Computers

From an early age, I’ve been exposed to electronics through my dad working as an Electronics Technician.  Starting out playing games on the Commodore 64 and VIC-20, our family had an IBM PC 286 somewhere around my 2nd grade. I was hooked and haven’t left the computer since.

Early Operating Systems and Applications

First operating system I remember using was MS-DOS 5.0 then 6.2/6.22. Along with DOS, used GeoWorks Pro an early desktop graphical user interface and productivity site popular before Windows.  Windows 3.1 was the first version of Windows.  I remember the fanfare around Windows 95.  Unlike my best friend and his dad, didn’t stand in line for copy of the most important operating system in history.

The first program used was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – World Tour electronic coloring book.  My dad downloaded it from a shareware BBS.

School

Always a PC guy, my school system had their stock of Apple IIe machines elementary and middle school classrooms (circus 1992-1998). First exposure to Apple Macintosh in elementary school (from memory) with Macintosh LCII and LC/Performa 575 (circus 1994-1995).

First time online was in Parkside Middle School Library (school has since been demolished) with the Technology Coordinator.  Yahoo! search engine was the first site. This was around 1996/97.

By high school (1999), computer classes were available as electives.  Computer Graphics (Corel Draw), Computer Applications (Microsoft Office), and Computer Programming (MS Visual Basic 6).  After joining WHBS-TV a friend and myself designed computer graphics for the station.  We did some planned graphics but often used our laptops to create and render graphic animations on the spot using Ulead Cool 3D – as it was an inexpensive and powerful package.

Wanting to pursue a career in computers, initially attended Bowling Green State University in 2002, majoring in Computer Science.  This was my first experience using Unix.  After my first CS class was a disaster – a computer class was taught on the chalkboard and the professor was terrible – I changed my major to Management of Information Systems (MIS).  I never cared for programming and enjoyed the business aspect.  Discovered virtualization technology, MS Virtual PC (now Hyper-V) which allowed me to try other operating systems instead of trying to dual boot or swapping hard drives.

Transferred to Cleveland State University (2006) and the best decision for my academic career as it was night and day over BGSU.  A Windows/Linux lab where we had to setup services on Windows and the Linux workstation had to access those services – such as HTTP, FTP, DHCP, DNS, setup users & groups, and file shares – and vice versa.  This is when I started using VirtualBox, which worked better for Linux virtual machines.

Gaming

My gamer phase was elementary school through most of college.  Started out with shareware games dad downloaded from shareware BBS.  In middle school was swapping games between friends at school.

I remember having to make boot disks for Doom in particular to clear enough RAM so that the program would load.

When I started playing Counter-Strike with dorm mates and online in college, I noticed that game servers had extra features that were obviously not part of the core game server.  I made HLDS servers for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic on my Dell Inspiron 8100 (Pentium 3, 512 MB RAM, Windows XP, 20 GB HDD) Windows laptop that I wasn’t using too much of in college.

HLDS mods that were used: Metamod/-P, Adminmod, AMX/Mod X, Clanmod, FoxBot, HLGuard, HLStats/X, PsychoStats, StatsMe, and Webmod

My servers were available on campus to BGSU students nearly 24/7 during the school year of my freshman year (2003) and subsequent years.  The last couple years, I brought a repurposed desktop as a dedicated server in my dorm room.

After college, these were hosted from shared servers at cloud providers.  They remained online until Steam updated – either the server or game – and the number of players went to nearly zero.

Media/HTPC

Since about the time I got into doing TV things with computers (2001) and joined WHBS-TV, I’ve had a TV capture card installed in my computers.  At first, it was for converting TV/VHS to digital forms for storage and posting online.  As features became available, turned my PC into a DVR, or what was commonly referred to as a Home Theater PC.

My favorite hardware was the Hauppauge line of TV capture cards, but their software was crap and frequently crashed.  At some point, found GB-PVR (now NextPVR) which solved all the stability problems of WinTV.  This lead into using Plex Media Server and now Jellyfin.

Online Services

Nearly since getting broadband DSL (maybe 2003), I’ve hosted used WIMP stack to host my site and eventually moved to LAMP and paid hosting.

Open-source

The people I worked with at one of my internships (circus 2004) were pretty serious outside of work in various aspects of computing.  I needed a new router and asked one of the guys which should I get.  He recommended the LinkSys WRT-54G/GL/GS series.  I went with the GL Linux variant in case I wanted to go down the 3rd-party firmware route.

After using Tomato and forks (AdvancedTomato, Shibby, FreshTomato), I was amazed at the features implemented by community developed and supported, custom firmware images for consumer network gear which implement advanced features.  Features such as: Linux based, SSH server/CLI access, bandwidth monitoring, Dynamic DNS, wireless radio adjustments and tweaks.  In addition, unlike cheap consumer router firmware, updated software is provided for a much longer hardware service life.

Currently:

  • Still use FreshTomato for wireless Ethernet bridges
  • Run Fedora as my daily driver operating system.  I got sick and tired of reigning in Windows 10 telemetry, out-of-control interface changes, and unstable releases.  The decision to switch largely stemmed from using Linux at work, using Raspberry Pi devices, and hosting services on Linux operating systems.  I started running Fedora full time since Fedora 25.
  • A big fan of self hosting services on my own Proxmox server, which follow the Free and open-source model.  AKA “my cloud is at 127.0.0.1”

Security

Couple years ago, I found myself interested, as a user and programmer, in the work done by security researchers to uncover issues with computing devices and how the might be used by bad actors.

I follow Brian Kreb’s blog, Security Now with Steve Gibson and the Sans Institute’s StomCast podcasts.  One thing I want to learn more about it is how-to pen test.

Networking

During my internship, I was exposed to and able to shadow the networking team.  I was interested in networking but felt it was “black magic.”  Experienced with the Tomato firmware, made the leap to home networking and securing networks using managed switches and managed firewall (2018).  Explored VLANs, LAGG, firewall rules, NAT, policy based routing, DNSBL, IP BL, traffic shaping, multiple-WAN, and multiple VPN configurations, secure hosting with Cloudflare tunnels (2024).

Work

My part time job in high school afforded me the opportunity to work on the office computers doing troubleshooting, upgrades, and consulting on new purchases.  I did additional website work pioneering the usage of PDF documents and streaming audio services.

My internship, I worked on two teams.  The first configuring software and hardware for new users including mobile devices, relocating PC equipment for department moves or job changes, and hardware or software changes.  The second team was the break-fix to the first.

Out of college, landed a job doing second level support.  Supporting all aspects of the system hardware, software, network, and supporting systems including development and testing.

Following that, development and third level support for merchandise management, credit card processing, and supporting systems.

Currently, supporting security integrations, firewalls, web proxy, remote access, and zero trust network access (ZTNA).

Ham radio

Many of my computer interests crossover to Ham Radio.  This is currently what I spend most of my time doing.

Computer build history

I’ve built every desktop system I’ve ever owned.  Here is a quick history of what I remember the last configuration to be.

386.  170 & 212 MB HDD.

Celeron 333.

Celeron 800.  768 MB RAM.  DVD-ROM, CD-RW, Iomega Internal Zip 100.  Creative Audigy.  WinTV-GO-FM.

Pentium 4 Hyper Threaded.  2 GB RAM.  80 & 250 GB HDD.  DVD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-RW, Iomega Internal ZIP 100.  Creative Audigy 2.  Hauppauge PVR-350.

Pentium Core i7 Sandybridge 2600K.  8 GB RAM.  2x 650 GB & 2x 1 TB HDD – RAID 1.  DVD-RW.  Asus NVidia GTX 460.  Asus Xonar DX.  Hauppauge PVR-1850.

 

By the way, the “circus” reference is a tribute to Donnie Baker from the Bob and Tom Show – who said circus instead of circa.

Ham radio and tech.