Welcome To My Tech Portfolio

Alongside my tech leadership career in the financial services industry, I’ve continued writing, building websites, and developing software, both for fun and a way to stay hands-on with emerging tech. While each project yields something tangible, they’re experiments with new topics, languages, or frameworks, helping me keep my skills sharp and my perspective fresh in a constantly evolving field.

Active Projects

Websites

  • Tweaks.com - 1000+ Tweaks, tips, and how-to articles covering everything from Apple and Linux to Microsoft, development, cloud, and AI. This consolidated brand replaced all my legacy topic-specific sites. Originally powered by a custom, database-driven CMS I built from scratch, the website has since evolved into a static site with an automated deployment pipeline connecting the GitHub repo, static site generator with custom JavaScript addons, and Cloudflare Pages for massive scalability and speed.

  • CastleInsider.com - Aggregates Disney theme park news from over 100 sources, using automated analysis to highlight trending topics and events covered across multiple outlets. The system is composed of several components: a Python-based crawler that scans and extracts article excerpts, followed by a content analysis layer that identifies overlapping coverage. By detecting when multiple sources report on the same topic, it surfaces the most newsworthy events automatically, offering a curated view of what’s happening in the Disney Parks.

  • SteveSinchak.com - This website is dedicated to making modern technology slow and look terrible using obscure CSS features that no serious developer would ever use. Automated pipeline deployment generating static pages.

Software

  • UGatewayStats - Open-source PHP-based internet bandwidth monitoring tool for the Ubiquiti UniFi network platform. It provides detailed visualizations of upload and download traffic, with breakdowns by minute, hour, day, and month. Designed to be lightweight and self-hosted, the tool offers users a simple way to track network usage over time without relying on third-party analytics.

  • AIMSPowerInverterMQTT - Free custom UPS monitoring integration for Home Assistant, built using Python and a simple circuit on a Raspberry Pi. The system reads data from the inverter’s serial port and transmits it to Home Assistant via MQTT. This DIY solution provides real-time insight into power status and UPS performance, bridging hardware and smart home automation to trigger actions upon power events.

  • Davis WeatherLink Live Integration - Open-source native weather station integration for Home Assistant, built entirely in Python and following the Custom Integration pattern. It includes full GUI-based configuration and polls data directly from the local network Davis WeatherLink Live device API. The integration exposes over 50 sensors to Home Assistant, enabling users to monitor a wide range of environmental metrics, including temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall, barometric pressure, and more, all seamlessly integrated into the smart home platform.

The Graveyard

A collection of old projects, some taken down, and others still running like unsupervised zombies. While no longer relevant or maintained, each played an important part in my journey, shaping my career, skills, and interests.

Books

Writing books was an exciting achievement that opened the door to new opportunities and helped me grow into a confident writer. But as life moved on, the time commitment and repetitive nature of producing sequels for each new Microsoft release made writing feel more like a chore than a passion. I still love writing and sharing what I learn, but the format has evolved. These days, I focus on articles that I publish on Tweaks.com instead.

  • Hacking Windows XP (Amazon link) / Website - Published by Wiley & Sons, this book dives into customizing the user interface, boosting performance, and securing Microsoft Windows XP. Spanning 14 chapters and 379 pages, it has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into four languages. A go-to resource during the Windows XP era, it empowered users to take control of their systems and squeeze out every bit of performance and personalization possible. That’s one fancy boot!

  • Hacking Windows Vista on (Amazon link) / Website - First sequel, published by Wiley & Sons and expanded on the original with 16 chapters and 316 pages. This edition introduced a range of new topics, including in-depth coverage of improving Vista’s system performance with guidance on both software tweaks and hardware upgrades, and techniques for measuring improvements using benchmarking tools.

  • Windows 7 Tweaks (Amazon link) - Webpage - Second sequel, published by Wiley & Sons and featured 19 chapters across 372 pages. This edition introduced detailed coverage of the Windows 7 installation process, safe system tweaking practices, including the use of backups and restore points, and a range of new enhancements tailored to the updated OS.

  • Windows 8 Tweaks (Amazon link) - Webpage - Final sequel, published by Wiley & Sons and marked the most detailed edition yet, spanning 20 chapters and 385 pages. This volume expanded significantly on performance optimization, including step-by-step guidance for upgrading to SSDs. It also featured an in-depth exploration of security and privacy, helping users better protect their systems in an increasingly connected world.

Websites

  • WebResourceCenter.com - My first "dot com" which in the late 90s, the registration alone cost an absurd $100 for two years thanks to Network Solutions’ government-sanctioned monopoly. The site was a portal that hosted a directory of free stuff found online, such as free software, free web hosting, and free email. It was a great way to learn HTML, but the site was never very popular.

  • DialupReports.com - In the early days, dial-up was king. I somehow convinced a few national ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to give me all their phone numbers and built a dynamic site that helped visitors comparison shop ISPs by providing the first six digits of their home phone number. The site then recommended providers with fast local interchange numbers, which was important to minimize your phone bill and get good 56k speeds. I would receive a small commission if the visitor signed up, but ultimately, the site was not profitable as something called DSL and cable internet came along and ruined everything.

  • TweakXP.com - Created to share articles, both my own and those submitted by the community, focused on tweaking, customizing, and fixing Windows XP. It was the first site to use the “Tweak” brand and quickly became one of the largest Windows XP resources on the web. I built a custom CMS in ASP and SQL Server, which I rewrote multiple times in ASP.NET and c# as traffic grew and new challenges emerged. To keep up with demand, I had to rapidly expand, migrating from shared hosting to dedicated servers, then to a full server cage at a colo with clustered SQL Servers, clustered front-end servers, and firewalls. It was a crash course in scalability, performance tuning, security, and infrastructure that pushed me well beyond my comfort zone and into the deep end of large-scale web operations, but it was an amazing ride.

  • TweakVista.com / TweakWin7.com / TweakWin8.com - As Microsoft continued to release new versions of Windows, I launched a new dedicated tweak site, each powered by my custom CMS but presented under different skins for each OS version. Over time, maintaining multiple separate sites became annoying. To simplify and scale, I purchased the domain Tweaks.com and consolidated all my content into a single, unified destination.

  • Tweaks.com Community Forum - Started with TweakXP.com but moved to the Tweaks brand during the consolidation. Started with an "off the shelf" commercial Bulletin Board/forum software package, but eventually rewrote the entire product to make it more scalable.

  • Tweaks.com - Early site design with my custom CMS.

  • Tweaks.com - Another slightly more modern but also retired design.

  • TweakMCE.com - Dedicated to the customization of Windows Media Center Edition, which was a niche product (the thing everyone used before Plex).

  • ITStories.net - A collection of humorous stories from IT professionals about the often unbelievable situations they encountered while supporting users, like the infamous case of someone using a CD-ROM drive as a coffee cup holder. The site was dynamically driven with ASP and SQL Server, enabling easy submission, browsing, and categorization of stories.

  • 64BitNews.net / iOSNewsNow.com / MSNewsLive.com - Built a server-based RSS/XML feed aggregator (primarily in C#) that crawled hundreds of news sources and powered several themed, dynamically updating websites. The front-end used AJAX to fetch and display content in near real time, making it one of my first large-scale implementations of JavaScript and JSON. This project laid the groundwork for many future efforts in content aggregation, dynamic interfaces, and full-stack development.

  • WinXPTop.com - Before Google dominated search, curated portals and “Top Sites” lists were a popular way for users to find quality content. This site was my take on this model, focused specifically on Windows XP-related websites. Visitors could vote for their favorite sites, making the rankings community-driven and constantly evolving. Beyond surfacing great content, it helped foster connections with fellow webmasters and creators during the height of the Windows XP era.

  • DealGizmo.com - Everyone loves a great Amazon deal, but not every “deal” is actually a bargain. Many products are marked up before being put “on sale,” making it hard to know what’s truly a good price. Dealgizmo.com solves this by using several backend components written in c# and Python to crawl user-submitted Amazon deals from across the web and cross-check them against my own historical price database. Only deals that pass the legitimacy check are published to the site, helping users avoid pricing gimmicks and score real savings.

  • WinGeek.com - A fully automated Microsoft news aggregator with lightweight intelligence designed to surface the most relevant headlines from across the web. Originally built to keep pace with fast-moving updates in the Microsoft ecosystem, it still runs today on a public cloud app service. While it hasn’t been actively maintained in years, it continues to hum along, I haven’t been able to bring myself to shut it down or sell it off.

EOL Software

  • Tweaks.com Login Changer - A free utility that lets users easily customize their Windows login screen by replacing the default wallpaper. Users simply select an image file, and the tool automatically reformats it to meet Microsoft’s specifications and installs it with no manual tweaking required. Created as a companion to my books and Tweaks.com, it served both as a helpful customization tool and a promotional resource to drive traffic and engagement.

  • Tweaks.com Start for Windows 8 - Frustrated by the lack of a traditional Start button in Windows 8, I developed a custom app to bring back access to three user-configurable views, along with a “quick launch” menu for commonly used Windows settings and utilities. Designed for speed and simplicity, it restored familiarity for users navigating the radically changed Windows 8 interface.

  • WinGeek Process Library Scanner - A crowd-sourced application integrity scanner designed to detect potentially malicious modifications in running applications. The tool calculated hashes of all active processes on a user’s system and uploaded them to the WinGeek Process Library for comparison against a database of user-submitted hashes. By identifying anomalies, it provided a primitive yet effective layer of security and leveraged techniques that would later become standard in modern antivirus and endpoint protection suites.

Corporate Entities

Growing up as the son of an accountant, I was taught early on about the importance of having a corporate entity and following generally accepted accounting principles. I mean, didn't everyone use Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel to balance pretend accounts for fun as a kid? Over the years, I’ve created a few different entities to house my projects and ventures, evolving them as the goals and nature of the work shifted.

  • Web Resource Consulting - During the dot-com craze, I ran a one-man web development and hosting shop, building websites for a handful of local Chicago businesses and hosting them for a monthly fee. I ended this business when the bubble burst, and my interest shifted to building my own sites and software.

  • SSMGI / Steve Sinchak Media LLC / Advanced PC Media LLC - The name of my holding company evolved over the years as my focus and vision shifted. Each iteration reflected a different phase of my journey with new goals and new ventures. Eventually, I settled on the most flexible (and generic) option: Steve Sinchak LLC. It may not be flashy, but it fits and it leaves room for whatever comes next.