War Stories
Real problems, real solutions. Each story follows the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result).
Zero to 12 Production AI Projects in 12 Months
Independent Consulting
In January 2025, I had zero AI/ML experience. My entire career was wireless networking — 25 years of RF, enterprise infrastructure, and protocol debugging. But I saw the AI wave transforming every industry and knew that my networking domain expertise combined with AI capabilities could create something unique. I decided to go all in.
Delivering a Production Website for a Real Client
Independent Consulting (Client: Hernandos Quilters Guild)
Hernandos Quilters Guild (HQG) needed a modern website to replace their outdated one. They needed event management, membership information, gallery displays, and a content management system that non-technical members could update. This was my first real client project through AI Aerial Solutions.
Building an AI-Powered Drone Footage Pipeline
Independent Consulting
Drone operators spend hours manually reviewing flight footage to find the good shots — interesting subjects, proper exposure, stable frames. With the rise of commercial drone operations, this manual review process does not scale. I saw an opportunity to combine my growing AI skills with the drone industry.
The Hidden Terminal Mystery
HPE Aruba (Enterprise Client)
A major enterprise customer experienced intermittent wireless drops every 30 minutes. The frustrating part: RSSI looked excellent everywhere. Traditional troubleshooting showed no issues. The client was losing confidence and considering ripping out the Aruba infrastructure.
The Rate Control Firmware Bug
HPE Aruba
During pre-release validation testing, I discovered a 40% throughput regression in a firmware build that was about to ship to thousands of enterprise customers. The regression was subtle — it only appeared under mobility conditions, not in static lab tests.
The Mesh Airtime Collapse
Smartwave Tech / Municipal Deployment
A 15-drone mesh network collapsed to less than 2 Mbps per node during a dense urban deployment. The mesh was designed for city-wide coverage but became unusable when all nodes were active simultaneously — a classic airtime fairness problem that gets exponentially worse with node count.
SFO Airport: Millions of Passengers, Zero Downtime
HPE Aruba
San Francisco International Airport needed a wireless infrastructure overhaul to support the explosive growth of mobile device usage. The existing network buckled under peak passenger loads, especially during holiday travel periods. Any downtime directly impacted airline operations, security systems, and passenger experience.
UCLA: 70,000 Users, One Network
HPE Aruba
UCLA needed to modernize their campus-wide wireless network to support 70,000+ students, faculty, and staff. The existing infrastructure was a patchwork of different vendors and generations, creating dead zones and poor roaming performance. Research departments needed guaranteed bandwidth for data-intensive applications.
Kaiser Permanente: 50,000 Medical Devices
Pyramid Consulting (Kaiser Permanente)
Kaiser Permanente operates one of the largest healthcare wireless networks in the country, with over 50,000 connected medical devices. These devices range from patient monitoring systems and IV pumps to mobile workstations and imaging equipment. Any connectivity failure could directly impact patient care.
Google: Global Traffic Optimization
Google (via Contract)
Google needed technical teams to optimize the distribution of global data traffic for YouTube and Web Applications. The scale was enormous — billions of requests per day flowing through a complex content delivery network.