Who Am I?!#

I am a Systems & Network Administrator with a brief background in programming.

As a tech enthusiast, I have spent many years tinkering with various bits of hardware as well as playing with lots of different operating systems. I have a strong belief in Open Source and I greatly appreciate all the hard work that goes into developing software. Java holds a special place in my heart being a language I self taught and the first ‘proper’ language I used. Honestly though, I only learnt it so I could write mods for Minecraft.

This site is bits of what I think other people may find interesting.

How did I get into all this?#

I got into computers along time ago at a rather young age. We’ve always had computers around the house with the earliest one I used being the Commadore Amiga 600.

Most notably however is an old school Packard Bell that used a vertical backplane design (rather than the modern motherboard), many an hour was spent playing Roller Coaster Tycoon and the original Worms.

My first personal computer was a Compaq Armada M700 that was given to me, it only needed a new hard drive. With a killer Intel Pentium 3 clocked at 800MHz, 512MB of RAM and a new 80GB HDD. The machine still lives and breathes and truely was a machine that got me interest in computers.

What do I do?#

I am a Systems & Network Administrator and have been working as such since 2017. My un-official title is ‘Co-ordinator of blinky lights and wrangler of cables’ and nothing seems to be off-limits with my job.

Day to day my job is:

  • Manage network and server hardware lifecycles.
  • Manage firewalls.
  • Manage WAN connectivity.
  • Manage Remote access and S2S VPN infrastructure.
  • Administrate Windows & Azure AD.
  • Administrate Windows & Linux Servers.
  • Manage and Monitor system & network security.
  • Manage Phone Systems.
  • Work with multiple offices to co-ordinate their needs and manage expentiture on network hardware.
  • Provide tier 3 support to a helpdesk team.

A short list of accomplishments done in this time are:

  • Relocate a Company and all its infrastucture to a new office (in one weekend).
  • Deploy VoIP phone systems with centrally hosted infrastructure over several sites.
  • Architect and install replacement network infrastructure for a college site.
  • Decomission On-Prem exchange moving fully to cloud.
  • Implement network integrated & SaaS securtiy IDS and IPS tools.
  • Architect, install and migrate a companies virtual infrastrcture from VMware to Proxmox Hyper-Converged.
  • Work around constraints of Grade I and II listed buildings.

Previously to this, I was a Junior Software Developer where I was coding in both C++ and Java for mutlinational clients.