About

About

Hey. I’m retr0.

This is my lab. A place where I document experiments, share what I learn, and occasionally break things on purpose to see how they work.

About Me

I’m a Site Reliability Engineer. Most of my time goes into making systems predictable—the kind of infrastructure that doesn’t wake you up at 3 AM unless something actually matters. When things fail, I want them to fail loudly, explain themselves, and leave fewer mysteries behind.

But there’s another side to this. I spend a lot of time with old machines. Commodore 64s. Classic Macs. Apple II. IBM PCs running DOS. Mainframes, when I can get access. There’s something about vintage hardware that teaches you things modern systems try to abstract away.

The ghost in the machine is the same whether it’s running on silicon from 1984 or containers in a cloud data center. Understanding one helps you understand the other.

What You’ll Find Here

  • Modern Infrastructure: Cloud platforms, containers, CI/CD pipelines, SRE practices
  • Cybersecurity: System hardening, threat modeling, security automation
  • Retro Computing: Classic Macs, C64, Apple II, IBM PCs, mainframes when accessible
  • Automation & DevOps: Infrastructure as Code, monitoring, operational efficiency
  • Hardware Projects: Microcontrollers, embedded systems, digital fabrication

The Philosophy

I focus on what works. Not theoretical perfection. Not best practices that sound good in blog posts but fall apart in production. Real solutions that solve real problems.

Old and new systems teach each other. The clever hacks from when memory was measured in kilobytes? Some of those patterns are still the right answer today. And understanding modern distributed systems helps you appreciate what mainframe designers figured out decades ago.

I also believe in working with AI, not against it. Human experience brings practical requirements and real-world constraints. AI helps with pattern recognition and code quality. Neither perspective is complete on its own.

Get in Touch

If you’re into SRE, security, automation, or keeping old machines alive—reach out.

Welcome to the lab.