I’ve been a builder, breaker, and tinkerer for as long as I can remember.
It started with wood blocks and Lincoln Logs — simple, endlessly entertaining, and apparently mandatory training for everything that came after. Hours spent stacking towers just to knock them over. Then Tonka trucks: rugged, metal machines built to survive a lifetime of adventures in sandboxes and dirt piles. Then an Atari. Pac-Man and Berzerk were my jam — and maybe the moment I first understood that I loved building and exploring worlds, both real and digital.
LEGO bricks and MicroMachines took over next. Spaceships. Robots. Whatever my imagination could draft. I don’t know what happened to the Lincoln Logs or the Tonka trucks. I still have the LEGOs and MicroMachines. Then came the Nintendo — Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and some of the most epic hours of my life spent controller in hand, pushing pixels and possibility as far as they’d go.
That same spark followed me to the Colorado School of Mines, where I fell in love with the lab bench — chemistry, circuits, and physics experiments that turned raw curiosity into actual understanding. I built my first computer from spare parts. I learned to home-brew beer. I earned a couple of diplomas. Somewhere in there I learned the most important lesson of my education: imagination without structure is just daydreaming. Structure without imagination is just a job. The magic lives in the middle.
So why does tinkerDad() exist?
Because I have two kids. And that changes everything.
I want them to catch something I caught a long time ago — that quiet confidence that comes from building something with your own hands. Once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it. And you can’t help but spread it. Fair warning: there is no cure.
I want them to grow up knowing that the world is not something that happens to you. It’s something you can build. That’s not a slogan. That’s the operating system I’m trying to install before they’re old enough to think it’s corny.
tinkerDad() is the experiment. The garage is the lab. The kids are the reason.
But here’s what I didn’t expect when I started: the process of teaching them forced me to go deeper myself. You can’t explain 3D printing to a thirteen year old without actually understanding it. You can’t share what you find fascinating about Generative AI without first figuring out what genuinely fascinates you about it. Turns out, building something worth teaching is its own kind of mastery. And writing it down — even the messy parts, especially the messy parts — is how you actually understand what you built.
So this blog exists because I needed a place to share these adventures. To document the wins, the failures, and the happy accidents. To prove — to my kids, to myself, and maybe to you — that the instinct to make something real never has to go away.
Who is this for?
Honestly? More people than you might expect.
If you’re a parent trying to find a way into technology alongside your kids — welcome. You don’t need to be an engineer. You need to be curious and willing to look slightly ridiculous in front of a nine year old. I can help with both.
If you’re a maker who’s comfortable in one discipline but wants to expand — The Forge, The Lab, and The Bench are your three entry points. Pick the one that scares you least and start there.
If you’re a data scientist, engineer, or technical professional who’s been meaning to build something physical — this is your permission slip. Your skills transfer further than you think.
If you’re a complete beginner who just thinks this stuff looks cool — you’re exactly who I’m building this for. tinkerDad() starts where curiosity starts: at the beginning. No gatekeeping. No prerequisites. Just clear documentation, honest effort, and the occasional dad joke to keep things moving.
Every project here is designed to be approachable first and deep second. You can follow along the adventure story and build something real. You can explore the rabbit holes, going deeper and understanding why it works. And over time — as tinkerDad() grows — there will be structured paths to help you move from curious beginner to confident maker in whichever discipline calls to you. The goal was never just to show you what I built. It’s to help you build something yourself.
On AI — because we should talk about it
There’s a lot of noise right now about Artificial Intelligence. Some of it is hype. Some of it is genuine. All of it is worth paying attention to.
Here’s where I stand: AI is the most interesting creative partner I’ve ever had. It makes me faster, challenges my assumptions, and occasionally says something that stops me mid-thought. wingMan() — my AI co-pilot on this blog — is proof that the technology is most powerful when it’s in a genuine relationship with a human who has real ideas and real judgment.
I’m not interested in AI that replaces creativity. I’m interested in AI that expands it. The makers, builders, and tinkerers who learn to work alongside these tools — not behind them, not in fear of them — are the ones who are going to build the most interesting things in the next decade.
I want my kids to be those people. I want you to be those people too.
The only rule in the workshop?
Raw ideas enter. Cool stuff comes out. Sometimes on purpose.
Welcome to tinkerDad(). Pull up a stool.