A Salty Vet: The Next Chapter
About this Salty Vet
A Salty Vet started as a long-standing email nickname that apparently hit a little too close to home during an Army exercise. The irony was not lost on me. Senior leader chats can be packed full of memes, sarcasm, and dark humor, but the moment a system states the obvious, suddenly everyone wants to clutch their pearls.
So the name stuck.
And honestly, it fits.
I have spent nearly two decades in the Army, and I am now winding down that chapter while preparing for whatever comes next. Over the years, my foundation has been built on mentoring and developing leaders, geospatial engineering, GIS architecture, systems maintenance, and a growing education path focused on information technology, coding, and cybersecurity.
At my core, I like learning hard things, breaking them down, and teaching them in a way that actually makes sense. Whether it is building servers, working with maps and data, experimenting with AI tools, gaming, coding, cooking, or figuring out how technology can solve real problems, I am always looking for the next system to understand and improve.
That same mindset is also behind Flavor by Design, my recipe and cooking platform. I love to cook, share recipes, and help people who want to get better in the kitchen. Cooking is a lot like technology: once you understand the fundamentals, the process gets less intimidating, the mistakes get easier to fix, and eventually you stop surviving the recipe and start designing the outcome.
This platform is where all of that comes together.
A Salty Vet is professional, but not sanitized. Honest, but not reckless. Technical, but not boring. It is a place for leadership lessons, technology projects, AI experiments, GIS work, gaming, PC and server builds, food, recipes, and whatever else I decide to drag across the finish line with caffeine, sarcasm, and questionable sleep habits.
The Army gave me plenty of experience, a healthy distrust of buzzwords, and enough dark humor to survive PowerPoint briefings that should have been war crimes.
Now I am using that experience to build, teach, document, cook, create, and explore the next phase of life after the uniform.
Position
Senior GIS & Operations Lead
Brand signal
Caffeine, sarcasm, GIS layers, and the discipline to always make progress.
Rule
If your feelings are hurt - it might be your own fault.
Professional Foundation
A living portfolio
My background sits at the intersection of geospatial operations, cybersecurity, digital systems, leadership, and technical problem-solving. After more than 17 years in the Army, I’ve spent my career turning complex information into clear, usable products that help teams understand the situation, make decisions, and move with purpose.
That work has included GIS architecture, systems maintenance, operational planning, data management, leader development, and a growing technical path in IT, coding, cybersecurity, and full-stack development. The common thread is simple: take messy information, organize it, make it useful, and explain it in a way people can actually use.
This section of the platform highlights the professional side of that journey: credentials, technical skills, project work, references, lessons learned, and the systems I’m building for the next chapter. The Army experience still matters, but the focus here is forward-facing: practical civilian value, useful digital products, and work that proves I can build, learn, lead, and adapt.
No buzzword parade. No corporate fluff grenade. Just the receipts.
CURRENT OPERATING LANES
Maps. Security. Data. Websites. Operations.
This portfolio is built around practical skills, real projects, and work that can be tested, improved, linked, and judged by what it actually does not how fancy it sounds in a résumé bullet.
Security & Networks
Web & Software
Operations & Leadership
Food & Creative Projects
AI & Agentic Systems
Working Projects
Projects, proof, and the receipts.
• Mission Control is where it begins. The agentic AI organization performs continuous audits database's, web design and coding structure, SIO and security responsibilities, marketing, research & development, and a trainer tasked with online knowledge grabs to keep my team trained and up to date on the latest and greatest.
• Flavor By Design Where it all started. This was the first piece of the internet I ever bought and built. Today, it's home to over 11,000 recipes, assisted by an AI chat bot, fed with affiliate links, and remains the largest free source of information I manage.
• TechNodeX This came to fruition when I finally went back to school after a long sabbatical and lots of research. I still don't really know what I want to be when I grow up (some day one day), but I do know I love reading and writing code, and teaching anything I've learned. This is in a constant state of refinement as I drill down into what teaching through an online platform really looks like. My hope is that one day it becomes a source of income and potentially a part time or full time job.
• Foundry Kit This also game out of watching many friends struggle with wanting to start a business, but not knowing where to turn after the big AI boom took over, well basically everything. While it's not a top of the market product, my hope is that new comers will find a place to build a reliable, safe, and custom startup website for their own brand and ideas. A long term goal is to be able to host websites for people, and build out what they want if they don't want to do it themselves.
A Salty Vet
The central public portfolio, profile, proof archive, writing hub, and learning record for A Salty Vet.
Role
Owner, subject, product designer, site publisher, resume source steward
Flavor by Design
A recipe and kitchen project with Italian roots, global flavors, searchable recipes, portion scaling, newsletter hooks, and a product/content pipeline.
Role
Founder, builder, content systems operator, product strategist
Foundry Kit
A website builder that turns a plain-English brief into exportable website source code, with pricing, docs, templates, status, and security surfaces.
Role
Founder, product strategist, systems designer, frontend engineer
Mission Control and Hermes Ecosystem
A governed operating layer for products, agents, approvals, audits, cost controls, and public-site quality work.
Role
System architect, operator, QA reviewer, product owner
Active Builds
The lastest projects
My latest projects include:
Army Board Study Guide This will remain a free resource for as long as I have space to run it. A long standing right of passage is the promotion board, but we no longer have things like the "Army Study Guide" from the good old days. Since we all have a phone attached to us, it just made sense to make a Progressive Web App (PWA) for everyone to be able to access it. Also because Apple charges $100 a year just to put things in the app store which is crazy.
TechNodeX This is poised to be my first ever Google Play Store official app and should be published within the next two weeks pending tester results and any required tweaks upon release. I am already diligently working on an app update while I try to curate a video game-learn to code-interactive platform to tie in to the website and app. This is built from the ground up as I go through my own education, and showcases all of the new skill sets I am learning along the way.
Project Titan This is a media player that was inspired by cooperate greed. My lifetime plex pass was $99 bucks. Currently it's $250 with a planned price increase to nearly $800. The app hasn't really improved or updated but has filled itself with relentless commercial bloat. So I've set out to make my own version that will be a free to use with paid add on application. My hope is to make it to the play store with a final copy, since Google has already started rolling out blanket bans on side loaded apps.
My Family Story I grew up in a house where tradition ruled above all. I was lucky enough to know my great grandmother and both sets of grand parents, but there's still so much of their lives that is being lost over time. A popular trend came out recently with "Tell me your story (insert person here)", but seems to be mediocre at best with engagements. I am working on an app that will allow you to dictate your story, but will also prompt you with questions about your life. You can buy this for you or buy and send it to someone, and they can write their story. It will support pictures with a potential video capability later on. Then you will have an option to send a digital download, create a book, or a few other items and give your family a piece of your own history.
Flavor By Design This is an app to work in unison with my website by giving users the visual aid of recipe choosing, creating a shopping list, and meal planning all in one place. With a swipe (or heart) to like or dislike (X) you can choose several recipes for the week, then build a grocery list to shop for your items, and even add your meals to the calendar to meal plan. While I know there's some apps that will let you take a picture of your pantry to make meals, I don't believe that AI and photo recognition are quite there yet in the civilian sector, so I am working on a text input where you can list what you have in your fridge, pantry, cabinets, etc. and my Chef's Assistant in the app will help you find meals from the recipe catalog.
GIS and cybersecurity skill track
A documented learning and proof track across ArcGIS, web mapping, cybersecurity fundamentals, network security, Linux, SQL, Python, HTML, CSS, Java, and full-stack development.
Next: Add credential links, course artifacts, lab notes, maps, dashboards, screenshots, and short writeups as they are cleared for public use.
A Salty Vet portfolio launch
A central public site for geospatial direction, cybersecurity growth, projects, resume/profile copy, proof, notes, links, and contact.
Next: Add confirmed screenshots, exact resume dates/titles, credential links, GitHub policy, and cleared public artifacts.
Flavor by Design product and content pipeline
Kitchen product research, recipe trust, and future shopping surfaces held behind review gates.
Next: Clear a small set of product recommendations before publishing any gear content.
Foundry export promise
Narrow Foundry Kit around portable source export, examples, trust pages, and deployment clarity.
Next: Publish stronger example previews and keep platform-adapter claims grounded.
Operating principles
How the work is judged.
This is the bar for the site and the products behind it.
01
Proof beats polish.
02
Caffeine, sarcasm, GIS layers.
03
Useful systems over shiny demos.
04
Private by default until cleared.
05
Plain English, tight feedback loops, no fake certainty.
06
Keep learning, keep building, keep receipts.
Field notes
Notes that explain the taste.
After-Action
Build with receipts
A working rule for products, resumes, and public claims: show the thing or mark the gap.
Field NoteControlled autonomy beats autonomy theater
Notes on keeping AI and automation useful through approvals, audit trails, cost gates, and human authority.
Field NoteA living portfolio should behave like a proof file
A short note on why this site is built as a public proof archive instead of a polished one-page resume.
Contact
Hiring, collaboration, interviews, GIS work, security work, or useful technical problems.
Start with context. The response path is intentionally simple: form plus domain email.