The kid from Cato-Meridian who posted FarmVille updates and World Golf Tour scores. Somewhere in there: an IT job hunt that frustrated him ("Why do I live in a place that has so few IT jobs?"), applications to National Grid, Upstate, and St. Joseph, and an anxious RIT admissions application. The infrastructure nerd was already showing: Ubuntu installs, Nvidia driver rage, and a running commentary on the small stuff.
Then June 2014 happened.
On June 5, 2014, Dustin posted four words: "That girl is amazing."
Six days later, the proof he was done for:
E3, the biggest gaming event of the year, and he was okay missing it. A week later:
By July there was a date night at Destiny USA with @kayylllaaa30. By November they were seeing Big Hero 6 in Watertown. The first photo in the archive is dated October 20, 2014: the beginning of the visual record.
herhimIt wasn't all smooth. A September post: "It was all so good then came crashing down. But don't worry, I'll build it up again." They built it up. Six years later Dustin would write it honestly: "We've had our ups and downs but we've never been happier."
The beat of their first years: the Great New York State Fair with "these dorks" (Kayla, Erin, and the crew), where Dustin won the world's biggest giraffe.
And the kind of fight that only exists between people who love each other:
There were cats already. June 2015: "Update: My cat has been dyed. Blue." (Kayla was presumably involved; the post does not say.)
the councilApril 2016: "So proud of Kayla for getting into NHS! One of many accomplishments to come!" A promise that turned out to be dramatically true.
Also April 2016, peak couple energy: "How do you capture an escaped cat? You use a hostage. Brought Cheeto outside on his leash to lure out the bandit."
The cats were a saga long before they were a household. Between the blue-dye incident, the orange hostage strategy (it worked), and the one who got stoned on catnip and watched Netflix with him, they were never really pets. They were the council, and they'd been running the place since 2015.
June 2016 was their first real vacation: Niagara Falls, the Seneca Park Zoo ("First vacation stop"), then the Buffalo Zoo and Botanical Garden, which Dustin called "a blooming success."
new friend
also new friend
Boldt CastleJune 14, 2016, two years in:
The homelab years, in retrospect: lens shopping for the Nikon, the eternal Chinese-takeout-cannibalism fear, and a cat who got stoned on catnip and watched Netflix with him. Dustin was shooting weddings on the side, building out servers at home, and on June 27, 2019, adding the life event that anchored the decade:
The job came with a firewall that blocked SSH to his home server. His workaround: a free Google Cloud VM as a jumpbox. This is the most on-brand sentence in the entire export.
The arc, for the record: the kid who couldn't find an IT job around here in 2013, who fired off applications to National Grid, Upstate, and St. Joseph and to RIT with his stomach in knots, is now IT Services at the state, using a free cloud box to poke at his own servers from behind the state firewall. The infrastructure nerd from Chapter 1 came all the way around.
fancy boy
Googley Bear, est. 12/27/2015February 29, 2020. Five years in. A leap day, which felt right for a couple this specific.
The next day: "Happy birthday to my beautiful fiance!" Then the planning: a new lens for the wedding photos (Sigma 17-50 f2.8), "22 days until 'I Do'" on September 18, and on June 14, 2020, the six-year post that laid it all out:
she said yes
waterfall eraAlexandria Bay, in the Thousand Islands. The check-in that day:
10.10.2020Mr. & Mrs.191 photos in the album, added October 29. The photographer was clearly one of the two of them, and clearly it mattered. The anniversaries tell the rest.
The wedding photographer. Dustin had been shooting other people's weddings on the side all along, so for his own he brought the Sigma 17-50 f2.8 he'd bought for exactly this, and shot it himself. The album came back 191 deep on October 29. (He also built the website. Of course he did.)
Year one, October 10, 2021: "It's been a year already. I can't believe how quickly time flies. It feels like yesterday I woke up nervous as hell, but also as excited as a kid in a candy store. I was marrying my best friend. I was marrying my partner in shenanigans. I was vowing to spend my life with the person I love and cherish most. There was no hesitation. No regrets."
Year two, October 10, 2022, back in the same place: "Two years ago today we were wed. It was a beautiful day in Alexandria Bay. Today we celebrate our anniversary in the same place. It feels like a dream, someone else's memory. Being married to you is the best decision I have ever made."
Year three, October 10, 2023, the Tulsa road-trip year: another trip around the sun, the same two people, still choosing each other.
Year four, October 10, 2024: the ordinary-place decade in full swing, the house, the cats, the anniversaries, and the quiet certainty that it was all still building.
The check-in map after the wedding says it all: Fair Haven Beach, Six Flags Darien Lake, the 1000 Islands, Buffalo RiverWorks, the Gettysburger Company in Gettysburg, and a 2023 road trip that deserves its own chapter: Tulsa to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, the National BMX Hall of Fame, a Waffle House, Maxine's Tap Room, The Buttered Biscuit, Sassy's Red House, and a stop at the Arkansas-Missouri state line for no reason other than it was there.
the good stuff
still into each other
cat supervisionAnd home: the check-ins around Liverpool, NY. Rio Grande. Bull & Bear Roadhouse on Oswego Road. Destiny USA. Tsing Tao House. The Oncenter. The War Memorial. The ordinary places that make a life together, in the town they made theirs.
Meanwhile, Kayla's "one of many accomplishments to come" kept coming true: LMHC-LP license, doctoral work in counselor education, teaching at St. Bonaventure, building a career in telehealth. The nerdy kid from Cato-Meridian who couldn't find an IT job in 2013 became a state tech guy whose idea of romance was a self-hosted wedding website. They got the house, the cats (multiple, occasionally high on catnip), the anniversaries, and the road trips.
Kayla's list kept its promise. NHS in 2016 was the first "one of many," and the run since has been long: the LMHC-LP, the doctoral program in counselor education, teaching at St. Bonaventure, a career in telehealth, and a dissertation still in the works. The high-schooler who got into NHS is the one counseling and teaching now.
Year five, October 10, 2025:
And then there were the two wheels. Somewhere in the mid-2020s Dustin added two-wheel transport to the rotation: a Vespa in the mix, a Class M permit via the BRC waiver, a soft spot for a Kawasaki Vulcan, and an eye on a Suzuki C90T. The infrastructure nerd who'd rather self-host a wedding website than rent one also wanted to ride.
The next chapter is already in progress. Kayla's doctoral coursework wrapped in August 2026, with the dissertation to finish and a commencement penciled for spring 2027. The "one of many accomplishments" from 2016 is now within a graduation of being a whole list. And Dustin, as ever, is building a homemade website to keep the receipts.