I’m a local Albury Wodonga self-acclaimed geek of over 20 years. You may say I’m to old to be a geek. Well you may be to young to know what a Beta Max Video tape Player is, or what a LP is. It’s when technology began to take off. Personal computers were the size of a suitcase, mobile phones were the size of a house brick let alone smart. If you wanted to be mobile you used a CB *Breaker Breaker that’s a 10 4 …
In my child hood I would devour electronic radios and slot cars just to see how they worked. I would then spend a huge amount of time putting all the bits and pieces back together. I built countless electronic gadgets, from the typical crystal radio to an oscillating relay mechanism to scare crows off my father’s grape vines.
By the time I was in high school I was programming games on my 1st computer. It cost a packet and spending more money on games was a Definite No Way! from dad. So I went to the school library and read books… lots of books. There was no Google way back in those days. I even had one of my games published by a community magazine that supported the type of computer I bought. I won’t mention what it was as it will embarrass me :p
As a teen I discovered what most boys do… Freedom and Girls! So my tech geek skills became non-existent. Well that’s not completely all true, I think I was born with silicon flowing in veins.
Completely utterly bored with high school I left after yr 10 and did 2 years at TAFE studying Electronics. Not only were my brain electrons firing up – finally – I discovered a passion I still have to this day – Electronics – and for those that are wondering, the Girls at TAFE were so much more… let’s just say ‘free spirited’.
After TAFE I got a job at a local (yet to be built) recording studio. I was helping to build the recording studio by mixing concrete, fetching lunch for the guys and mixing more concrete… When I was lucky (on a couple of occasions) I helped in making Audio amplifiers, Speaker boxes and Audio mixing equipment for Rock n Roll bands. But that soon was wearing thin because I was doing more concreting and fetching lunch for the guys than being challenged mentally. Sure, Concreters and the Lunch shop lady have their talents but I was after something different.
I began an apprenticeship with a TV repair shop in Albury and really began to get my hands dirty into electronics. Some of electric shocks I got I’ll never forget, 20,000 volts from a cathode ray tube stings like the same amount of bees stinging all at once. With girls still distracting me I was once dumped over the phone at work. When I got back to my work bench I got another massive electrical shock from the microwave oven I was half way fixing. That electrical shock threw me on my back and it had left pains in my arms and chest! Lucky to still be here!
Soul searching, I began to travel the world and discovered a man can travel the world a hundred times over, searching for something he already had at home. Albury Wodonga had become my home and then I did what many of us are so afraid of. I bought a house, rented a room to help with payments and nutted down in another yet similar direction.
Computers. By now it was 1998 and Windows 98 edition was released. I still vaguely remember the National News having a story on it. I was constantly asked by friends I should start to fix computers but for me computers were going to be a passing fad. After seeing that news story I searched high and low for an affordable computer. When purchased it I think I was up for 3 days getting into it, pulling it apart and discovering how it worked. Those childhood habits all over again!
As the years had passed I worked with some mighty companies, mostly as a tech. I worked for military companies that granted me with special clearances. I’m a trust worthy guy and I’m sure their profile of me granted the required parameters for such clearances. I also worked for another company looking after one of Albury Wodonga’s largest data centers. With so much responsibility to keep the data center running 24 7 365. I was once called out because of an over temperature alert being triggered. Long story short I spend 4 hours outside with a garden hose spraying water over the air conditioner condensers because of the extreme heat of 44Deg + was too hot for the condensers to work efficiently. Unfortunately I was made redundant as China began flexing it’s powers and the data center was downgraded to a computer room with its core services relocated to … yeah, China. 6 moths later we had our 1st child. What a time to be job-less.
Now I freelance and contract to a couple of family owned businesses in Albury and Wodonga, still involved in Computers and Electronics. Being a Part time Stay home Dad, rewards me with unimaginable family values. Funny how things happen..
Website design came about in a reasonably natural way. My beautiful wife seeing me a little bored, bought me a weather station. At first I thought what am I going to do with it. Soon realizing Wodonga didn’t have a Weather Station and the Albury weather station was being updated every 30 or more minutes. Really! we don’t live in such a stone age where we need to wait half an hour to find out the weather. So my quest of starting an Unofficial Weather Station for Wodonga began. WodongaWeather.Net was created and so my new skills in web development. Serving 100’s of visitors monthly the weather site was stable and secure.
One of the local business I was part time contracting to phoned me to tell me their webpage was gone! How does a webpage just disappear?!? I did some research and found out a couple of interesting things.
1. The local Business Webpage was Hosted in the States – Why would their web developer do such a thing?
2. Their web developer was dodgy. He couldn’t provide us with a backup!
3. ..and other things I best not mention.
I then began making a webpage for the local business, and while doing so another local business contacted me to see if I could get their lost website back. It amazes me how dishonest some (not all) webpage developers are. Telling their clients the webpage was gone with all the backup files, and they needed to spend thousands to have another website developed.
In a short amount of time I had built two websites! Got them on Australian Servers, and have given my clients a copy of the backup files.
A couple of months passed, I learnt about Ranking on Google (forever ongoing) Great results though! Both local business are ranking on the top of Google using keywords that relate to their field.
Now that you know a little about me, I hope you have the confidence in my ability to look after your website and computer requirements.
