G’day mate. Alright, so settle down, ’cause I’ve got a yarn for ya.
I reckon I’m the local Albury-Wodonga self-proclaimed geek. Now, yeah, they say I’m bloody old to be one; you gotta laugh at that! But let me tell you something: you lot might be too young to even know what a Beta Max player is, or what an LP record was. Man, those were the days when technology was just finding its feet.
Back then, smartphones weren’t little bricks; they were basically the size of a bloody house! Personal computers looked like they needed their own trolley. If you wanted to get out and about? You fired up a CB radio and yelled, “Breaker Breaker, this is 10-4!”
When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my obsession wasn’t just toys; it was the bits. I used to devour electronic radios and slot cars just to see how they ticked. Then the real fun started: tearing ’em apart and putting ’em back together! I built countless gadgets, everything from basic crystal radio things that barely glowed, to some dodgy oscillating relay contraption I whipped up just to spook crows out of my dad’s grape vines.
By the time I hit high school, I was already messing about programming games on my first computer. Crikey! It cost a bloody fortune, and Dad’s rules were pretty clear: no spending another dime on games, or you weren’t having it! So what did I do? I stalked off to the school library and read; I mean tons of books. No Google back then, mate; no magic search bar. In fact, I even got one of my little programmed blokes printed in a local community magazine that supported my setup. (Nah, don’t ask what it was, ’cause it’ll make me blush to death, ha!)
As a teen, well, let’s just say I discovered the two great pillars of male existence: Freedom and Girls! And naturally, my tech-geek skills took a massive dip right there. (Though I swear on everything, some silicon was pumped through my veins at birth.)
I got bored bloody socks of high school life, so I dropped out after Year 10 and did two years doing TAFE for Electronics. Now, not only were my brain’s electrons finally firing up, finally!, but I found a passion that still keeps me going: electronics. And speaking of things at TAFE… the girls there? Well, let’s just say they were a bit more ‘free-spirited’ than any circuit board I was learning about.
After TAFE, I landed a job down at a local and yet unbuilt recording studio. My job description was pretty varied: mixing bloody concrete, hauling lunch for the blokes, and then mixing more bloody concrete! Every now and then, I got lucky helping out with audio amps or speaker boxes for some proper Rock ‘n Roll bands. But mate, that soon wore thin. All I was doing was shovelling cement and running to the canteen.
Sure, the concreters are solid blokes, and the lunch lady’s a legend, but my brain needed something different. Something that challenged me!
So, I bagged an apprenticeship down at a TV repair shop in Albury. And that’s where I really got my hands dirty with proper electronics. Some of the electric shocks? Nah mate, they were unforgettable. Twenty thousand volts from a CRT screen stings like a million bees having a bloody party on your skin. Amidst all the lovely distractions provided by the girls, I even got dumped over the phone while at work! When I walked back to my bench, I took another massive jolt from a microwave I was fixing. It chucked me onto my backside and left my arms and chest aching like blazes! Good thing I’m still here today, eh?
I went through this whole ‘soul searching’ phase. Ended up travelling the world, only to realise you can circle the globe a hundred times over, but if your heart is stuck in Albury-Wodonga, nothing changes. So, I did what many us blokes are scared of: I bought a house, rented a room to help with payments, and settled down again.
Computers. By now it was 1998, and Windows 98 dropped. I remember seeing the story on the National News; it felt like a proper moment in time! My mates kept nagging me about fixing machines, but I thought computers were just some passing fad, yeah? Still, after that news report hit me, I searched everywhere for an affordable kit. When I bought it, I think I spent three solid days with it: pulling it apart piece by piece until I understood how the whole shebang worked! The old habits kicking right back in!
Over the years, I ended up working for some big companies as a tech bloke. I handled clearances for military operations; you could trust me to keep yer secrets, mate. Then there was this massive data centre gig, one of Albury’s biggest ops. Keeping that place running 24/7, every single day. Once, we got hit with an overheating alert. Long story short: I spent four hours outside with a garden hose blasting water over the AC condensers because 44 degrees plus was too hot for the gear to breathe! Unfortunately, I got redundant when China started flexing its muscles, and they downgraded everything so that all the core services moved across the ditch. Six months later, we had our first kid. What a time to be job-less, eh?
Now? I’m freelancing and doing contract work for a couple of family businesses right here in Albury and Wodonga, still messing with computers and electronics bits. Being a part-time stay-at-home Dad is the best reward money can buy; unimaginable family values, mate!
The web stuff started pretty naturally. My beautiful wife saw me getting bored, so she bought me a bloody weather station. At first, I thought, “What am I going to do with this?” Then I realised Wodonga didn’t have one, and the Albury one was updating every thirty minutes! Seriously? We don’t live in some stone age where you gotta wait half an hour just to check the forecast. So my mission began: building an unofficial weather station for Wodonga. WodongaWeather.Net was born, and that’s how I got into web development. Serving hundreds of visitors monthly; the site stayed stable and secure, fair dinkum.
Then one of the local businesses I was helping out with called me up to say their webpage had vanished! How does a website just poof? I did some digging, and found two things that nearly made me gag:
The bloody site was hosted in the States. Why would their developer pull that kind of stunt?!
And get this—the web developer was dodgy as anything. Couldn’t even provide us with a single backup!
So, I started building a proper webpage for them. While doing it, another local business rang up wanting me to find their lost website. It amazes me how crook some of these page developers are. They tell their clients the site is gone forever; backups vanished; and then they demand thousands just to build a replacement!
In a short amount of time, I built two websites! Got ’em on solid Australian servers and gave both clients all the backup files they needed.
A couple of months later, I learned about Google Ranking (which changes constantly, by the way). But hey, great results though! Both local businesses are now sitting right at the top of Google using keywords that relate to their bloody trade.
Cheers mate!
