About Don and This Site

I'm a Boston-based DevOps engineer with a passion for automation, teaching, learning, presentation, and community outreach. I'm one of the organizers of DevOpsDays Boston and am also involved with the monthly Boston DevOps meetup. I've presented at a variety of local meetups, like Boston Python, Boston Kubernetes Meetup, Boston Jenkins Area Meetup and the Inclusive Tech Hub, as well as some non-locals like DevOpsDays Austin and ONUG.

Tangential to my day job, I've been a maker since the mid-2000s. My first "build" consisted of nothing more than a 386 PC, an FM radio, a light timer, and a CompactFlash card - so that I could listen to a radio show that aired while I was at school. I was also a member of the Netscape and Mozilla communities, and put out a Mozilla distro, Donzilla, with the help of some great folks at SillyDog701. Later I made an HDTV, restored a 1987 BMW, built a portable drive-in movie theater, and did plenty of other personally useful but ill-advisable things.

I've been a practitioner of Shōhei-ryu karate since 2013, and earned my third-degree black belt in 2025. In additional to helping me stay physically fit, the martial arts have taught me important lessons in how to problem-solve, and how to teach - the most important thing I've learned from the martial arts is that it's not possible to truly "know" something (not even just a martial art!) until you've taught it to someone else. I currently teach childrens' classes several times per week at the Institute of Okinawan Karate in Weymouth, and South Shore Karate in Scituate.

I have several other hobbies that I spend regretfully little time doing. I'd be remiss to take a vacation without going on a hike and shooting some photos, some of which can be seen in the gallery. I'm a local radio enthusiast, and have followed a number of Boston's DJs as they've moved among WFNX, WBCN, WGBH, and Indie617, and am an avid WERS listener. As an amateur radio operator, KC1YEK, I technically sometimes do that myself, too. Ask me anything about the restored BMW E30 that I can be found driving in the nice weather.

The site hardwarehacks.org has been around in some form since 2003, though its lineage is a bit more difficult to track:

It started in 2003 as a static site designed in Netscape Composer. (Remember Netscape Composer?)
In 2005 it got a rewrite to use the templating features of ASP.NET 2.0, and became self-hosted at the current domain.
In 2009 it switched to the now-defunct .TEXT (DotText) blog engine. The current theme is a carryover from the .TEXT default theme, ported up through a succession of blog engines.
In 2010 it swithced to the also-now-defunct Subtext blog engine.
In 2014 it switched to the also-now-defunct-but-still-with-a-website Pebble blog engine, then sat dormant for many years.
In 2020 it switched to Hugo.

The moral of this story is that the tools are a dime a dozen and will change anyway.