About Joe Laskowski

The Work

The arc, roughly: years of on-site warranty work for HP, Dell, Sony, and the rest of the OEMs. Then close to a decade managing field techs across the country from my basement. Then nine years at Aunalytics — service desk, service desk lead, Internal IT — the last stretch spent living in Microsoft 365, Active Directory, Intune, and Entra/Azure (which Microsoft has renamed enough times that I've stopped keeping count out of self-respect). Long enough, either way, to have watched the same "new" framework get rebranded twice and sold back to me. Long enough to have strong opinions about why the PowerShell window went red at 2 AM.

In April 2026 the role shifted to AI Quality Analyst at Aunalytics — the Midwest data platform company that's been the day job for the last nine of those years. Stripped of the title, the work comes down to this: when the AI says something, is it actually right? Turns out that's a more interesting question than the marketing for any of these systems would have you believe.

Building

Outside the day job there's AutoScript Studio LLC — my Indiana company, and the legal wrapper around the things I'm slowly shipping. The brand under it is PixelDrops, an AI-driven digital-products operation: a novel I wrote under a pen name (Amazon launch coming), a YouTube channel called StackTraceDocs (first video out, production pipeline in iteration before the next one), and whatever software ships out of the workshop after that. Everything leans hard on AI tooling — that's the whole point of doing it now. The blog is where the first version of any of it tends to surface.

Off the Clock

Linux every day for 19 years — the terminal is where I think clearest. Been an XRP obsessive since 2017 — full conviction, no exit plan, XRP Army 4 Life. Sold my $XLM bag a while back to buy more XRP because the math kept making sense (and still does). Ask me about it if you want to lose an hour of your day. The rest of my screen-time goes to AI tooling (anything new I can poke at, I poke at), the biohacking side of health and longevity, and the UAP disclosure rabbit hole. Most of what falls out ends up on the blog. The rest ends up in a drawer.

Away from the screen: IPAs of every persuasion (I shop by ABV; the higher, the better), hot wings ordered at a heat level my friends consider a personal failing, miles on the Mishawaka Riverwalk (my home away from home), and I'm Star Wars enough to keep watching but not enough to fight about it.

Family

Three kids and four grandkids — my two oldest are grown and out doing their own thing; AJ, my youngest, is still a kid, with me several days a week. The grandkids are sharper than I was at their age and significantly louder. My partner Rianna and I started dating on New Year's Day 2025, and between her three kids and mine the house is rarely quiet — which, most days, is the point.

South Bend, Indiana. Real place. Notre Dame, the river, winters that make the terminal feel like a coping mechanism. I grew up here, my kids did too, and I'm not going anywhere.

Under all of it: a foundation under the people I love, a future with Rianna that doesn't depend on which of the side bets pays off. The day job covers the floor. The rest is the ceiling I'm trying to raise.

Let's Connect

If you want to talk XRP, AI tooling, or whether the UAP stuff is finally about to break wide open — social links are in the header. The blog is whatever I've been chewing on lately. Or send me a message and we'll go from there.