Hello, I'm Dustin. 👋
I'm a software engineer who grew up in a small rural Utah town, left to see the world, and came right back to a small rural Utah town. I build things, I break things, and then I write about how I fixed them so future-me doesn't have to figure it out twice.
Here's what made me, me.
Baseball first, everything else second ⚾️
I've loved baseball my whole life. My dad coached football, wrestling, and baseball, and my brother and I spent a lot of miles on the team bus. I played football, basketball, and baseball in high school, and finished my senior year by breaking my arm pitching in the state tournament — Dave Dravecky style. Worth it.
These days my sport of choice is pickleball, but baseball never left me. I'll watch it, coach it, score it, and I still have a soft spot for the boys of summer.
Movies, and a lot of them 🎬
I'm a big movie guy. A lot of movies. My two genres are romantic comedies and baseball movies, and I'm not ashamed of either. There's a special place in my heart for a good rom-com, and for a baseball movie that understands the game — that it's equal parts failure, redemption, and doing it again tomorrow.
Audiobooks (mostly non-fiction) 🎧
I'm nearly always listening to an audiobook, and it's almost always non-fiction. I want to know how things work, how people think, and how to get better at being a human.
Two books sit above the rest:
- The best book I've ever read is the Book of Mormon.
- The book that gave me my life back is The MindBody Prescription by Dr. John Sarno — it changed how I understood my own body and pain, and I don't exaggerate when I say it turned my life around.
Faith matters to me more than anything ✝️
I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it is a big deal to me. It shapes who I am, how I see people, and how I spend my Sundays and my life.
Between growing up and settling down, I served a two-year mission for the Church in Cape Town, South Africa 🇿🇦. It was life-changing. It taught me to love people I'd never have met otherwise, to work without expecting credit, and that a homegrown kid from a rural Utah town can belong anywhere.
I love to build 🔨
Making things is my default setting. Software, furniture, plans, systems — doesn't matter. If it can be built, I want to build it, and I want to build it well. I've spent my career at companies like IHC Health Plans, 3M Health Information Systems, and a few great places in between (see my LinkedIn), and I picked up a degree in Computer Information Systems from Weber State along the way.
I love to automate things 🤖
If I do something twice, I'll spend an afternoon making a script do it forever. I love automating the boring, the repetitive, and the error-prone — and then handing the time I saved back to the things I actually care about.
I love bleeding edge technology ✨
I'm a sucker for the new and shiny. If it just shipped and nobody's using it yet, I want to try it. I love being early, learning the sharp edges, and figuring out what the future is going to look like before it's obvious to everyone else.
I'm taking up gardening 🥕
Newest adventure: growing things. I'm taking up gardening and learning that,
unlike software, you can't just git revert a frost. It's humbling, and I love
it.
Back home in a small rural Utah town 🏔️
The world is a big place, and I've seen a good chunk of it. But I've come back around to where I started — living in a small rural Utah town with my beautiful wife Rachel, our five kids, and our dog. Quiet, spacious, and full of the things that matter.
Why blog?
More than anything, I blog for myself. I can't tell you how often I've gone back to my own blog to remember how I did something. It's also fun when a co-worker says they found an answer on my blog — my response is always, "I would have just sent you to my blog."
I hope you find something useful here, whether it's for work or for home. Say hello on X if you'd like — I'd love to hear from you.