Welcome!

What is this place?

Hello friend! I’m glad you stumbled across my tiny site.

My name is Erik and I have way more things that I want to accomplish than I have time to accomplish them. Whatever though, thats a lame excuse for inaction.

For now this site exists primarily as an online resume, but there’s so much more to come!

I’m interested in getting more involved in network security and what that even means. So as I explore that world I’ll make sure to post things that I have done that are interesting.

The things you can most expect on this site in the near future are posts about my dotfiles repository. I have a lot of stuff on there that I think is pretty clever (/brushesoffshoulder), and I’d love to share it with whatever nerd wants to listen. Now I just have to find the time to write all that…

What keeps me busy

Computers

I love cooking up my own solutions with whatever tools I have at my disposal. Sometimes it’s a “I wonder how hard this would be” kind of thought, and other times it’s a “I could do that so much better” thought. I run Ubuntu 18.04 as my personal OS, I stream my music off a plex library which I have hosted off a frankenserver at my apartment, and I’ve got a million-and-a-half questionably-finished projects with Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms. Wanna work on something together? Toss me a line, I’d at least like to chat about it.

Biking

Since I was a kid I’ve always loved biking. I never did it on any kind of team, or really in any organized manner, but I started building and working on bikes with my brothers around the time I was in junior-high.

In the Summer of 2018, I found myself with ample time, as I had recently decided to leave CODE, and more than enough stoke for bike touring. I never studied abroad in college and have always wanted to see more of the US. This seemed like the perfect opportunity, and those don’t always come around twice! I headed out of New York City at the beginning of June. Fifteen days later I was in Chicago!

After seeing the city, spending time with friends and family, and eating my weight in deep dish pizza, I took a Greyhound bus to Knoxville, TN where this lovely picture was shot:

Then I headed down a less-than-straightforward path to St. Augustine, FL where I met up with some family to relax after what ended up being ~2,000 miles of biking.

I could fill a whole site about the adventures I had along the way, but no one wants to hear about all that… right? Maybe someday I’ll get around to writing a bit about this trip, but probably not. In the end it was much more impactful of an experience that it would be as a story.

I recorded my ride every day using a bike computer and uploaded the routes to a variety of services, including Ride With GPS. The folks there were kind enough to stich them all together for me after I opened a support ticket with the intention of using their API to do it myself. Here’s the route I took from NYC to Chicago, and here’s the route I took from Knoxville to St. Augustine. They take a while to load, here’s a screen grab if you’re on mobile or a have a slow connection.

Climbing

I’ve been climbing rocks for almost as long as I’ve been biking, but I have way less impressive things to share. Here’s a shot of me learning how to climb trad in City of Rocks, ID.

Sewing

There will be much more to come on this. Suffice to say I do not like buying new things if I think I can make them. The number of things that fall into that category is increasing each year! Someday I would love to make all my own clothes (at least the casual-wear ones) and my own bags (especially for my bike).