About Alastair

Abstract Holistic Computational Device

You’ll often see me use the phrase, “abstract holistic computational device” as a silly way of describing myself. Partially inspired by the title of my favorite book, “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” I like to describe myself this way because really, it’s a way of describe anyone. Humans, for all our squishyness, are analytical in a way that can process information, create remarkable things, and discover absurdities about the nature of this world. Uhg. I’m making my own eyes roll. I don’t mean to get philosophical, so to cite an example, if my first time hearing about quantum entanglement was from a science fiction movie, I would have bailed on that movie for being too weird, and I’ve watched some wild stuff . To break down the phrase into its parts, we can think critically (computational device), about intangible things (abstract), and we can do that for just about everything (holistic).

“He’s just this guy, you know?”

I live in the greater metropolitan area of Portland Oregon. I moved here from Chicago, but grew up in Montana and later Michigan. I earned my Bachelor’s degree from the Computer Science department of Northern Michigan University and have done work in tech industry for some household names like State Farm and Bank of America in a broad range of roles that has had me touching just about every part of a software stack from writing the code as a Software Engineer, to maintaining servers as a Sr. Systems Administrator, and most recently creating the code that builds and deploys applications as a DevOps Engineer. Despite the fact that I’ve mostly worked for large companies, the goal throughout most of my career has been to work on a small, dedicated team who is focused on supporting each other to drive the success of the team and the business.