About Me

I’m Jim VanPetten.

I’m a technology guy by trade, but curiosity has always been the bigger job.

I’ve spent much of my career designing, building, fixing, and connecting complicated business and technology systems. I’ve been creating e-business solutions for more than 25 years, working somewhere in the overlap between technology strategist, developer, problem solver, and the guy people tend to call when something important isn’t behaving the way everyone thinks it should.

But technology is only one part of who I am.

I’m also a musician and lifelong audiophile.

I don’t just enjoy music. I enjoy listening to it. There’s a difference.

Over the years I’ve owned and experimented with some fairly serious audio equipment, from tube amplification and studio monitors to speakers from B&W, NHT, Monitor Audio, UREI and others. I’m fascinated by recording techniques, mastering, acoustics, speaker design, vinyl, and that strange intersection where engineering ends and human perception begins.

Put on a great recording through a great system and I can happily disappear down that rabbit hole for hours.

I’m also a collector, particularly of things that carry a little history with them.

I collect antique watches, including early American pieces from the National Watch Company and Elgin, and I enjoy repairing and preserving old family watches. There’s something extraordinary about holding a tiny mechanical machine made more than a century ago, opening the case, and finding that it can still tell time.

I collect coins too, including a fairly serious collection of Jefferson nickels. Coins fascinate me for many of the same reasons watches do. They’re tiny historical documents that somehow survived in people’s pockets.

I’m a photographer and videographer, a sailor, and a longtime chess player. I have an enduring interest in civil law, history, science, philosophy, religion, language, politics, business, and probably a few subjects I haven’t discovered yet.

At first glance, those interests may seem unrelated.

I don’t think they are.

A watch movement, a loudspeaker, a computer system, a sailboat, a chess position, an old coin, a law, a biblical manuscript and a philosophical argument all tempt me in roughly the same way:

How does this actually work?

And then:

How did it get this way?

And finally, the dangerous question:

Is what everybody says about it actually true?

That last question has cost me an enormous number of perfectly good afternoons.

It’s also largely why That’s Profound exists.

This isn’t a site devoted to one subject. It’s a place to follow interesting questions wherever they go.

Sometimes that means technology. Sometimes history, theology, science, music, business or politics. Sometimes it begins with an old watch, an odd expression, a news story, a piece of software, or something somebody said over a beer.

I’m not writing as a professor, preacher, politician, or professional philosopher.

I’m writing as a guy who likes taking things apart.

Sometimes literally.

Sometimes intellectually.

I want to know what’s inside, why somebody built it that way, whether it still works, and whether we’ve been telling the story correctly.

Sometimes I find an answer.

More often I find a better question.

And every once in a while, I find something that makes me stop for a second and think:

That’s profound.

I’ve spent much of my career solving problems involving systems, business, software, data, integrations, and all the wonderfully ridiculous ways humans manage to make simple things complicated. Somewhere along the way, I realized I was just as interested in the systems we don’t usually diagram: religion, history, language, politics, belief, consciousness, money, culture, and the peculiar machinery of being human.

That’s what That’s Profound is about.

Not necessarily profound answers.

Sometimes just profound questions.

I like taking ideas apart, turning them upside down, tracing where they came from, and asking whether the explanation we inherited actually makes sense. I’m particularly fascinated by things everyone “knows” that become much more interesting when somebody finally asks:

Wait. Is that actually true?

Some articles here will be serious. Some will be technical. Some will wander through history or theology. Others may begin with an absurd observation, a bad joke, or something somebody said over a beer and somehow end up discussing the nature of God.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I’m not writing this site as a professor, preacher, politician, or professional philosopher. I’m writing as a guy who has spent a lifetime fixing things, questioning things, building things, and occasionally staring at something everyone else accepts and thinking:

That doesn’t make any damn sense.

Then I start digging.

Sometimes I find an answer.

Sometimes I find a better question.

And every once in a while, I find something that makes me sit back and say:

That’s profound.

About Me

I’m Jim Vanpetten.

I’m a technology guy by trade, but curiosity has always been the bigger job.

I’ve spent much of my career solving problems involving systems, business, software, data, integrations, and all the wonderfully ridiculous ways humans manage to make simple things complicated. Somewhere along the way, I realized I was just as interested in the systems we don’t usually diagram: religion, history, language, politics, belief, consciousness, money, culture, and the peculiar machinery of being human.

That’s what That’s Profound is about.

Not necessarily profound answers.

Sometimes just profound questions.

I like taking ideas apart, turning them upside down, tracing where they came from, and asking whether the explanation we inherited actually makes sense. I’m particularly fascinated by things everyone “knows” that become much more interesting when somebody finally asks:

Wait. Is that actually true?

Some articles here will be serious. Some will be technical. Some will wander through history or theology. Others may begin with an absurd observation, a bad joke, or something somebody said over a beer and somehow end up discussing the nature of God.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I’m not writing this site as a professor, preacher, politician, or professional philosopher. I’m writing as a guy who has spent a lifetime fixing things, questioning things, building things, and occasionally staring at something everyone else accepts and thinking:

That doesn’t make any damn sense.

Then I start digging.

Sometimes I find an answer.

Sometimes I find a better question.

And every once in a while, I find something that makes me sit back and say:

That’s profound.