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Howdy, folks!

Whether you’ve been here for years, or are just joining our wonderful corner of the internet, we’d love to hear more about you!

Tell us about your hobbies, experience, interests, or even your career goals! We’re happy to listen (or, er… Read?) to whatever you’ve got to share about yourself here!

I’ll start!
I’m Josh, I was in IT from 2012 until earlier this year when I somehow managed to con (vince… yes, convince) Spiceworks into paying me for being on the forum I was already spending most of my day on anyway. :joy: However that’s a bit misleading, because for around 5 years of that, I was primarily delivering pizza, and only doing the occasional job, which was anywhere from PC repair to ransomware cleanup, for local businesses.

From 2018 to early 2024, though I had a steady job at a business that grew from a small government contractor, to a multi-segment multinational very quickly, and learned a TON from going through such a rapid transition with a small team.

My main areas of interest are AD, Exchange, PowerShell, MacOS, Linux, HaikuOS, Rust, .Net… OK, I’m interested in just about everything even tangentially tech-related. :slight_smile: I particularly love when I get to talk to experts who are passionate about their particular niche, and love learning from those folks!

Now it’s your turn! Let us know something about you!

Also a quick shoutout to the older “Introduce Yourself!” thread! If you’re looking for more after reading through this one, that thread is approaching 10 years old, and 3200 posts! While I do love the square bear, it’s time for something fresh.

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Hello, my name is Suzanne (or Z), and I am a Spiceworks addict. :slight_smile:

… Seriously though, I’ve been here since 2018 and I have enjoyed writing the SpiceQuests and other fun things over the years.

I had lots of different jobs before moving into community management… I’ve been a Technical Writer, an Editor, and faculty at various colleges, mostly teaching writing, but occasionally Science Fiction, Business Ethics, and even Poetry classes. :slight_smile: I also have a little bit of IT experience, but only low level helpdesk stuff.

My hobbies are reading, writing (usually unpublished short stories, but I also have a scripture blog), video games, board games, card games, and play-by-post Pathfinder over on Paizo. I also have gotten into AI art lately, as you will be able to tell from my posts on the site. :slight_smile:

Glad to be here, and looking forward to hearing about everyone else. :slight_smile:

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Living the dream! #jelly

A bit about me? I have been in IT for 24 official years. Unofficially for 30. I was doing IT related things in the Army, they wouldn’t let me reclass so I got out. At the beginning I really enjoyed learning and doing so much that I got into Security but burned out quickly due to an event that took a few months to recover from. From that point forward I have taken jobs with less stress (leaving work at work is the best).
I know my true calling should have been a Physical Trainer. I love the gym, love going to the gym, love working out at the gym. I got the nickname of Hulk from a friend of mine, and it stuck. If I had to do it all over, I would have taken that career path. It’s interesting when I was in the Army I ran because I had to, but when I got out, I picked up running because I wanted to. Since December of 2012 I have done over 300 5Ks, 10Ks, Half Marathons, OCR (Spartan races etc). My only goal remaining is a marathon. I kind of gotten away from the grueling schedule I used to have and should have done it then. Now I am older and not wiser. Oh, I do like to drink beer and eat bacon and if I could combine all 4 loves into one that would be heaven!

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That’s so many medals! The only medal I’ve got is a “gold” for an undercover “Fastest pizza delivery in $hometown” event that a local charity group held one night.

I am quite proud of that one, though… I took the call for the order, made the order, cooked, cut, and delivered it all myself (It had been a slow day, so the manager had sent everyone other than me and himself home for the night by that point, since I was cross trained for all positions anyway.)

I beat 2nd place by a few minutes, and they were around a mile closer. 3rd was a few minutes later still, and 4th-8th hadn’t shown up by the time the “award ceremony” was over and I needed to get back to the shop.

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I used to deliver for Dominoes. I never got anything close to a medal! That sounds so cool though! I did get a medal for winning an accounting contest at the fair. haha

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@HulkSmash There is a beer lovers marathon in Europe somewhere (Belgium
maybe) where you can literally drink beer on the course.

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My name is Jeff and I’m a SpiceHead.

Audience: Hi Jeff…

This is my 5th SpiceLife - I used to have to abandon SpiceLives due to job changes and the apparent inability to change email addresses - thankfully this has since been remedied.

I’ve been in IT for 35 years now and like many here have seen the transition of IT from mainframe to PC to networking to internet to whatever it is we have now. My career trajectory started as purely technical and touched just about every area of endeavor in IT and taken me to many interesting places - something like 25 countries for IT related work, another 13 just to go. I find myself in the management phase of my career pining for the technical days when I didn’t have to worry about chasing down timesheets, fielding customer complaints, performance evaluations, budgets, contracts, budgets, did I mention budgets?

I have been fortunate that my various positions have - despite general aggravations - been interesting and provided challenges to keep me engaged. My favorites have been as an IT generalist or Jack of all Trades - you get to touch all aspects of an infrastructure and there is constant variety.

I was lucky enough to take advantage of the whole work from home thing and move to the beach and work from here. Not on the actual beach, mind you - sand and salt water are generally not recommended for IT gear. I hope to continue on for many years in IT but will probably be cut down by SkyNet for opposing our new cyborg overlords.

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I’m Ed T. I do IT to make a living, but my passions are languages and cultures. I have a degree in Speech Communication and a second degree in Arts & Sciences with a concentration in Spanish. As well as Spanish, I also have been speaking German all my life (I have a German mother).

While I work in San Diego and rent a room there during the week, most of my “stuff” is at an apartment in Tijuana, Mexico. It’s not the lawless poverty-stricken border town that you might see in the movies and on TV (though there is crime, and there is poverty). Tijuana has a thriving craft brewing scene, and a ton of great restaurants. It’s also the home of the Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles, one of Mexico’s major league football (“soccer” for Americans) teams.

I love to travel; so far it’s been mostly in Europe and some in Latin America (basically Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia).

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There was a beer mile before somewhere. Found it.

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:shushing_face: Someone might notice! :shushing_face:

If you’re anywhere near MN, you should sign up for the world’s shortest marathon. Give you some training while you work your way up to one of the better-known marathons. :wink:

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Hi, I’m Mike though there are those who call me … Tim. I am an enchanter and I can summon fire without tinder or flint. I’ll be featured in a special post here on Spiceworks next week so please be on the lookout for that.
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Hello, I’m Brian. I started programming a mainframe (BASIC) in high school. Then Pascal in high school. Then in college continues with RPG, more BASIC, COBOL, and a part time job as a mainframe operator. I continued there for 9 years, eventually becoming the manager as the company was sold to an European company. No more family to continue. We were outsourced. From there, on to a tractor company as a helpdesk (more money, less responsibilities) but it was a contract position. Never should have left. From there to an insurance company because of my mainframe skills, where I picked up desktop support, to a hospital, to temp jobs, to a newspaper, back to a hospital. Now doing servers, GPO, phones, desktop, printer, basically all manners of IT.

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Hi Everybody! I’m Kris. My background is Art Ed./Art Therapy. I ended up working at a nursing home in activities during college as a “back up” if I couldn’t find a teaching job. Fell in love with it. Once graduated, started doing activities full time at a convent with retired nuns(love my sassy ladies!) I became the catch all person, and wound up helping them with emails, video calls, and all sorts of tech stuff. Fast forward 10yrs, they wanted to separate the activities role from the IT support. I’ve worked with out IT fellas a lot over the years so they said “Get Kris!” Now I’m the IT Liaison, aka “old folks translator,” and field all the questions about “Where did the picture I click for my game on my tablet go?” or “How do I see the picture my niece emailed?” The IT fellas are happy they don’t get distracted with those questions and are able to do the important things that actually keep the wheels on the rail. Love the ticket system and the forums! Thanks to the what’s your IT trope post a bit ago… I realized I’m now “Jen.” :rofl:

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Not to make you feel old, but you’ve been doing IT officially for longer than I’ve been alive!

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I’ve been in IT since 2019 while I was a co-op student at the High School (graduated 2020) I attended and I just kind of kept working and doing college full time from there. I worked in Education as an IT technician from 2019-2023, until I jumped into the Financial sector as the sole IT guy here. If it has a plug, I’m responsible for it. It’s been a lot of stress but it has also presented many learning opportunities!

In my spare time I like to read, especially anything in the Legendarium by JRR Tolkien, work on cars and motorcycles (current projects are an 81 650 Maxim and a 79 Camaro that I’ve converting to a 71) and homebrewing mead. The next one will likely be my first attempt at an actual beer, likely something with orange and vanilla if I can make it work.

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I’m so old my degree was Computer Science. Started off teaching, way too bureaucratic. Was in manufacturing for a long time and my home stretch run is in legal as the IT Director, which only means I take care of everything that plugs in or runs on batteries and manage a budget. LOL the other day the elevator wasn’t working. Told everyone it was rebooted when I reset the breaker.
It’s been a trip, learned so much, met so many different people. Very happy with my career choice.
Hobbies are gardening, cooking, reading and default house electrician because the hubby is color blind. Just moved into a new home so improvement will be the next couple years. It’s way too beige for us.

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Howdy folks, I’m Justin, former Spiceworker, former annoying talking head/host. Been working in the IT space for almost 20 years. I actually started out at an MSP doing Microsoft deployments but eventually got sucked into the dark side of tech marketing. My main hobbies are running, binge-watching, doomscrolling, and cooking. I live in Austin and hope to see some of y’all at Spiceworld!

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I’m Charles H. from Tennessee (see how creative CharlesHTN is!). Everytime I try to use Google to find something I posted years ago on Spiceworks, it corrects CharlesHTN to Charleston and I have to inform Google that I do, indeed, know how to type what I mean.

I enjoy 2131514 occasionally (OK, much more than occasionally!).

I’ve been in IT for 24 years after following the not-so-obvious path of Engineering Major changed to Education Major, BS in Secondary Education, to school teacher, to part-time help desk, to full time Systems Administrator, to IT Specialist, to Network Administrator, back to Systems Administrator, but unofficially “IT Director”.

I’ve ran over seven MILES of network cabling since coming to my current job in 2015, as we do most everything in house. I mostly do server and desktop support, and maintain the network and firewalls. I’ve installed dozens of WAPs and Security Cameras. As a Department of One, I like to say that “when it comes to I-T, I’m IT”. That’s part of why I lean on the Spiceworks Community so much. Y’all have helped me through loads of projects.

I’m so much a southerner that I had to move 750 miles north to live in Tennessee!

In my spare time, I attempt to do things as far from IT as possible, being very involved in our church (OK, there is IT stuff I do there too), with family, and in the classic automotive hobby (specifically, I’m an old Ford truck nut!). The old Ford Truck (1970 F100) in my profile picture was bought new by my dad, and I’ve owned it for about 25 years now.

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I thought I recognized you from MTG

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