Ever since I was a kid I have always dreamed of working in the mountains. I still live under them.
I retired a First Sergeant. I built a brewery and sold it. I closed a second shop and went to Daniels because that death taught me something the formation did not.
The next mountain is Super Intelligence.
Experience
Rugged Individualist LLC
Founder
Built a local-first memory system: retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) over a private corpus, a local 14-billion-parameter language model, bound to localhost. Cloud stays closed unless I open it.
Wrote the honesty stack. A grounding judge scores whether an answer is in the record. Confabulation is measured, not hoped down. The machine does not invent what is not in the file.
Built Operator as an approval-gated agent staff. It runs the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP), reads live calendar free/busy, and books 30-minute meetings only after a full intake.
One hand on the world: calendar create, behind my approval and Touch ID. Nightly re-ingest. Citations from the record.
Florence Brewing Company
Founder. Sole owner.
Sole owner. Stood up a production brewery in a neglected building, 2015. Taproom open May 2016. Sold August 2024.
Capitalized from the sale of investment properties and a cashed 401k. No outside raise.
Scaled house production to 21 beers. Ran the taproom profit and loss until the sale.
The Gazette wrote about the night the taproom fed the prison workers during the 2019 shutdown.
Silver West Feedstore
Founder
Opened the shop May 2021. Ran the kitchen: menu, line, close. 28 months.
Shut it down September 2023 when the books showed a knowledge gap I could not bluff. You learn that through the wallet.
SIGINT subject matter expert on Army simulation used to train units before they go downrange.
Advised how tactical SIGINT shows up in the synthetic environment so the training matched the fight.
42six Solutions
Product Owner
Owned scope, backlog, and acceptance on contract work through August 2013.
CACI · Genesis III
Technical Trainer
Technical trainer on Genesis III. Taught tactical SIGINT operators in theater. Six months Iraq. Six months Afghanistan. Twelve months on the contract.
After a 12 to 14 hour day I still put my nose in the books when the power and the internet held.
Military
Colorado Army National Guard
First Sergeant. Retired 2018. 21 years in intelligence.
Iraq, 2009-2010. SIGINT Platoon Sergeant, B Company, 86th Special Troops Battalion. Accountable for $3.7 million in SIGINT systems. Wrote the SIGINT protocols. Bronze Star in country.
Company First Sergeant, SIGINT Platoon Sergeant, and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Platoon Sergeant from 2006. Combat logistics when the picture changed by the hour.
Afghanistan, 2002-2003. Special Operations Team Alpha (SOT-A) with 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group. Tactical SIGINT in support of that formation.
Senior Intelligence Sergeant, J2, North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command (NORAD-NORTHCOM), 2008. Katrina, 2005. Colorado flood, 2013.
United States Marine Corps
Cryptologic Linguist. Radio Reconnaissance Sergeant.
Enlisted 1996 as a Cryptologic Linguist. Finished June 2001 as a Radio Reconnaissance Sergeant, First Radio Battalion, Kaneohe.
Defense Language Institute (DLI), Russian, September 1996 to December 1997. Korean transcripts. Not fluent. Fast curriculum. Sink or swim.
Cryptologic Operations Center, Misawa, 1998-2000. USS Carl Vinson, Operation Desert Fox, winter 1998.
Built and ran computer networks and satellite communications gear in a technical field I liked for the detail.
Education
University of Denver, Daniels College of Business
Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA), cohort C84
Excelsior University
Bachelor of Science, Liberal Arts
Defense Language Institute
Russian. Korean transcripts. Not fluent.
Clearance
Held Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information. Not current.