---
title: "About"
description: "A brief synopsis about me"
---

## DayZ Modding

I started modding DayZ in early 2019, and the way in was small. My first mods were mostly itches I wanted to scratch for myself. I removed the paper that spawned when unboxing ammo, added a keybind for auto-running, built an action that lets you check the name of whoever killed you by looking at their corpse, made it so you could flip an overturned vehicle back onto its wheels, gave players a note item they could actually write on, and put together a dogtag attachment for identifying players dead or alive.

From there the projects got a little more involved. I helped rewrite the code lock mod that was already one of the more popular ones on the Steam Workshop, and built a mod that let players use a third-person camera inside vehicles on servers otherwise locked to first person. Eventually I found my way onto DayZ Expansion, the largest mod on the Steam Workshop, where I mostly work on system design, bug fixing, and quality assurance.

Alongside the mods themselves, I've built a handful of tools the wider community uses. [DayZ Extract](https://github.com/wrdg/DayZExtract) unpacks PBOs faster than the vanilla DayZ Tools extractor or Mikero's dayz2p script, and shows progress for each PBO as it works instead of leaving you staring at a frozen window. [bisign2bikey](https://github.com/wrdg/Bisign2Bikey) pulls a bikey out of a bisign file, which matters because several Steam Workshop mods never publish their bikey, and without it the mod won't load on a multiplayer server. [edds2png](https://github.com/wrdg/edds2png) converts Enfusion's DDS images into a format you can actually edit.

::github{repo="wrdg/DayZExtract"}

::github{repo="wrdg/Bisign2Bikey"}

::github{repo="wrdg/edds2png"}

## Running DayZ Modders

I took over as admin of the [DayZ Modders](https://discord.com/invite/dayz-modders-452035973786632194) Discord server in December 2022, when Arkensor stepped down. I was already one of the more active moderators and community members there, so the handoff came to me. It's grown since then to more than 15,000 members.

Running it means doing a bit of everything. I moderate, mentor people through scripting and server configuration from scratch, and connect people whose projects overlap before they've noticed it themselves. Some days that means walking a brand-new modder through their very first steps, which means explaining things I stopped thinking about years ago. Other days it's someone who already knows what they're doing but has hit a wall, whether that's a stubborn bug, a design choice that isn't panning out, or a system that is not quite easy to mod or change. I like both kinds of days. There's something satisfying about watching someone go from stuck to unstuck, whether they're brand new or years into it.

::discord{invite="dayz-modders-452035973786632194"}

## The Day Job

Away from modding, I work as a system administrator for a hospital. I fell into the job more than I chose it, but I've stayed for several years now because the work has real stakes and doesn't evaporate when the market has a bad quarter. I'm on a mid-sized team, which means I wear more hats than my title suggests. On any given day I might be in Azure AD or on-premise AD, setting up Intune and Autopilot, checking workstation compliance, pushing patches, or just making sure people have the software they need to do their jobs. When something in the field is too gnarly for the first line to untangle, it usually ends up on my desk next. It's not glamorous work, but when something goes down, it's not just an inconvenience. It can slow down actual patient care, and that's enough to make me take it seriously.

## Off the Clock

When I'm not working or modding, I'm usually playing something like Battlefield or Arma Reforger when I want to play a shooter. Factorio, Tropico, Command & Conquer, or Age of Empires when I'm in the mood to build or manage something, and modded Minecraft, mostly technical modpacks built around Applied Energistics 2, where I end up spending more time designing subnets and automated systems than actually playing the game.

I'm also a single father. I lost my wife to suicide when our son wasn't yet two years old. Since then I've raised him on my own, which has meant stepping back from a lot of the community work and hobby projects I used to pour evenings into. He's smart, and he's got more energy than I know what to do with some days. Everything else gets scheduled around him now, and that's fine by me.