James was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. He attended Iowa State University to pursue a Computer Science degree. During an intense period of self-reflection (the University would call it having been ‘academically dismissed,’ but lets not get hung up on semantics!) one of his roommates was able to secure him an internship with the IT reseller/integrator the roommate worked for. And so the IT career began.
Career
To date, James has been a help desk resource and support engineer (we all have to go through it!), an architect at a very large federal contractor, a hired gun for VDI projects, and a pre-sales and implementation specialist for virtualization technologies with another VAR. During that same time, James has also written on his old blog (www.virtadmin.com), presented at local VMware User Groups and on the Community Stage at VMworld. In the last year, he transitioned to writing for hire and produced articles for a number of well known industry publications, as well as wrote a number of ghost-written pieces for industry content producers.
A couple of times throughout 2015, James and the founders of ActualTech Media (for whom James was a contractor) discussed a more permanent relationship. The details finally came together, and as of January 1, 2016, James has parted ways with the VAR he was 
consulting for and is now a Partner in ActualTech Media. He is focused full-time on delivering services to ATM customers and helping the founders to grow the business.
Home Life
James and his wife currently live in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa. In 2016, they expect to move to Carly’s home state of Wisconsin to be closer to her family. The families being split between Iowa and Wisconsin causes a ton of travel, especially around the holidays. They have a beautiful daughter, born about a year after they were married, and expect to have more children in the future.
They are, as a family, disciples of Jesus. Most people would use the word “Christian,” but James isn’t particularly fond of some of the things that word connotes today. Regardless, they’re a Bible-believing, people-serving, everyone-loving, Christ-centered family.
They were fortunate to be involved in 2014-2015 with launching the newest branch of their local church, Lutheran Church of Hope, in a Des Moines suburb called Waukee. When they move to Wisconsin, they’ll be looking for a new home church, but they’ll also continue to be blessed by Hope via the weekly live stream at www.hopeonline.tv.
James and his wife are interested in health and fitness, and have been on a journey since their relationship began to discover the sorts of foods and activities that make them look good, feel great, and perform at the highest level. For all of 2015, James was experimenting heavily with Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof methodology. If your familiar with different types of nutrition, you’ll note that Bulletproof has similarities with Paleo at ketogenic diets. They’ve seen a lot of success in reaching their goals with this methodology, so for 2016, they’ll be doing a lot of cooking out of the Bulletproof cookbook.
Since this area of life is so critical to high performance, and they are all about being high performers, James decided to expand the scope of this blog to include writing about food and biohacking. Not having a relatively narrow focus is the cardinal sin of running a blog for gain. Fortunately, James no longer needs to leverage his blog for professional traction (as he will have other outlets for that) so he decided to leverage it to share a broader array of his experiences.
Hobbies
Studying the IT industry and technology captivates James and there isn’t room for a lot more, but there a few other interests that keep James busy:
- He has played the bass guitar for more than 10 years, and enjoys playing on a regular basis
- Being a well-rounded nerd, he enjoys consumer tech gadgets and such. He is a self-proclaimed Apple convert. If Apple were Jesus, James used to be Saul; now he’s Paul.
- Recently, craft brewing has been attempted. James has made 4 batches of homebrew over the last year – it takes a long time to drink 50 bottles of beer! Apparently the key to homebrewing is to share a lot of it.
- James is an avid reader. In 2016, his goal is to read 52 books, which should be easily attained at the current pace. Last year he logged almost 30, but didn’t start recording them until June. The widget below shows progress on the 2016 goal.
Contact
James emphatically believes in the view that “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” He would love to get to know anyone he doesn’t already, so use the ‘Connect With Me’ section at the top-right of this page to get in touch with James via social media or e-mail.