My kids go through library books faster than I can place holds manually. 2,400+ books in the backlog. Two library accounts. A process that required navigating multiple systems, searching by title, switching accounts — every single book, every single week.
It was a broken process. So I automated it.
Selenium navigates the Polaris library system, OCR pulls titles from screenshots, and the script handles dual-account management with automatic ILL (interlibrary loan) fallback when a book isn't available locally. I haven't manually placed a library hold since.
The Grayslake Area Public Library's Polaris catalog. My script drives this same interface with Selenium to place holds across two accounts, so I haven't placed one by hand since.
I include this because it's the same instinct I bring to enterprise work — just at kitchen-table scale. The tools are the same. The pattern is the same: find the broken step, understand why it's broken, build the fix.
Whether that's a multi-million dollar supply chain model or a library hold queue, the approach doesn't change.
The backlog runs. The books arrive. The kids keep reading.
The real point isn't the automation — it's that I applied the same problem-solving instinct to my own kitchen table that I bring to enterprise-scale work. That's not a quirk. It's the methodology.