Frequently Asked Questions

For American companies, working with me is no different than working with any other American citizen residing in North America.  I maintain a San Antonio, Texas address and phone service, and I have bank accounts with several US banks.  All IRS and other reporting and payments (including the SSA) are performed as required.  In addition to US based phone service (VoIP terminating in our local office), audio and video conferencing is possible through our fast local Internet.  My main instant messaging solution is WhatsApp but I also maintain accounts with Signal, Telegram, Viber and Zoom.  Postal mail can be sent to our San Antonio address.  Rush documents can be exchanged using DHL and our Philippine address.

I have a long history of working with people from many parts of the world including North America, Asia/Pacific, Australia and Europe.  I have permanent resident status in the United States (natural born citizen), as well as Hong Kong and the Philippines.  Bank accounts are maintained in each of these.  Communication is simple with most locations that have good Internet connectivity.  Additional International accounts or payment methods can be established, depending on your location.  If you are interested in working together send me a message and we can figure out a solution that works well for all involved.

I’m normally a night person and when not working on client projects my hours typically overlap with the US East Coast time zone.   With that said, when not working client projects I occasionally shift my time back to local daylight hours when needed.  The bottom line is that I adjust working hours to match client needs.

I reside on the island of Panay, Western Visayas region of the Philippines.  We have built the home here as our local office where both my wife and I maintain offices in addition to an Electronics/IoT Lab and small video studio.  The location is connected to the Internet through a 600M fiber circuit (can be upgraded if necessary).  We also run a set of servers out of our Hong Kong data center used for both development and deployment of production services.

I’m a network engineer and businessman from the USA now working and living in Asia. I provide linux network design services and am passionate about building usable real world solutions. This applies to electronics, systems, network engineering, education and business.  I also provide English language writing services for areas that overlap with my areas of expertise.  Full details can be found on this site.

Details of my professional qualifications, including writing samples, can be found on the rest of this site.  I bring many years of experience to bear on projects across different disciplines.  Depending on the project, may have additional facilities that can be utilized such as our data center assets and the local Electronics/IoT Lab.  Technical projects can be professionally documented as part of the deliverables.  Technical writing for other projects is also available as long as I either have existing expertise in the subject matter or can acquire it.  I work  together well with other team members, including those from diverse International backgrounds.

Most of the projects that I work on are contract based.  The normal advantages of working with contractors over employees is the same as for others – ease of contract establishment and termination and lower overhead costs.  Expenses such as employee benefits, FICA matching funds, health and others are not issues for contracting organizations.  For American companies, all billing, banking, and tax filing is done through our San Antonio address which requires no special handling on the company side.  Similar benefits are applicable to non-US partners although International banking may incur some additional overhead.

In closing I bring to the equation more than just myself and years of experience.  Local assets can be brought to bear on many projects.  Depending on the project additional local resources might be available.   And finally I operate with lower overhead costs than many so depending on the project am likely to be more cost effective.

I run a rack of 9 servers out of our Hong Kong data center.  This web site (and others), email services, and network infrastructure development are run from this location.  All servers run the latest production version of Ubuntu Linux.  Network address allocation is not an issue as we maintain a largely under utilized /22 network.  Depending on the nature of the project we may be able to bring data center services into the mix.  Site prototyping, infrastructure, and Linux development are a few possibilities.  Let me know what you need and we can see if an how we can be of assistance.

We’ve built a simple electronics lab for IoT development work.  Standard test equipment and parts (resistors, capacitors, microcontrollers, sensor modules, etc) are stocked.  We can order additional parts from standard name brand suppliers or more budget friendly options.  Often bulk parts are used (after testing) for prototyping projects, with standard parts used for the final project.  The setup here is basic but adequate for most small to medium sized microcontroller based projects.

We run a modern multi-floor office environment.  The local network utilizes a 2.5G backbone with 1G switches distributed on both floors.   All office spaces, lab and studio areas have wired access in addition to the 4-node WiFi 6 mesh.  Computers run a combination of Windows 11 and Ubuntu on machines ranging from Raspberry Pi 4’s to AMD Ryzen 9 5950x desktops.  2 file servers are available to all wired and wireless devices.  Network printing and high resolution image/document scanning is also present.  In addition to normal Internet access, we run a WireGuard tunnel between our local network and our Hong Kong datacenter.  A FreePBX server provides VoIP connectivity (IAX/2) to our US DID as well as local PABX functionality.

A simple video studio is connected into this network which supports 1080p streaming or 4K recording.  We don’t use this at the moment very often but are considering possible video production and streaming down the road a bit.

For routine communication (either text, audio or video) I usually monitor and use WhatsApp.  I monitor this account regularly so getting in touch should be simple and quick.  I also maintain accounts with Telegram, Signal, Viber and Zoom but don’t check them often.   If you prefer to use one of these let me know so I can check them when necessary.  If you need higher quality audio/video let me know and I can prepare our studio.  The studio systems can be used with all of the above applications.

I don’t have any immediate plans for adding new local capabilities, but items on the future wish list include 3D printing, PCB design and wave soldering and getting proficient with DaVinci Resolve.  Networking protocols that I’d like to integrate into personal projects include LoRaWAN, Zigbee and more work with MQTT and NodeRed.  Of course should new projects require additional capabilities I’m happy to adjust priorities.

At this point in time I am easiest to work with as an individual contractor.  Thsi is particularly simple for US companies.  In time we will re-incorporate in one or more jurisdictions allowing for corpporate relationships and the ability to sub-contract with other consultants.

I maintain relationships with other consultants in the systems, networking, Linux, web development, video production and graphic arts fields.  If you have needs in any of these areas let me know and I can put you in direct contact with them.

Depending on the nature of a project, different roles are appropriate.  Over the years the most common role (especially in the context of consulting) has been a member of a larger team.  Communication and coordination with other team members and the team lead is critical in obtaining the desired outcome.  I’ve also built up and managed groups, most notably the bootstraping of IMA from the ground up into a multi-million dollar company.  I also work self contained projects individually as I do with the Jade projects.   Whatever role your project needs I can likely be of assistance.   If needs change or evolve I can adjust to meet them.