Lifelong Fascination with Tech, Early Explorations with Radios and Video Games
I have always been fascinated with technology. My fascination started when I was only 5 or 6 years old, taking apart radios with my brothers in an attempt to figure out all of the parts and how they function. I had a few years gap between this early exploration of how radios operated and my later love for video game systems and televisions. After my love for video games took hold, technology has forever played a vital role in my life.Growing up, I was always the one to get the TV, DVD player, game stations, or internet connectivity working. Either simple troubleshooting or browsing the internet for lesser-known solutions. I never got into jailbreaking or hacking lower levels of devices, although I wish I would have been more interested. I spent a lot of my childhood and adolescent years playing sports or spending a lot of time with family camping or on other adventures. My interest in technology always persisted, though, whether it was keeping up with the latest gaming system releases or the newest cell phone releases. I was always on the consumer/user end of the technological stack, which is great for understanding how to utilize these modern tools but not understanding how they functioned.
The Beginning of a Life of Labor and Higher Education
My work life started around 14-15 years old working with my father at the property management company he has been an employee of his whole life. A lot of this experience was hands-on, tool operation, and functioning of large retail/apartment buildings in downtown Cleveland. I was fortunate enough to spend one summer as an apprentice to an electrician. This experience really pushed me into deciding what I wanted to do coming out of high school. That decision was to be an electrical engineer. So after getting a scholarship for college and committing to a university for electrical engineering, I came to find out rather quickly that the university I decided to go to wasn’t a good fit for me nor was I ready for higher education. I went back to work with my father for another year until I decided I was ready to try school again, this time with my selected major being computer science. I was enrolled in an extracurricular STEM program and was really ready to commit myself to a 4-year computer science degree.
Deep Dive into Indoor Agricultural Production
As life and chance happen, though, a family friend and now married-in relative, was in need of some extra help with an indoor cultivation facility located in Michigan. At the time I was still enrolled in university and helping out with the facility during the weekends or when I could afford to. I found myself fascinated with the knowledge and skills required to be good at cultivating healthy plants in a completely controlled indoor environment. It touched both of my fundamental interests of detailed hands-on work and manipulating technology to achieve your desired outcome. Through this chance meeting, I made the decision again to leave university and pursue this newly discovered fascination with high-quality agricultural production.
This decision led me on an 8-year path into the world of controlled agricultural production. I still would not trade this life experience for a degree. I feel I learned more, granted in a specific domain, than I ever would have been able to achieve at a university. My exploration with technology did take quite a turn, though. Moving away from entertainment devices and into mechanical devices with a specific purpose. I was able to gain a broad understanding of both electrical function and the impact on the environment of both mechanical devices and biological organisms. Simultaneously, in my free time, I was venturing more into PC gaming and all of the knowledge required to build a high-functioning PC. This was the beginning of my pursuit into computer hardware, tracking technological advancements, and becoming deeply familiar with the Windows OS.
Leap to Colorado and Information Technology
After 8 years of committing myself to indoor agricultural production and it not yielding the results I had expected for my life, I made the next decision to move to Colorado to be with my current life partner. This move was quite the leap for me as I have no family or friends in Colorado. It also forced me to take a job as an outdoor garden designer/landscaper. This was just to allow me to live in Colorado without needing to go into substantial personal debt. In the meantime, a great lifelong friend pushed me to acquire some IT certifications and get back into the tech industry as there are many more career opportunities. Taking his advice, I started studying to acquire my CompTIA A+ certification. This process took me about 5 months from start to completion. It was all self-taught, with the help of my friend to find and utilize study materials required for me to be successful. I passed my final exam in February of 2024 and became officially A+ certified.
Since achieving A+ certification, I have been making every effort to land my first job in a helpdesk support role. This includes updating my resume, modifying my LinkedIn to reflect my current skills, connecting with recruiters in the industry, building out an AD environment in home labs, starting a website to journal, and applying to every job that comes across my screens. This is currently where I stand. I can’t wait to update my website after landing my first role and getting some real-world experience. In the meantime, I will continue to post about things I find interesting whether it be technological achievements or blockchain-related news I find to be worth journaling about. I hope this finds any readers well and is interesting enough to get you to follow along!