Work Work Work!

Hello again all. It's been quite a while since I've updated this space. I've been working on quite a few things for Tesla now that I'm out here working for them. I got an extension on my original contract to work out here and now I'll be out here till August! Woo hoo!

I've worked on lots of things out here so far, from working on Model 3 infrastructure in the factory, to keeping sites up, to learning Ansible for mass provisioning and integrating it with Jenkins for version control, to learning how to setup a dashboard when a team has no clients or anything to plug into other than networking switches at multiple locations. Learning a lot of varied tools that helpdesk, sysadmin and DevOps have all used in the past while here!

Here's to looking forward to the future and the side projects I can work on when I get home!

Updates on Things - Lakka Box Finishing soon

Hello again!

It's looking like the Lakka Box should be done by Wednesday or so. I have to go grab a small SATA cable for it. Working on that guy has basically been rebuilding an Optiplex 780 bit by bit with parts that work best around an emulation station. I've been quite busy recently with lots of coursework in scripting, attempting to further automate my Factorio game and server, look up a test Soundcloud scraper I can modify for testing and I'll be working part-time soon for LexisNexis until my co-op semester begins in the Spring. It's interesting how I assumed I'd have all my projects done by the end of the year, that I started during my summer co-op semester!

My Spring co-op semester- I believe it's January to April or May- will be the last time I'm available for a co-op position and I'm still in talks with prospective companies...no idea who I'll be working for around then, however I'd really like someone I can stick with in the SysAdmin sector as I grow into new roles. Here's hoping I can find someone who wants to teach a student in I.T./Automation more Linux goodness! I much prefer learning open-source vs paid software, as there is a lot in the open-source sector that people don't realize can help them.

My recently-received Google Home DiY box will be done once I get a proper image for the Pi. I recently- as in maybe two or three months ago- received that MagPi edition that came with a kit to turn your Raspberry Pi 3 into a Do-It-Yourself Google Home which is quite interesting. I'll be playing with that more between entertainment, school and projects.

Still need to figure out how to boot windows on an upcoming project computer....this re-built Dell doesn't seem to like booting from CD, DVD nor USB....all I need to do is update the BIOS with Windows and then I'm immediately slapping Linux on there. That'll be all!

Further Projects - Update!

More parts that I need for projects coming in during these future weeks. I'll be reviving the servers and finally racking them using a cheap rack that  I found for the VPS Instances project, as well as setting up a Raspberry Pi 3 with a SENSE HAT to monitor the temp/dampness of the basement room the server rack will be in so as to monitor environmental variables that could hurt them.

For the Pi 3 with SENSE I'll likely either look into Parrot IoT, Ubuntu with Snaps or Raspian- regardless of what I use, it'll be command-line based.

I also recently got a Pi Zero W from someone; might look into some legal pentesting I can do with that in an Altoids tin. That'd be cool and definitely help my college fix their rampant wireless issues.

After racking my servers, because I can't sleep with them whirring next to me, I'll likely begin my foray into the unRAID space for the R710 to become a storage center and begin throwing ProxMox back on the HP dl380 so I can more effectively manage the vms....just no idea yet what I'll be doing for a frontend to the VPS Instances I'll sell or lend out to friends...with time I guess I'll learn!

Progress on The Scraper...

Just a short little post here. Something I'd love to try is scraping open source repositories, my social media profiles and various other things on the internet to my own storage media. Of course, this will have to wait until I can afford or come across all the parts after I come home from vacation...

A movie I've recently watched, called Summer Wars, had me on the idea of preserving data long after an account was stolen or deleted.

I've been looking into a few things...more details on my project page in the future...

The Beginning

This wasn't my first time in the tech space. I've worked on many previous projects, though the future holds endless possibilities.

 From administering SCCM and Active Directory at General Cable to learning how to make a nested VSphere environment at the University of Cincinnati, I've done many different things thus far in life. Now, it seems that the creation of this website will facilitate the posting of my tech adventures in a more public medium. Come join me on my journey!