I'm Zach Payne. I build things for the web and tinker with infrastructure.

I've been building software for as long as I can remember. What started with curiosity about how websites worked turned into a career building products that people actually use.

When I'm not writing code, I'm usually working on my homelab — a 6-node Kubernetes cluster running on Intel NUCs that I use as a playground for infrastructure experiments. It's overkill for what it does, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I believe in doing things right: GitOps from day one, proper secrets management, documented decisions, and code that's a pleasure to read. Life's too short for clever hacks that nobody can maintain.

This blog is where I write about the things I learn along the way — mostly software engineering, infrastructure, and the occasional opinion about tools and workflows.