Open to work: retail, food service, customer service, office and tech

Reverb256 Calm in the rush, fast to learn. Ready for any job.

16 years on the crew at a busy pizza restaurant, and a lifelong fixation on computers. Whatever the job is, I show up on time, learn it fast and get the details right.

Email me about a job See what I bring
Food service crew
16 years
Public code projects
37
Linux, websites, AI tools
Self-taught
Reverb's cat-eared character with dark navy hair streaked in coral and cyan, blue eyes and a small knowing smile, in a black hoodie with coral seams, arms crossed

// strengths

What I bring to any job

These are Ideatransferable skillsSkills that come with you from one job to the next. A calm head in a rush works at any counter, in any store, at any desk.: they work at a till, on a stockroom floor, behind a desk or in front of a screen.

  • Reliable

    When I'm on the schedule, I'm there, on time and ready to work.

    Proof: 16 years of shifts at a busy pizza restaurant.

  • Customer service

    Friendly at the counter and on the phone, and steady when someone is upset. I listen, fix what I can and make it right.

    Proof: years of orders, questions and complaints, handled face to face.

  • Learns fast

    Show me once and I've got it. Anything I don't know yet, I go and learn.

    Proof: taught myself Linux, websites and home servers from scratch.

  • Problem solving

    I find out why something went wrong and fix the cause, whether it's a wrong order or a crashed computer.

    Proof: I keep four home computers running myself.

  • Teamwork

    A busy line only works when everyone covers each other. I call out, help out and leave my station ready for the next person.

    Proof: 16 years on a restaurant crew.

  • Calm under pressure

    Rush hour is where I keep the pace up and the mistakes down.

    Proof: every dinner rush, phones, counter and delivery orders at once.

// experience

Where I learned it

A busy pizza restaurant · 16 years

Crew member

  • Staying fast and calm through Work skilldinner rushThe hour when the phones, the counter and the delivery apps all want food at once. Staying friendly and accurate through it is the whole job.Carries over: Retail: Saturday afternoons, holiday sales and the line that never ends., with the phones, the counter and the delivery orders all going at once.
  • Taking orders by phone, at the counter and online, and Work skillorder accuracyWrite it down, read it back, check it again before it leaves. The customer gets exactly what they asked for, every time.Carries over: Warehouse pick lists, pharmacy counters, data entry: same habit, different paper. before they go out.
  • Work skillcash handlingCounting the till, making change fast and correct, and balancing the drawer at close. Honest to the cent.Carries over: Any register, any store: the drawer has to balance at the end of the night.: counting the till and making change, fast and correct.
  • Work skillcustomer serviceGreeting people like you mean it, and staying calm when they are upset. Listen first, fix what you can, and make it right.Carries over: Front desks, call centres, retail floors and help desks all run on this., including handling complaints calmly and making it right.
  • Keeping to Work skillfood safetyClean hands, clean surfaces, the right temperatures and dated labels. You follow the rules every time because people's health depends on it.Carries over: Any job with a checklist and a standard to meet: stock rotation, safety rules, audits. standards on every shift.
  • Work skillfollowing recipesThe hundredth pizza of the night has to match the first one. That means following the recipe exactly, even when nobody is watching.Carries over: Procedures, planograms and checklists: doing it the right way, the same way, every time. exactly, so every order comes out the same.
  • Work skillmultitasking in a teamPhone ringing, oven timer going, a customer at the counter, and a teammate who needs a hand. You call out, cover each other and keep it moving.Carries over: Every shared shift: stocking while serving, answering while filing.: calling out, covering each other and keeping the line moving.
  • Work skillreliabilityShowing up on time for every shift on the schedule, ready to work. The team can plan around you because you are always there.Carries over: The first thing every manager in every industry is hiring for.: on time and ready for every shift.

Where it carries over

Retail
Cash, customer questions, busy weekends and keeping the floor tidy.
Customer service
Phones, patience, and turning a complaint into a customer who comes back.
Warehouse and stock
Accuracy, pace, checklists and safety rules.
Office
Phones, orders and records handled right the first time.
Tech
Finding the cause of a problem and checking the work before it ships.

My own projects · since 2025

Self-taught tech

Computers have been my fixation my whole life. In September 2025 I switched to TechLinuxA free operating system: the base software that runs a computer, like Windows or macOS. It runs most of the world's servers. full time, and I have been building ever since. The tech is the proof of the strengths above: I learn fast, I fix what breaks, and I check the work.

  • Set up and look after a few computers at home that run my own TechserverA computer whose job is to serve other computers: web pages, files, music. It works the night shift so everyone else can sleep.: Techself-hostedRunning your own services on computers you own, instead of renting them from a big tech company. You pay for the power, not a monthly bill., with no monthly cloud bill.
  • Built Techstatic websiteA website built ahead of time into plain pages, so it loads fast, costs almost nothing to host and has very little to break. for two small businesses: a crystal-jewellery shop and a mobile hair stylist.
  • Work with TechAI agentsComputer programs you give a written task, like 'fix this page' or 'look this up'. They do the legwork; a person checks the result before it counts. every day. I write the task, they do the legwork, and I Techcode reviewReading a piece of work line by line before it goes live. Same as checking an order before it leaves the window. every change before it goes live.
  • Built PlaceQuillA project that gathers Canadian government records, like budgets and meeting transcripts, into one place you can search.See Quill, which gathers Canadian government records into one place you can search.
  • Share my work as Techopen sourceSoftware whose recipe is public. Anyone can read it, check it, improve it and share it. on GitHub: 37 public projects.
  • Write long essays at Placereverb256.caReverb's journal: long essays about technology, freedom and figuring life out.Visit the journal, and have made 70 songs with AI music tools.
See the projects in detail

// how I think

What the essays taught me

Short lessons from the long essays at reverb256.ca. Each one links out to the source.

🎮 Games, VR and the dojo · essays on reverb256.ca

Lessons from games

I learn systems by playing them. These habits came out of games, social VR rooms and an old dojo floor — then stuck when the headset came off.

  • Respawn discipline. If you are stuck, you do not wait for someone to lower the difficulty. You change the plan, grind the hard part, or rethink the approach. Outcomes still answer to you. Essay →
  • Coreflame. When a received story demands assent, ask what it costs to doubt it. Keep what still runs after a cold reread; burn what only sounded like destiny. Essay →
  • Descender pattern. Games keep handing the same diagram: a history database the locals outsource memory to, and a traveller whose data that database does not own. Pattern match, take notes, stay unrewritable. Essay →
  • Hyperbolic time chamber. Social VR is high-density, low-consequence practice. Mute, block, leave the room — then bring the confidence back when the display turns off. Essay →
  • Happy Warrior. Anger is cheap. Playfulness under pressure is surplus compute: diagnose the failure, smile, and refuse the handshake the panic wants. Essay →
  • Dojo Kun as permissions. Character before technique. Scope is the bow; review is the bow on the way out. Capability does not auto-merge. Essay →

🧱 Mental models from IT and open systems · essays on reverb256.ca

Frameworks I think with

I borrow the language of boxes I can open: root, firewalls, configs, review. Same tools for machines and for attention.

  • Delegate, don't outsource. Hand a tool the brute work. Keep the merge. Review the output. That is parallel processing, not handing away the spine. Essay →
  • Sysadmin protocol. There is no external IT desk for your own mind. Open Task Manager, end the junk jobs, whitelist what gets a port. Essay →
  • Zero-trust. Never trust a black box that demands a yes and hides the log. Ask for something you can re-run and inspect. Essay →
  • Declarative over accretion. Describe the state you want, rebuild it, keep yesterday for rollback. Add deliberately; make subtraction normal. Essay →
  • Trivium firewall. Grammar: what did it say. Logic: does it follow. Rhetoric: who needs you to stop checking. Run the scan yourself. Essay →
  • Company of agents. Scope is a diff you can reject. Router picks the worker. Docs before vibes. Bad merge rolls back because the last generation still exists. Essay →
  • Own the file. Open weights are data; the runner should be source you can read. Own the hardware, aim it, keep the off switch. Essay →

🧭 How I decide what gets my attention · essays on reverb256.ca

Philosophy

Not a brand. Practices that still compile when you set them next to a machine and ask them to run.

  • Airgapped mind. Pull the cable on the feed and find which thoughts were still yours. Connect by choice, not by necessity. Essay →
  • Sovereign attention. The arena is where your focus lands. Labels, shame and noise are not arguments — they are grabs for the next hour. Essay →
  • Epistemic humility. You cannot know a person from the row on a spreadsheet. Drop the tags and talk to the node in front of you. Essay →
  • Signal, not bunker. An airgap that never broadcasts is a powered-off machine. Fence the noise so you can host the work, the art and the play. Essay →
  • Broadcast in the clear. Put the thinking where it can be forked, checked and stress-tested. Critique that fails is free QA. Essay →
  • Agency still compiles. A claim that minds are only chemistry cannot honestly ask you to change your mind. Persuasion assumes a chooser. Essay →

// skills

Skills at a glance

People and service

  • Work skillcustomer serviceGreeting people like you mean it, and staying calm when they are upset. Listen first, fix what you can, and make it right.Carries over: Front desks, call centres, retail floors and help desks all run on this.
  • Work skillcustomer serviceGreeting people like you mean it, and staying calm when they are upset. Listen first, fix what you can, and make it right.Carries over: Front desks, call centres, retail floors and help desks all run on this.
  • Work skillorder accuracyWrite it down, read it back, check it again before it leaves. The customer gets exactly what they asked for, every time.Carries over: Warehouse pick lists, pharmacy counters, data entry: same habit, different paper.
  • Work skillcash handlingCounting the till, making change fast and correct, and balancing the drawer at close. Honest to the cent.Carries over: Any register, any store: the drawer has to balance at the end of the night.
  • Work skillmultitasking in a teamPhone ringing, oven timer going, a customer at the counter, and a teammate who needs a hand. You call out, cover each other and keep it moving.Carries over: Every shared shift: stocking while serving, answering while filing.

Work habits

  • Work skillreliabilityShowing up on time for every shift on the schedule, ready to work. The team can plan around you because you are always there.Carries over: The first thing every manager in every industry is hiring for.
  • Work skilldinner rushThe hour when the phones, the counter and the delivery apps all want food at once. Staying friendly and accurate through it is the whole job.Carries over: Retail: Saturday afternoons, holiday sales and the line that never ends.
  • Work skillfood safetyClean hands, clean surfaces, the right temperatures and dated labels. You follow the rules every time because people's health depends on it.Carries over: Any job with a checklist and a standard to meet: stock rotation, safety rules, audits.
  • Work skillfollowing recipesThe hundredth pizza of the night has to match the first one. That means following the recipe exactly, even when nobody is watching.Carries over: Procedures, planograms and checklists: doing it the right way, the same way, every time.
  • Ideaself-taughtLearned by doing, not in a classroom: reading the manual, breaking things, fixing them, and doing it again until it sticks.

Computers

  • TechLinuxA free operating system: the base software that runs a computer, like Windows or macOS. It runs most of the world's servers.
  • Techstatic websiteA website built ahead of time into plain pages, so it loads fast, costs almost nothing to host and has very little to break.
  • TechAI agentsComputer programs you give a written task, like 'fix this page' or 'look this up'. They do the legwork; a person checks the result before it counts.
  • TechGitA save history for files. Every change is written down with who made it and why, so any mistake can be undone.
  • Techself-hostedRunning your own services on computers you own, instead of renting them from a big tech company. You pay for the power, not a monthly bill.

// under the hood, for the tech-curious

How I work with AI agents

Like a kitchen line: I take the order, the TechAI agentsComputer programs you give a written task, like 'fix this page' or 'look this up'. They do the legwork; a person checks the result before it counts. do the prep, and nothing leaves the window until I have checked it.

  1. 01

    Brief

    I write down the job: the goal, the limits and what finished looks like.

  2. 02

    Delegate

    AI agents do the pieces, like code, tests and research, each with one narrow task.

  3. 03

    Review

    I read every change and check the proof. Nothing counts until it is checked.

  4. 04

    Merge

    I decide what goes live, and keep the last version so a mistake can be undone.

  5. 05

    Operate

    It runs on computers I own at home, set up from files kept in Git.

Delegating is not outsourcing

When I hand a task to an agent, I keep the responsibility. I write the brief, the agent does the work, and I read the result before it runs. I wrote the longer version down as an essay.

Read “Root Access”

Tools I use

For tech hiring managers. Every one is in a public project or a running system.

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Astro
  • Rust
  • Python
  • Go
  • Bash
  • Node.js
  • Tailwind
  • FastAPI
  • Axum
  • SQLite
  • Redis
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • k3s
  • Helm
  • Argo CD
  • MCP
  • llama.cpp
  • CUDA
  • VictoriaMetrics
  • Grafana
  • Cloudflare
  • Tailscale
  • Omarchy
  • GitHub Actions
reverb256@cluster:~/portfolio

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Control plane, embedded etcd quorum Workstation, k3s agent + GPU compute

Projects

Every card is something that runs. Each write-up on Craft reads: the goal, what I handed to agents, my part, and the result.

Client work

Personal projects

Home servers

Ask the site

Hello! I answer from a fixed FAQ that ships with this page. I run no model and make no network request. Ask about his experience, skills, projects or how to get in touch.

Static FAQ: answers ship with the page. The AI Inference Gateway is open source but is not wired to this page. No request leaves your browser.

About me

Who I am

I'm Reverb. I spent 16 years on the crew at a busy pizza restaurant, where I learned to work fast, stay friendly and get the details right when it's busiest.

Computers aren't a hobby for me. They're a lifelong fixation. I've been taking things apart to see how they work for as long as I can remember, and I've never stopped. I'm Ideaself-taughtLearned by doing, not in a classroom: reading the manual, breaking things, fixing them, and doing it again until it sticks.: I switched to Linux full time in September 2025, and now I build websites, run my own home servers and work with AI tools every day, usually well past when I meant to stop.

What I'm looking for

A team that needs someone dependable. Retail, food service, customer service, stock and warehouse, office or tech: I am open to it, I learn quickly, and I take the job seriously from the first shift.

Open to on-site and remote work. My original character, the Lorethe cat-eared guideReverb's own original character. He pops up around the site to explain things in plain words, one line at a time., is here to translate anything that reads like jargon.

Plain-words glossary

Every dotted word on this page, explained without the jargon.

Work skill dinner rush
The hour when the phones, the counter and the delivery apps all want food at once. Staying friendly and accurate through it is the whole job. Carries over: Retail: Saturday afternoons, holiday sales and the line that never ends.
Work skill order accuracy
Write it down, read it back, check it again before it leaves. The customer gets exactly what they asked for, every time. Carries over: Warehouse pick lists, pharmacy counters, data entry: same habit, different paper.
Work skill cash handling
Counting the till, making change fast and correct, and balancing the drawer at close. Honest to the cent. Carries over: Any register, any store: the drawer has to balance at the end of the night.
Work skill customer service
Greeting people like you mean it, and staying calm when they are upset. Listen first, fix what you can, and make it right. Carries over: Front desks, call centres, retail floors and help desks all run on this.
Work skill food safety
Clean hands, clean surfaces, the right temperatures and dated labels. You follow the rules every time because people's health depends on it. Carries over: Any job with a checklist and a standard to meet: stock rotation, safety rules, audits.
Work skill following recipes
The hundredth pizza of the night has to match the first one. That means following the recipe exactly, even when nobody is watching. Carries over: Procedures, planograms and checklists: doing it the right way, the same way, every time.
Work skill multitasking in a team
Phone ringing, oven timer going, a customer at the counter, and a teammate who needs a hand. You call out, cover each other and keep it moving. Carries over: Every shared shift: stocking while serving, answering while filing.
Work skill reliability
Showing up on time for every shift on the schedule, ready to work. The team can plan around you because you are always there. Carries over: The first thing every manager in every industry is hiring for.
Idea transferable skills
Skills that come with you from one job to the next. A calm head in a rush works at any counter, in any store, at any desk.
Idea self-taught
Learned by doing, not in a classroom: reading the manual, breaking things, fixing them, and doing it again until it sticks.
Tech AI agents
Computer programs you give a written task, like 'fix this page' or 'look this up'. They do the legwork; a person checks the result before it counts.
Tech code review
Reading a piece of work line by line before it goes live. Same as checking an order before it leaves the window.
Tech server
A computer whose job is to serve other computers: web pages, files, music. It works the night shift so everyone else can sleep.
Tech self-hosted
Running your own services on computers you own, instead of renting them from a big tech company. You pay for the power, not a monthly bill.
Tech Linux
A free operating system: the base software that runs a computer, like Windows or macOS. It runs most of the world's servers.
Tech open source
Software whose recipe is public. Anyone can read it, check it, improve it and share it.
Tech Git
A save history for files. Every change is written down with who made it and why, so any mistake can be undone.
Tech Kubernetes
Software that keeps many programs running across several computers and restarts any that fall over. Think of it as the shift schedule for apps.
Tech GPU
A graphics card. It is great at doing thousands of small sums at once, which is exactly what games and AI need.
Tech MCP
A standard plug that lets AI tools use other software safely. Like a menu of approved buttons the AI is allowed to press.
Tech static website
A website built ahead of time into plain pages, so it loads fast, costs almost nothing to host and has very little to break.
Place reverb256.ca
Reverb's journal: long essays about technology, freedom and figuring life out. Visit the journal
Place Quill
A project that gathers Canadian government records, like budgets and meeting transcripts, into one place you can search. See Quill
Lore the cat-eared guide
Reverb's own original character. He pops up around the site to explain things in plain words, one line at a time.

// contact

Hiring? Let's talk.

Send me the role, the hours and where it is. Retail floor, kitchen, stockroom, front desk or dev team: I'll get back to you.

Email hey@reverb256.ca GitHub YouTube
Canada · open to on-site and remote work