About

The short version of a long story.

I’m Andrew Kalek. I’ve been writing software for about 25 years. I live off-grid in the Yukon with my partner Alessia, our daughter, and two dogs who think they run the place.

I came up through the Toronto tech scene — agencies, startups, enterprise. A few years ago we moved to a cabin outside Whitehorse. No grid power. Starlink for internet. More computers than you’d expect for someone heating with a wood stove.

What I do

I run Anlek Consulting. Mostly Ruby/Rails and Elixir/Phoenix work for clients who need something built properly. I’ve been doing this long enough to know when to use the boring solution and when to reach for something interesting.

Lately I’ve been deep in AI tooling — not the ChatGPT wrapper kind, the kind where an agent actually runs your infrastructure and remembers what you told it last week.

The off-grid thing

People hear “off-grid” and picture someone who’s sworn off technology. That’s not me. I have a battery bank, a generator, Home Assistant running the house, and an AI assistant monitoring all of it.

Living this way does change how you think about systems, though. When every watt matters, you stop tolerating waste. Turns out that’s a useful mindset for software too.

Find me

Thoughts from the Yukon

© 2026 Andrew Kalek