About

Hey. I’m Alex Cash. This is my digital home. Here you can find links to other places I am on the web and some of my musings. On this page specifically you can read what I have to say about myself. I don’t really recommend that, but I won’t stop you.

Origin

I grew up in Kansas City metro area. My primary interests were always computers and music. I don’t have a ton of record of my computing escapades, but I was checking out (and reading!) books on BASIC from the library as early as third grade. Around that time my parents helped me buy parts (AMD K6-2, ATI All In Wonder 128 Pro) one at a time to build my own computer. In Middle School I took out a loan to buy a 12” PowerBook G4(1ghz, Superdrive). I mowed lawns for three years to pay it off.

Which leads me to a crazy story. After purchasing the Powerbook (2004?) I briefly wrote for a blog that wanted to compete with Spymac and MacRumors. We pumped out fake iPod leaks like crazy, but if I recall correctly we had opinion pieces too. I did it under a pseudonym that I don’t recall (maybe acecash??) and I don’t recall the name of the website either. My email at the time was hosted on either Juno or (I shit you not) eskimobob.com. I know it sounds like some ‘my girlfriend lives in Canada’ shit, but I swear to christ it’s true. If I recall correctly I got into it via DMs on a forum (Spymac?) and the site runner I was writting for went by (I think) “Luigi Masai”. I’d love to find some wayback machine links so if anyone remembers anything about it I beg you to let me know.

There is some digital footprint for my music, however. I loved marching band, and in 2005 I was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade. I also had a shitty ska band.

Work

Professionally, I’m a software engineer. I attended Graceland Univeristy from 2008 to 2012, receving a B.S. in Computer Science and Information Technology. I interned with Pioneer Hi Bred in 2011.

In 2012, I interned with Nest Labs and was subsequently hired on full time. I was at Nest for five years, working on many projects. For the second generation theremostat, I rewrote the web tool that help prospective customers find out if their HVAC system was compatible. For the third generation thermostat, I worked on a (very) small team to take the nest.com marketing website in house, moving from wordpress (and duct tape) to a middleman static site. For the smoke detector, I worked on the web app (home.nest.com) which allowed you to control and monitor our devices from your web browser. I then moved on to the iOS team. I worked on redesigning the UI (we called it version 5.0), folding in DropCam (we aquired them, and renamed it Nest Cam), and writing our watchOS and tvOS apps.

In 2017, I left Nest and joined my current employer. Some kind of fruit company or somehting like that. I’ll share more some day.

Play

I play video games to pass the time. I write about it here occasionally. I’d classify myself as casual, but I did raid in World of Warcraft for 10 years. I was a paladin healer for the guild Dulce Bellum, rest in pepperoni. Very recently I’ve gotten into modifying and restoring retro video game consoles. I’ve been working on my soldering skills. I hope to share about that here soon.

One of my cousins is huge on motorcycles, and he passed that bug on to me. I’ve been on several moto-camping trips including two big ones to Yellowstone and El Paso. I’ve only written about it once here, but perhaps I’ll do more in the future.

In 2018, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe at a fever pitch I decided to try out comic books. I’ve fallen way far down that rabbit hole. I hope to write about that more here, but suffice to say I went and started a podcast about comics. It’s called Bat Lessons and it’s about the history of Batman. Shouts out to my good friend Brian for being my cohost.

Family

I don’t want to share too much online, but family is deeply important to me. I’ve been happily married for over a decade, and we have a wonderful son. After living in the San Francisco Bay Area our entire marriage, we returned to Kansas City in 2022. Being near family while raising our son has had an immeasurable impact.