Jonathan Wagner
I'm Jonathan Wagner. I started programming in 1980, at twelve, on a TRS-80 Model 1 (Level 1, 4K of RAM). I learned BASIC from a book and taught myself to type with one hand while I held the book in the other.
I've been learning ever since. I remember when neural nets were brand new and AI was a pipe dream, when the internet was gopher-net and the World Wide Web didn't exist yet. Languages, protocols, anything and everything.
The name Xanthakita goes back to my teens. I found the writing of Piers Anthony and fell hard for his Xanth series. Years later I came to know Akitas, back when they were all simply Akitas, before the American Akita and the Akita Inu were split into two breeds. My first girl was Xena. I planned to show and breed her under a kennel I was going to call Xanth Akitas, and that is where the name comes from. I never did get to breed her, but I held onto the identity, and the domain, all these years.
Life filled in around the code. I've been married since 1989, and my wife and I raised three sons: Kenneth, Riley, and Jesse.
Now LLMs let me jump straight from an idea to a made thing. This is where I keep the projects, stories, and thoughts.
Work with me
Forty-some years of building things has left me with a habit of looking at how an organization actually runs, not how the org chart says it does. I review systems and procedures for organizations that need a second set of eyes: where the data really lives, what breaks when the one person who knows leaves, which processes exist because they were needed once and nobody has asked since. You get a plain-language report and a short list of what to fix first.
Beyond reviews, I take on consulting engagements and serve as a fractional CTO for teams that need senior technical leadership without a full-time hire. Tell me a little about your organization and what you are up against, and I will get back to you.