The Silicon Sermon: From the Rural Wisconsin Dump to the Neural Frontier
They say intelligence is a biological imperative, but for me, it was forged in a landfill in Rural Wisconsin. Born in Minnesota, I moved to the rural expanse of Wisconsin at age eleven and stayed until I was twenty. Imagine a thirteen-year-old boy, fueled by a relentless, high-functioning autistic curiosity, kneeling in the mud of a local dump to scavenge discarded motherboards. At that age, I didn't see junk; I saw the architecture of potential. I scavenged the parts to build my first five PCs not out of financial necessity—though we were far from wealthy—but out of a primal hunger to understand the systems that define our reality.
Back then, in those formative years in Wisconsin before I returned to Minnesota, the "lines of code" weren't just syntax; they were the invisible threads connecting human intent to electrical manifestation. My brain has always worked differently—I don't just see data; I see patterns. I see the subtle shifts in variance, the weight of variables, and the latent intersections where technology transforms from a tool into a teammate. That same hunger that led me to the dumpster is what drives this platform today. We aren't just looking at the "news" of AI; we are dissecting the marrow of the machine.
Today, back home in Minnesota, that hunger has transitioned from physical silicon to neural weights. We are standing at the threshold of an era where "vibe coding" and prompt engineering are the new literacy. But as we move forward, we must remember where we came from. The strategic literacy I teach here is rooted in those early days of troubleshooting hardware failures. It’s about more than just typing a prompt into a box; it's about understanding the "Ins & Outs"—the plumbing, the privacy, and the potential.
As AI becomes the operating system of our lives, those who understand the base layer will lead. Whether you are a homeschool parent looking to optimize your child's education or an enterprise leader protecting client privilege, the principles remain the same. We must be sovereign in our usage. We must be tactical in our approach.
Driven by Faith, Committed to People
Every line of code I’ve ever "connected," every tool I've built, and every insight shared on this site is a byproduct of the grace of God. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that our gifts are not our own; they are lent to us to serve others. Technology is often viewed as cold, secular, or perhaps even antithetical to faith. I see it differently. I see AI as a canvas for the "Imago Dei"—the image of God reflected in our ability to create and reason.
The mission of "Ins and Outs of AI" is to demystify these powerful tools so that they can be used for the betterment of the human condition. My goal is to equip you—the believer, the student, the professional—to wield these technologies with discernment. We focus on truth, sovereignty, and the removal of "cognitive sludge" so you can focus on what truly matters: your family, your community, and your calling. All credit for what is built here goes upward, through the grace that saved me and gave me a path.
The Flame of Inspiration
In Memory of TJ Beach (1992 - 2010)
Every professional journey has an anchor. Mine is the memory of TJ Beach. He was a friend, a mentor, and a spark that ignited my passion for technology before he was taken at the age of eighteen. TJ saw the world in ways others didn't, much like the patterns I see today. His passing left a void, but it also left a mandate: to pursue excellence and to use my mind to its fullest potential.
This site is dedicated to his spirit of curiosity. If he were here today, he’d be the first to dive into the weights of an LLM or the nuances of generative art. I carry that torch for him. When you see the complexity of these tutorials or the depth of the strategic hubs, know that it is built with the same intensity TJ brought to everything he did. We keep the memory alive by building things that matter.
The 1-10-5 Strategic Grid
Topical Authority Silos for Comprehensive Mastery
Tested in the Trenches,
Not Read in the News.
There is a proliferation of "AI Experts" who have never looked at a loss curve or handled a raw model weights file. I am not one of them. For over five years, I have been deeply embedded in the internal testing ecosystems of the world's leading AI organizations.
OpenAI API Early Adopter (2021)
One of the first public beta participants for GPT-3, exploring the limits of LLMs before they became household names.
Android Grok Public Beta (xAI)
Actively testing Musk's Grok model via the Google Play Beta program, helping iterate on mobile information retrieval.
Venice.ai Early Adopter
Community beta participant and early adopter of privacy-first, decentralized inference for SOTA models.
Thrifty Flipper Founder
Architect of a barcode price checker for arbitrage flippers, enabling real-time sold data analysis from eBay, Amazon, Google Lens, and more.
Tactical Insights: The Venice Protocol
One of the most critical shifts in 2026 is the transition from "Convenient AI" to "Sovereign AI." Through my work with Venice.ai, I've seen firsthand how private routing and decentralized inference is changing the game for Legal and Medical professionals.
When you use a platform like Venice, you aren't a product; you're a user. Your data isn't being harvested to train tomorrow's corporate monopoly. This strategy is baked into every tutorial on this site. We don't just teach you how to prompt; we teach you where to prompt to keep your intellectual property safe.
The Tipping Point of Human Agency
The year 2026 is not just another iteration in the Silicon Valley cycle. It is a fundamental pivot in the history of human cognition. We are moving from "Static Knowledge" to "Dynamic Synthesis." For decades, we were taught that the value of the human mind was its ability to store and retrieve data. AI has rendered that paradigm obsolete. Today, the value of the human mind lies in its ability to direct and discriminate.
We call this "The Ins and Outs" because that is the new threshold. Information flows IN at an unprecedented rate, and value flows OUT only if you have the strategic literacy to filter, refine, and focus the machine. If you treat AI like a Google search, you will be replaced. If you treat AI like a specialized, high-bandwidth cognitive architecture, you will become superhuman. This site is the manual for that transformation.
Think about the implications for specialized fields. In Law Enforcement, we are seeing the rise of generative crime scene analysis. An investigator can now feed raw evidence data into a multimodal model to generate probable 3D reconstructions. In the home, mothers and fathers are using AI to create custom-tailored curricula for their children, bypassing a one-size-fits-all education system that was never designed for individual genius. These are not hypothetical futures—these are tools I will show you how to build today.
There's also the matter of ethics. We are currently building the foundation of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). The decisions we make about model alignment, open-source sovereignty, and the environmental cost of compute will echo for generations. My autism allows me to see the long-tail implications of these choices—the cascades of failure or the compounding of success. I believe we have a moral obligation to steer this technology toward the light.
So, whether you're here to learn the fundamentals of an LLM context window or to architect a multimodal enterprise workflow, remember this: You are the driver. The machine is the engine. The roadmap is right here. By the grace of God, we will build a future that respects privacy, honors humanity, and unlocks the next level of our collective potential.
Ready to Begin?
Select your first Hub and enter the neural frontier.