A working reference · prepared for The Boring Company

I move dirt, and I build the systems around it

I'm an applied AI architect who also owns and operates an excavator, and has spent years doing real land development work on my own property and for others. This page exists to make that visible — not as a resume line, but as photographed, dated work.

See the work → Equipment Contact

Why this page exists: I'm applying to The Boring Company, where the work sits exactly at the intersection I've been operating in without a name for it — heavy equipment and site work on one side, software and applied AI systems on the other. Most of what proves the first half doesn't live on a resume. It lives in photos of finished grading, a machine with hours on it, and jobs that held up. This is that record.

Equipment

Owner-operator, not equipment-adjacent

I own my primary machine outright and run it myself — sourcing, permitting, planning, and operating, start to finish, on every job below.

Primary machine

Bobcat E32 mini-excavator — compact, ~3-ton class, zero tail swing

Owned since

2023

Attachments / implements

Standard grading/digging bucket (pictured below),
additional attachments — auger, plate compactor, jackhammer ]

Other equipment run regularly

Stihl Clearing & Cleaning Tools (Chainsaw, Tiller, etc)

Hours logged

400

Licensing / certification status

NC general contractor license status under consideration.

Land development work

Clearing to finished — one site, start to end

All of this is the same job, in sequence: a rhododendron-choked roadside embankment at 215 Edmisten Rd, Blowing Rock, NC, cleared and cut into a vehicle-passable access road and camp bench, ending in a built utility structure and a set-up expedition tent. Every stage below was run solo — no subcontracted excavation.

Bobcat E32 mini-excavator clearing rhododendron thicket on a steep roadside embankment, paved two-lane road visible below

Stage 1 · Clearing the cut

Bobcat E32 working a rhododendron thicket on the roadside embankment — root balls and brush cleared to open the line for the access cut.

Bobcat E32 grading a flat pad after clearing, a red SUV parked on the newly graded surface

Stage 2 · Grading the pad

Same cut, graded to a flat, driveable bench — the SUV parked on it is the proof of load-bearing, compacted surface.

Muddy access trail cut through fog and rhododendron, fresh tire tracks visible in the graded soil

Stage 3 · Cutting the access trail

Pushing the road further up-slope through fog and root mass — the messiest, least photogenic part of the job, included on purpose.

Finished graded dirt access road on a sunny day, with a built plywood utility structure alongside

Stage 4 · Finished access road

Compacted, crowned, and holding — plus a framed-and-sided utility structure built alongside it, on-site carpentry beyond just excavation.

Graded camp bench with drainage swales cut into the dirt, wall tent visible in the background

Stage 5 · Graded bench, drainage cut

Swales cut into the bench to route water off the pad before anything gets built on it — planned before it was needed, not after.

Reclaimed pallet-board steps leading down through the trees to a cleared camp bench with tent, cooler, and bench seating

Stage 6 · Access down to the site

Reclaimed-pallet steps down the slope to the finished bench — camp seating and the tent already in place below.

Finished canvas wall tent set up on a wood platform among trees, lit from inside

Stage 7 · Finished

The end state: a canvas wall tent on a built platform, on ground that was rhododendron thicket a season earlier.

01

Blowing Rock property — access road, clearing & camp site prep

Full-sequence solo job: cleared a rhododendron-choked roadside embankment, cut and graded a vehicle-passable access road up-slope, built a utility structure, then graded and drained a camp bench and set up an expedition tent platform. Ahead of the property's winter-excursion venture and the water/Fraser-fir ventures. No contractor crew, no subcontracted excavation.

Scope: 600ft of road, sloped terrain

02

Drip irrigation system

Full manifold design and install — supply line, pressure reduction, zone valves, trenched distribution. Photos pending.

Scope: 300 linear feet of trenching, 4 zones

03

Backyard pond

Excavated depression, rock-bordered terracing, sealing/lining method selected and installed. Photos pending.

Scope: slop-based rock pools/systems

Why this matters here

The same discipline, applied twice

Systems, not tasks

I plan the whole system before I cut the first inch

Drainage, access, sequencing, and load-bearing all get worked out before a bucket touches ground — the same way I architect software systems before writing the first line.

Owner-operator

I've never outsourced the hard part

I've built the YSKAIPE product, codebase, and brand independently. The land work follows the same pattern: source the machine, learn it, run it, finish the job myself.

Applied AI architect

Digging is the tractable part

The hard problems in tunneling and land development are the systems around the cut — sensing, mapping, sequencing, verification. That's the exact discipline I bring from applied AI work.

Contact

Happy to walk through any of this in more detail, or point to the property and jobs directly.

Get in touch →

Nick Conenna · Peaking Waters LLC
Applied AI work · Writing · peakingwaters.com →