👋 Hey, I'm Matt Howe!

(Dad, Husband, Systems Engineer, Thirst Trap, Puzzle Enthusiast, Army Veteran, and All-Around Debonair)

Daddy and Claire

Claire (and I) - born 4/22/24 in room 424

📖 About This Tall Drink of Water

Welcome to my corner of the internet! Born in '85, forged in the New Jersey hardcore scene, spazzed in the Army, and now trying to figure out life with a crafty toddler. I don't respect Javascript (especially Typescript), but reluctantly admit that the world runs on it, so this page now exists... Kids, the internet all used to look like this - it was fun AND it didn't destroy peoples' brains.

  • 👨‍👧 Dad to Claire and husband to Amber
  • 🛡️ Cybersecurity engineer building cloud-native k8s apps and tactical edge hardware solutions CLASSIFIED
  • 🎖️ US Army veteran - learned discipline, excessive drinking, some of the worst words of Hangul, problem-solving, and how to say a lot of words that sound professional without actually saying anything of value
  • 🔧 Professional "wtf does this do?" investigator
  • 🌟 Enjoys complex things, simple things, sardonic humor, motorcycles (though I gave it up), football, hockey, baseball, dogs, food, and music.

💡 Lessons Learned

Get a dog, they will make everything better.

RIP Sadie

Find someone who keeps you grounded, appreciative, and makes you want to be better.

<3

Having a child will open dimensions of love that you never new were inside of you.

Spooky

🛠️ Projects

A collection of things I've flirted with with over the years. If you have something you think would scratch that itch, drop me a line.

🍕 NYC Style Pizza Engineering

Status: ONGOING RESEARCH
I grew up in NJ and have lived in a lot of places. Pizza uniformly fucking sucks in a lot of places, so I have up the scientific pursuit of the perfect NYC-style pizza. Involves 60% dough hydration, temperature monitoring (550-650F), and way too much debate about sauce-to-cheese ratios (see the doc). I own a pizza oven now that I have modded, and am considering another one.

Current Recipe

🖧 Home Lab

Clusters of Raspberry Pis, cheap SBCs, old desktop and laptops - all cobbled together into asinine projects that add minimal value to daily life.

📻 Radios

Shortwave, GMRS, Ham, Digital, Software-Defined - all are welcome here because sometimes you need to talk and listen without the internet. Emergency comms will come in handy one day.

Baofeng

🔧 Retro Refurbishing & Restoration

Taking broken things and making them work again. From old electronics, game consoles, computer, to random household items - if it's broken and interesting, I'll probably try to fix it. Success rate varies wildly.

⚡ FPGA Gaming

Diving into the wonderful world of Field Programmable Gate Arrays and bringing old video games back to life when I inevitably brick a system. Because sometimes you need hardware that does exactly what you want, and not what some CPU thinks you want. The MiSTer project might be humanity's greatest achievement.

🏗️ This Website

Status: VINTAGE BY DESIGN
Built using authentic 2000 technology as a tribute to the days when websites had character and didn't spike my CPU usage. No frameworks, no build tools, no bullshit - just pure HTML and CSS like God intended.

🔗 Look me up

Various digital outposts...

  • 🏠 Main Site - The polished, grown-up version of me
  • 📝 Personal Blog - Random thoughts and musings
  • 📱 GitHub - Code repositories and digital experiments
  • 💼 LinkedIn - The professional version
  • ✉️ Email - Tech that actually just works