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About

I’m a Systems Engineer at Appalachian State University with a background that spans everything from rebuilding desktop PCs to designing multi-site LAN/WAN networks. When I’m not keeping technology running for faculty and staff, I’m usually tinkering in the home lab, building something in the workshop, or wrenching on a car.

$ career

What I Do

I’ve spent my career keeping technology running for the people who depend on it — educators, students, and staff. I recently moved into a Systems Engineer role at App State, where I get to dig deeper into the infrastructure side of things after spending time on the desktop support and Jira Service Desk side of the house.

Before App State I spent years at Caldwell County Schools working my way from Computer Technician all the way up to LAN & WAN Engineer. I designed and built networks, managed Active Directory environments, stood up Hyper-V clusters with SAN storage, implemented RADIUS for wireless authentication, and kept Nagios watching over everything — with a pretty lean team.

  • Systems Engineer
    Appalachian State University
    current
  • Desktop Support Specialist & Jira Service Desk Admin
    Appalachian State University
    prior
  • LAN & WAN Engineer
    Caldwell County Schools
    prior
  • System Administrator
    Caldwell County Schools
    prior
  • Computer Technician
    Caldwell County Schools
    earlier

$ skills

What I Know

My toolkit is pretty broad — I got into this field hands-on and have stayed hands-on ever since.

Networking

Ubiquiti / UniFi Cisco Routers & Switches LAN / WAN Design DNS Firewalls RADIUS / 802.1X Aerohive APs Tailscale / WireGuard Cloudflare Tunnels

Systems & Virtualization

Windows Server Active Directory & Group Policy VMware ESXi Hyper-V Linux / UNIX Nagios MDT / WDS

Scripting & Tools

PowerShell AutoIt VBScript Jira Service Desk WordPress HTML / CSS
CompTIA A+ CompTIA Network+ CompTIA Security+ Cisco Academy

$ outside –work

What I’m Into

The day job ends but the tinkering doesn’t.

🌐 Home Networking & Self-Hosting
Running a Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE, Raspberry Pi 5 as a Tailscale exit node, and a GL.iNet travel router. I host my own WordPress sites and enjoy solving weird edge cases — like routing around CGNAT with Cloudflare Tunnels.
🪵 Woodworking
From bathroom shelves to router table carts, I enjoy building things with my hands. I usually start in SketchUp, then head to the shop to figure out what I got wrong.
🚗 Cars
Former owner of a high-mileage ’98 Tacoma and a 2013 Mustang GT. I like knowing how things work well enough to fix them myself.
✍️ This Blog
Where I document mods, builds, and home lab projects. Mostly for my own reference — but if it saves someone else a few hours of searching, great.

Want the full picture?

Dates, details, and everything else lives on my resume site.

$ view resume →