About

A little about me

Hi! I'm Mike. Welcome to my site.

I’m a tech-geek that loves to learn and evolve. Currently I am employed as an on-prem systems administrator with the goal of transitioning into cloud engineering. I am currently enrolled in AZ-104 and AZ-500 courses on Udemy, and have obtained my AZ-900 this way. In my free time I love to play video games and work on personal projects to further my knowledge. Here are a few of the technologies I’ve worked with in my homelab.

  • Pfsense - firewall/router, VPN. Love this software. Easy to use, and secure
  • VMWare Vcenter 7 - for persistent virtualization
  • Cube Coders AMP (Application Management Panel) not to be confused with Cisco's AMP (Endpoint security) - for easy docker based deployments for game servers
  • Wireguard - for reverse proxy via a VPS
  • Racknerd VPS - for site/game hosting, reverse proxy, and miscellaneous projects
  • Ubiquiti Flex 16 port - Got this before I was trained on Cisco products, but don't regret. Looks nice and easy to configure via GUI
  • Raspberry Pi

As many techies do, I have ventured down the Linux route before. I still use it from time to time, but moreso for curiousity than anything else. I can proudly say I prefer Windows as my daily driver, but have had intermediate experience in the following distributions:

  • Arch - I love it with Hyperland, but not my favorite distribution. You need a lot of time to get things working the way you want, which I simply do not have.
    • Debian Based Distros
    • Ubuntu - My favorite. Stable, and works out of the box for what I use it for.
    • Kali - We've all had that "hacker phase" before. I like the OS, but at this point I'd rather just use Arch or Ubuntu and install the tools I need. Too much bloat in my opinion.
    • Mint - Sweet mint.
    • Pi OS - probably my least favorite distrobution of all time to be honest.
  • RHEL - Have used both professionally and personally, no major complaints.