About Me

Hi, I'm Richard: a QA engineer, father of four, LA Clippers fan, marathoner-in-training, and the kind of person who notices when the menu at a restaurant is clipped upside down… and then tries to fix it. (It was glued down. Sad trombone.)

I’ve spent more than two decades breaking software in the good way - catching bugs before they catch users. Big automotive platforms, SaaS startups, my own side projects: I love the puzzle of making sure tech does what people think it should do. My job is basically to advocate for the user, whether that user is buying a car or just trying to get through checkout without wanting to throw their laptop across the room.

Outside of QA, I solve a different kind of problem: what's for dinner. Cooking is my favorite creative outlet, equal parts science experiment and comfort ritual. Sometimes that means an all-day braise with homemade stock and perfect mise en place, other times it's "what can I make with three eggs, half a cabbage, and a jar of gochujang?" Either way, dinner's going to be interesting.

I also love to travel, but especially for events. I try to time trips with local holidays, festivals, or something unforgettable happening nearby. One of my favorite trips was Guatemala during Holy Week, walking streets lined with colorful alfombras and watching the processions. I once accidentally timed a trip to Ko Samui with Loy Krathong and saw the sky filled with floating lanterns. More recently, I went to Dallas for the 2024 solar eclipse and I made sure to book my AirBnB to be near Goldee's so I could hit Texas Monthly's #1 BBQ spot.

I tinker with my own ideas too. Right now I’m building GratePlan, a kitchen inventory + meal-planning tool, and designing Eightia, a collaborative memory-sharing platform that crowdsources your autobiography. Both scratch the same itch: make life work better, smarter, and with less last-minute chaos.

This site started as a way to add some new stuff to my skill set. But because I can’t leave well enough alone, I turned it into a place to share some stuff I like: cooking projects, travel notes, and anything else I think my mother would like to see. Let me know what you think!