About

If you’ve somehow stumbled upon this blog, then you may or may not already know who I am – so allow me to wax a little loquacious and tell a few things about myself. Besides, it’s my blog – I’ll say what the hell I want

So: I’m a 30-something guy living in Perth, Western Australia. I’ve always had a knack for things technical – in primary school that meant being good at maths and science; high school – much of the same except that expanded a little to maths, physics, chemistry, astronomy and computing. By the time I made it to university, I’d pretty much figured out what I thought I wanted to do – which was some combination of physics and electronic engineering..y’know, figuring out how the “bits and pieces” inside computers and technical equipment work, and designing new “bits and pieces”.

Somewhere along the way, between finishing a physics degree and not quite finishing the electronics engineering course, life [as it does] took a bit of a turn. Due to some health issues, I ended up taking some time off from my studies, and started working full-time. Since I wasn’t quite an engineer yet, and jobs as physicists require Ph.D.s, I turned down a road that I actually knew well enough to get a paying job in: computing/information technology. The first few years weren’t particularly glorious or memorable, but I started finding out more about the IT industry, and the actual skills that I needed – rather than the ones I’d picked up on my own – both for any job, and specifically for IT jobs. So – I studied and learned those things, and some more, eventually moving through a sequence of IT jobs in system administration, software development and IT management.

In the middle of all that, I realised that I’d probably been “overly committed” to the idea of physics and engineering, without rationally considering at any point along the way “is this really what I want to do?” Turns out – it wasn’t, and that working in IT was clearly something that I should have been doing all along. I enjoy it, I’d like to think that I’m pretty damn good at it, and I certainly hope other people I’ve worked with think the same about me as an IT professional. I realised that I’d need to get some actual qualifications in IT, so while I was working at the university (U.W.A., for what it’s worth), I took the opportunity and completed a Graduate Diploma in I.T. (it’s essentially a degree in CS/IT, but takes into account the fact that I’d already done 1.95 degrees already, and gives you credit for courses you’ve already taken.) I did that part time – took me nearly 4 years, but formally finished the course in 2007. Obviously working full-time in IT during that time helped me with a lot of “real-world experience” about the course I was taking. I know I had some heated debates with certain CSSE staff, but even those debates helped solidify or clarify a lot of different ideas and concepts about CS/IT principles and concepts. From time to time, I hope to elaborate on some of those things on this blog.

What do I do now? Well, after the last year I’m not sure where I sit – I’ve done a lot of systems administration work over the last 8 years; I’ve tried to do as much software development as possible in that same period of time, but it’s only been in the last year that I’ve really been able to do that in a significant way, thanks to a business start-up I was involved with. So – I do sysadmin work, software development, and IT management. It really comes down to the job and situation.