DIY Computer Repair/Aspiring IT Professional

Linux, Networking, and Programming Enthusiast

Greetings! I am an extremely passionate individual looking to break into the field of IT at an entry level. I offer freelance computer repair services to my local community and am proficient in a number of Linux and other UNIX-based distributions. I am also enthusiastic about home labbing and expanding/improving my home network. Relevant skills include knowledge of various networking protocols, experience with Cisco IOS, proficiency with all commonly used operating systems, setting up and configuring a wide range of services, knowledge and utilization of hypervisors and containers, and basic scripting to automate tasks utilizing Python and Bash.

What I’m working on

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Navidrome on FreeBSD

Whew! It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Lots of OS installs, lots of configuration, its been a blast. Since I wrote the original draft of this article, I've spent a decent amount of time 'dancing with the Devil' (well Beastie the devil anyways!) and wanted to give this OS...

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(Reluctantly) Embracing the Cloud

Initial disclaimer, I've never really been big on cloud services. I try to host all of my stuff locally, but I am just running services for my private network so I've never had to worry about scaling or any of the other trepidations of hosting services meant for public consumption....

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Is NixOS the Perfect OS for DevOps?

In a world where IaC and CI/CD strive to push the bounds of optimization, why wouldn't we take the same strides to optimize our desktop and VM environments? Sure, it's easy enough to write a script for you or your company's OS of choice that takes care of all of...

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Gen 3 and Beyond: Editing C to Hack Pokemon

I'm not gonna lie, I get super nervous writing these articles out of fear of divine punishment from Nintendo-sama, but besides focusing on my new server repair role and learning how to survive 5 o'clock traffic (as well as reconnecting with some old friends), I haven't been doing much since...

Projects

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Why I (Almost) Never Use File Explorers

2023 was a crazy year for sure, I started by deleting the Windows partition on my laptop (my only device at the time) and switched to Debian, then Arch Linux full-time to really dig down into Linux. But the real fun started when I discovered tiling Window Managers and decided...

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Getting Hip to Tmux

This article almost feels overdue, but honestly already using a tiling WM made putting off learning/using Tmux pretty easy but use cases kept popping up, mainly when I'm learning coding on my laptop. I usually default to my study screen being half one terminal window running Zathura with whatever book...

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The Revenge of Vimtutor: Actually Getting Good At Vim/Nvim

Anybody who knows me knows that I absolutely love Vim and NeoVim. Vim is one of the first programs that I install on any of my servers, pretty much all of my configs have basic vim key bindings added, if I'm not using a program that has them integrated by...

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Becoming a Pokemon Master by Hacking Assembly

Greetings! Today's article is going to be a fun one for sure. I'm sure that many of you are at least semi-aware of the ROM hacking scene where people take their favorite games and alter the data to make their own custom version, and we're going to look at one...

Experience

Freelance Computer Repair
Self-Hosted, Freelance Computer Repair
| October, 2001 - January, 2024

I've never worked in a professional tech position, but I'm definitely the guy that friends, family, and coworkers come to with their tech issues. Everything from doing system restores, to backing up pictures, basic hardware swaps, and OS optimization for whatever use case (while fighting the urge to put a Linux distro on their machine while doing so.) I love messing with tech, its what gets me out of bed in the morning and I'm passionate about breaking into the industry.

Certifications

Badges & Skills

Education

Decatur High School
Decatur, Tx August, 2007 - June, 2010

Student council, UIL debate, Jazz Band