Who Am I?

Hi! I'm Charles. And if I had to explain myself in one sentence, it would be this: I’ve spent my entire life standing at the border where technology and humanity collide.

My 'formal' work is the kind of thing that sounds simple and highly technical all at once: fixing sprinklers under the sun, repairing computers that should've died years ago, and keeping small businesses alive with duct tape, logic, and stubbornness. I've got the certifications to back it up (CCNA, Security+, irrigation license in Texas), but they're not the point — they're just proof that when I tell you I can fix something, I actually can. I run Ocho Consultant, a shop built on the idea that practical work can still have meaning behind it.

However, my story didn’t start with tools or keyboards. I’m Salvadoran, raised between two cultures, two languages, and two ways of understanding the world. I’ve lived in the U.S. for over twenty years, and studied History at UT Dallas. My dad had a small business, in which I learned the basics, and will always be grateful for that to him. In addition, I picked up playing music with guitar and piano when I was a teenager, and have been playing music ever since; lately, I have been getting more into music remixing and audio engineering, because music tools are at a level I can now evolve my own instrumental skills. Languages — programming and human — have always been my way of understanding the world from different angles, so I try to learn about them and use them. All of this colors the above in ways that are unpredictable, fun, and exciting.

These days, my life is split between the U.S. and El Salvador. I have a wife, a daughter, and a sense of identity that refuses to stay inside a neat little box. I’m not just “the sprinkler guy” or “the computer guy” or “the history major.” I’m all of them at once, and something else entirely.

So what is this website? Not a résumé. Not a scrapbook. Not a shrine to my job titles. This is the part of me that doesn’t show up when someone asks, “So what do you do?” This is where the Gunpla, the programming experiments, the drawings, the music, the half‑finished ideas, and the fully‑lived stories live.

If I had to describe it, I’d say this site is a narrative experiment in multimedia format. A way to turn my life into something you can walk through, not just read about. If you stick around, maybe you’ll see the same thing I see: that a life is not just a profession, but a collection of obsessions, accidents, and small victories stitched together in a collage that's a lot more beautiful than the sum of its parts.