all the three letter agencies. One of the biggest accomplishments was earning a challenge coin by the DIRNSA for something I can't talk about. Military folk should appreciate its significance. I eventually decided to leave the service after having earned degrees in Business/Accounting and Mathematics.

The next step forward would naturally be working in the agency as a government civilian or contractor, but I missed having the freedom to travel full-time so I started working on some freelance coding projects while bouncing between beaches from Colombia to Cambodia. During this time I explored libertarianism and anarcho-capitalist ideas in fringe podcasts and YouTube, leading me to become a lucky early adopter in bitcoin in 2013. I am still long bitcoin, and only bitcoin.

Around the same time, I also stumbled into in a future "career field" as a professional gambler by first learning how to count cards in blackjack. My first year playing blackjack I earned double my previous Air Force salary, and my second year at higher stakes I had even doubled that! This led me to focus more on advantage play (AP) than programming because the hourly wage wasn't even comparable anymore. I like to think that handling bitcoin's price volatility helped significantly with building the emotional maturity to deal with the swings experienced in gambling. And the AP helped pay the bills while holding savings in bitcoin, which thankfully grew significantly. Don't worry this will not be a blog about bitcoin :) Advantage play is a deep rabbit hole, and I can still count cards but it's rarely the best move to make in a casino. The next challenge for me would be to build a baseball sports model in R to find edges in sportsbooks or prediction markets.

In the past couple of years I've been interested in collecting retro personal computers from the 80's and 90's, starting with a ZX80 found in an estate sale for $5. I'm mostly focused on computer hardware and electronics repair to save old machines from e-waste and give them a new life. I also have a small collection of older TI calculators. On the software side, I'm exploring older Artificial Intelligence ideas from the perspective of expert systems and decision support systems. I'm building a large physical library of computer, engineering, math, and science textbooks too, unwilling to accept the ebook and tablet trend even though I own both. It's just not the same!

In my free time I'm usually watching the Arizona Diamondbacks or NASCAR Cup Series races. I recently certified as Amateur Extra in ham radio, although I don't have much hands-on experience and still working on building a shack. A friend just bought a sailboat and is cruising South America, and so I'm learning the basics to be somewhat helpful whenever I can join him. For whatever reason, I can't quit the daily Wordle or Duolingo streak despite getting very little out of it. Messing about on SDF's NetBSD UNIX machine and learning Gopher and Gemini protocols has brought a lot of joy recently.

If anyone reading this has similar interests or would like to chat, I'm excited to make new friends here. Such small communities usually bring out many interesting personalities. 

phi1618