Kevin McAllistermcallister.ws

Hoʻolauna

This isn’t meant to be a perfunctory introduction but an opportunity to build a relationship by seeing how we connect.

This was meant to be an about page but I’ve recently read famous Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde’s book Floating Mountains: The Art of Imagining the Impossible (it’s fantastic BTW). And his Introduction chapter was subtitled Hoʻolauna and I found the focus of that Hawaiian word and practice as locating yourself and making visible what brought you to where you are now very appealing. So it’s not just doing a preamble to a conversation where you say, “hi, I’m Kevin I’m an engineer” but a real conversation of its own. This is my attempt to give you an opportunity to really have some connection with me.

Smiling man wearing a navy flat cap and green hoodie at a busy brewery
Locating myself at the Union game in late 2026

To locate myself for you, I grew up in Roxborough a section of Philadelphia, PA right next to the more famous Manayunk. Always easy to find because it’s the high point of the city and has all the big radio towers. I went to LaSalle College High School and played defensive line on the football team. I learned a ton from playing sports and even more from what was expected of LaSalle students (class of 94).

Next stop was Drexel University, I studied engineering as part of their 5 year program with 18 months of co-op working in the field mixed in. Here I learned about the Internet and met some great friends. Both of which would figure prominently over my career. It was here I got a taste of startup culture in college and it would dominate (at least) the next 27 years of my life.

It was in college when supporting one of my greatest friends I found a complete bad-ass woman, Michelle, who is not only brilliant and beautiful but also just always knows instantly the right thing to do. We’ve been together since 1997, married since 2003, and continue to look forward to more adventures together. Together we have two adult children who are just on the precipice of the fully independent parts of their lives.

My career involves working for a bunch of startups and plenty of trial and error as I worked to find the way to succeed in business. Most of my work has been very deep technical work:

  • IP networking
  • Linux/Unix systems administration
  • Programming in numerous languages
  • Working with different databases
  • All sorts of DevOps, Cloud tech, Databases.
  • For the majority of the time working on systems that support real-time communications, yep I’m talking about various ways of doing VoIP, either proprietary systems, but mostly adapting and building production systems out of open-source software packages.

I’ve been promoted to and self-demoted from various levels of leadership positions several times. I’ve often had success in these roles but found the expectations of those roles around me led to stress and very little professional satisfaction. I’ve mostly sought roles of technical and cultural leadership where I’m primarily considered an individual contributor. Over the years I’ve gotten more comfortable with being a leader and holding people around me accountable.

I am convinced that every problem is solvable and that with enough relentless sustained thinking I can come up with a full understanding and solution, even if it’s technology that is new to me. I’ve become very good at learning new complex systems and fairly quickly identifying the biggest issues and sustainable fixes.

A lot has been unlocked for me with the latest in LLM powered coding agents. I’ve always looked up to people who seemed to be able to do so much with their time. Maybe they could think faster than I could, maybe they could just make plans and code way faster than I could. But they always seemed like they had 10 side projects going, a beautiful up to date website, three podcasts, a job, a family, travel, reading a book a week. And while I was proud of how well I could do at work and I’ve learned how to have good balance in my life, I was always just full of guilt that my side projects languished.

So those heroes are still way ahead of me but finally I’m able to leverage all my knowledge and experience, and use these tools to actually make progress on lists of things I’ve always wanted to work on. The fact my websites have come together is a testament to that. I’m aware that there is controversy here and people I’d rather connect with will shun and belittle any achievements I have with these tools. But if they’d rather have nothing to do with me that’s their choice. I plan to promote my projects here and hopefully find more opportunities to help people with systems I’ve built, or systems they want me to build or repair.

I have tons of other interests that take up my time:

  • I consider myself an Objectivist, I have a first edition of The Fountainhead Michelle bought me and I treasure it.
  • I organize a pick-up basketball game on Tuesday nights.
  • I do SuperSlow strength training with a trainer 2 times a week
  • I love hiking, and exploring.
  • I’m a Philly sports fan: Eagles, Flyers, Phillies, Sixers are actually a bit of a religion.
  • I like trying and making new cocktails.
  • I do like playing video games even though they mostly get super short shrift lately
  • I’m on a kick to restart regular reading (I used to get a ton of audiobooks but COVID killed my commute and put a crunch on audiobooks and podcast time)

The Career Path

To the extent you’re interested you can see a long-winded focus on my career path by following this link.

Postcards from the road

I just like having a way to post some photos. What’s the sense of this awesome iPhone camera if I don’t share stuff?

All postcards