Systems · Security · Independent R&D

Hi, I'm Jay.
I build, secure, automate, and occasionally over-engineer computer systems.

Network and security specialist, infrastructure generalist, and founder of Juniper Applied Research — a small independent lab for experiments in local AI, software, hardware, and whatever else seems worth investigating.

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About

Infrastructure specialist by trade. Technical generalist by temperament.

By day, I work in network infrastructure and cybersecurity, with a particular concentration in Microsoft 365, Entra, Intune, virtualization, networking, endpoint management, and security operations.

Outside the day job, I'm an incurable technical generalist. I build software, automate things that probably didn't need automating, experiment with local language models, resurrect old enterprise hardware, and make purpose-built systems for problems that annoy or interest me.

Most of those experiments now live under Juniper Applied Research — my deliberately broad little R&D shop for software, hardware, AI, infrastructure, and miscellaneous technical rabbit holes.

👨‍💻

Tools & Systems

Technologies I've spent enough time fighting with to have opinions about.

Infrastructure & Identity

Windows ServerActive DirectoryMicrosoft Entra IDMicrosoft 365IntuneHyper-V

Networking & Security

Enterprise NetworkingWirelessFirewallsEndpoint SecuritySIEM / WazuhPRTG / MonitoringPowerShell

Development & Automation

JavaScriptNode.jsElectronHTML / CSSPowerShellAPIs / AutomationGit

Lab & Emerging Stuff

Local LLMsllama.cppRAGLinuxHome AssistantESP32 / EmbeddedMQTT

Projects

Things I built because apparently leaving well enough alone isn't an option.

CALamari

A purpose-built, always-on household calendar and information display combining multiple ICS calendars, scheduling logic, weather, RSS, proportional event visualization, and physical controls.

Node.js Electron ICS Hardware

INKfish

A scheduling engine that turns complex recurring schedules, holidays, overrides, and exceptions into deterministic calendar output — including an explanation of why any day resolves the way it does.

Node.js Rules Engines ICS Data Modeling

Local AI Lab

Experiments in running modern language models on decidedly non-modern hardware: multi-GPU desktops, llama.cpp, quantization, NUMA tuning, and a large-memory dual-Xeon server.

LLMs llama.cpp Linux CUDA NUMA

Wearable Voice Capture

A purpose-built ESP32-S3 wearable recorder designed around near-instant capture, local storage, long standby, and minimal interaction friction.

ESP32-S3 Embedded Audio Hardware

Independent research division

Juniper Applied Research

An independent technical research and development shop with an intentionally loose mandate: local AI, software, embedded systems, infrastructure, and other technically interesting problems.

Current research priority: seeing what useful things can be made from hardware, software, and unreasonable curiosity.

Contact

Want to talk infrastructure, security, strange hardware, local AI, or something I've built? Say hello.

I’m always interested in an unusually specific technical problem, a good systems story, or a machine being used far beyond its intended purpose. A direct contact link will live here once I choose the least annoying way to publish one.