Timeline Source Data — Captured 2026-05-02 ~04:00-05:18 CEST¶

Full Narrative (chronological)¶

1. Childhood Origins (~early 90s)¶

First computer: 80286 — couldn't run Wolf 3D
Talked middle school guidance counselor into gifting his 386
386 had the CPU but wrong GPU. 286 had the ISA GPU.
Pulled GPU from 286, installed in 386 → Wolf 3D runs. HOOKED.
MS Flight Simulator on floppy disks — Uncle Wally Obermeyer
Constantly salvaging computer parts, frankensteining PCs

2. Middle School / Early Teen (~1993-95)¶

First new build: Cyrix 5x86 from Computer Shopper magazine
Hosting game servers with Jim Selby throughout middle school/high school
IRC / mIRC — comms backbone
ICQ — social coordination
Read the cypherpunk manifesto in a mIRC channel (~1995)
Shareware, freeware, open source ethos from the start
CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) — obtained in early high school

3. High School — Aspen (~1995-99)¶

Hacked admin access to library computers → kicked out by librarian
Jim Selby (Aspen High sysadmin) befriended him, made him Jr Admin
Jim and Z started MacAspen — web hosting on Mac servers (rare: Mac vs IIS/Linux)
Also hosted game servers
Hardware: 3dfx Voodoo 2 + P3 → Riva TNT → first Radeon → GeForce 2/3/4 Ti
Counter-Strike on WON (pre-Steam) — max performance obsession
HLDM league admin: The Proving Ground, RITD, BITE
CAL competitor, CPL competitor for years
Desert Combat (BF1942 mod) — voted best pilot
5 CAL championships with NET (Network of Exceeding Tactics)
HLTV frag videos produced for clan (not named)

4. Hamilton Sundstrand Internship (pre-KMC, ~1998)¶

Dad's buddy was engineer there
Aerospace: DEC Alpha, SGI terminals, stereolithography
3D Systems polymer resin printing before consumer 3D
First enterprise-grade compute exposure

5. Kemper Military College (KMC, ~1999)¶

Went to fly attack helicopters
Too tall to qualify for attack rotary wing → routed to transport
Not interested in transport → bailed on commissioning
Earned: MSE (Military Science & Engineering), LET (Leadership Excellence Training)
Switched MOS to 35F (All-Source Intelligence Analyst)
Already one of the best at computer optimization

6. AspenWave Era (~2000-2002)¶

Returned to Aspen, helped Jim co-found CO's first wireless ISP
MacAspen (web hosting) evolved into AspenWave (wireless ISP)
Worked with Lucent/ORiNOCO on first-gen 802.11b AP firmware
WSJ coined "wireless guerrilla" (Dec 2001)
Sky Dayton (EarthLink founder) discovered the network per WSJ

7. AspenWave Destroyed (~2002)¶

Jonas Wells — Ma Bell era founder, Aspen PE/VC
Wanted to pivot 802.11b tech into VoIP
Z and Jim disagreed on direction
Wells' private equity muscle destroyed the company
Non-competes signed
Jim → Oregon with Sky Dayton
Z → Pepperdine, California

8. Overclocking Era Begins (~2002)¶

LN2-cooled builds, HWBOT verified world records
Eventually EVGA sponsored
Knows Vince "Kingpin" Lucido since the Classified card days
Privileged access to EVGA GPUs

9. Pepperdine / LA Era (~2003-2006)¶

Film school — the HLTV frag video instinct formalized
StarCam (GF's uncle's company) — produced 2500+ red carpet videos
Early YouTube SEO — viral content demos before anyone knew how
A-list celebrity network → IT consulting for Hollywood elites
Senior Tech Consultant for President of BankWest Mortgage
Co-founded Malibu Tech Support (MTS) with Pepperdine classmate Jeff
Jeff's dad invested $30K
Z = Level 3 engineer
Combined client bases, served Hollywood elite

10. Return to Colorado (~2007)¶

Grandfather's skiing accident — 90 days at Aspen Valley Hospital
Came back from LA for hospital stay
Met his wife during that time
Decided to stay in Colorado

11. Colorado Career Sequence (~2007-2013)¶

Paragon — Crestron/automation, Aspen & Vail (got Crestron Programmer cert)
Paragon failed/reformed → moved on
ExxonMobil — top secret oil shale project, Piceance (short-lived)
DOD/DOE contractor — 16+ nuclear facilities, HIPAA EMR, RECA/EEOICPA
SCHLS/Exempla — Checkpoint encryption for ~5000 endpoints
Encana Piceance — wife's environmental scientist colleagues pressured him to help struggling IT team

12. Aerobotical / UAS Era (~2012-2016?)¶

10,000+ hours invested in drone/UAS engineering
Designed custom power delivery systems and FC PID controllers
Best custom UAS system in North America (pre-DJI Mavic)
30+ min flight times, best gimbal, huge custom birds
AeroPSI (Pipeline Safety Inspection) drone
Fixed deltawing design, ~15-17 mph for precision
Real-time image processing: foliage/weed type detection
Invasive species mapping for spraying ops
Way ahead of its time
Built indoor cinema drones for Cirque du Soleil cinematographer (LA connection)
Canon 5D Mark II (heavy payload)
Indoor = no GPS → LIDAR + SONAR positioning
Custom flight controller
Spectacular demo failure in front of Exxon/Encana/Olson execs at AMA field, Clinton CO
DJI Mavic Pro released → devastating but validating
Immediately bought one, recognized the quality
Commoditized the custom drone market
Still has original Mavic, currently uses Mavic Mini Pro daily
Company name "Aerobotical" = Aero + Robotical (autonomous aerial robots)

13. Basin Infrastructure (2013-Present)¶

11+ years in Piceance and Uinta basins
7 M&A transitions (Marathon→Encana, Anadarko→Caerus, etc.)
RF & Cisco specialization (Exalt, Cambium, SAF)
IT/OT convergence, 100+ Starlink deployments, Meraki enterprise

14. Overclocking Competitions Continued (2019-2023)¶

Professional world record competitions
Multiple 1st and 2nd place finishes
EVGA sponsored, Kingpin relationship
After competitions → GPUs put to work mining
20+ year competitive span

15. Bitcoin/Crypto Mining (ongoing since ~2009)¶

Cypherpunk since mIRC 1995
BTC mining from the very beginning — had GPUs from OC
Used the original BTC faucet (Gavin Andresen)
Mined losers too (Nautilus, etc.)
Killed it in Ethereum mining era
EVGA access + OC competition = insane GPU supply
OC comp cards → mining rigs after events

16. AI Agent Fleet (2023-Present)¶

Multi-model autonomous agent architecture
Fleet orchestration, async dispatch, security ops
Self-hosted on hardened Kali infrastructure
The current obsession

Certifications¶

CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) — early high school
MSE (Military Science & Engineering) — KMC
LET (Leadership Excellence Training) — KMC
35F MOS (All-Source Intelligence Analyst)
MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer)
Crestron Programmer
Ruckus Certified

Key People¶

Uncle Wally Obermeyer — MS Flight Sim, sparked aviation obsession
Jim Selby — mentor, Aspen High sysadmin, co-founder MacAspen/AspenWave
Sky Dayton — EarthLink founder, discovered the network
Jonas Wells — Ma Bell founder, VC who destroyed AspenWave
Vince "Kingpin" Lucido — EVGA, overclocking legend
Jeff — Pepperdine classmate, co-founded MTS
Wife — environmental scientist, connection to Encana
Cirque du Soleil cinematographer — LA connection, indoor drone filming

Core Themes¶

Every obsession feeds the next
Hardware performance → gaming → overclocking → crypto mining → AI
Flight sims → military → Desert Combat → drone engineering → Aerobotical
Hacking library → Jr Admin → ISP → enterprise infrastructure
Frag videos → film school → content production
The professional career is what happens when lifelong obsession meets the real world
Two destructions by external force: AspenWave (PE) and Aerobotical (DJI commoditization)
Pattern: build something incredible from first principles → external force changes the game → redirect obsession to next frontier

Additional Drone/UAS Details (added 05:20 CEST)¶

Cirque du Soleil drone was 2-operator system: 1 pilot, 1 camera operator
Project TALOS — Technical Autonomous Long Range Optical Sensor
Started before TALOS was a known military project
Some YouTube hype around it
Spooks were briefly interested
Named independently, military later adopted same acronym for their own project
The AI agent fleet is the SAME obsession — just redirected to a new frontier
Drones → autonomous flight systems → autonomous AI systems
Same architecture thinking: swarm coordination, dispatch, sensor fusion → model orchestration, async dispatch, multi-agent
"How many more times will I fail before I break out in an undeniable way?"
Pattern: arrives 3-5 years early every time
This time: owned infrastructure, documented, building in public

GPU Compute → AI Pipeline (the full arc)¶

BTC mining (GPUs from OC) → ETH mining → GPU compute pools
Pools = like PoW pools but for AI inference workloads
Stable Diffusion dropped → helping friends run SD locally
Grok dropped → back to pools
OpenClaw → running own agent fleet (current)
Same hardware, same obsession, different application layer every cycle

Lab Power Constraint (2024)¶

Early 2024: Cybertruck Foundation Series delivered
Diverted 1/2 lab power to garage for charging
Lab in limp mode ever since
Running multi-agent AI fleet at half electrical capacity