About Me

Introduction

Georgetown, CO

In the real world name is Garland MacNeill and I’m an IT Geek. I’m in my mid 30′s, married, I have two kids, and I have been accused of hot dogging servers since 1999. I am originally from Colorado, I was born in Denver and raised in the mountains just west of Denver. The picture of the valley is my hometown, Georgetown Colorado. I now currently live in the Tulsa, OK area but more on that later. Prior to working in IT I’ve worked as a mechanic for diesel equipment and cars, I spent time in construction, as well as driven a truck for a couple of years. I’ve done a little bit of everything. However, I’ve always been into computers. I’m old enough to remember the original Atari and pong, playing  Oregon Trail on a Apple II, and being completely freaked out by the movie Wargames (the OG hacker movie btw).

Growing up I was blessed by my father, who taught me how to fix almost everything around the house, cars, and what not. Most importantly he taught me that to be able to fix something, you have to learn and understand how it works. I often kid with my Dad that I had suffered an abusive childhood because most kids didn’t have to help around the house like I did. Truth be told, I am grateful for the education my Dad gave me. It has helped me forge a career in IT and thinking outside of the box has become natural for me. Not to mention, it has saved me thousands of dollars in car and home repairs. Better than Geico really.

I was introduced to the modern PC in high school. My high school had a vocational drafting program and CAD was part of the program. I remember having to use 5.25 floppies to save huge AutoCAD plates to disk. Towards the end of the program, it would take 2 full days to render the plate on the computer and another day to run the plate on the plotter. It was so cool. Unfortunately the school district cut the program at the end of my junior year to give money to the football team. So that end my drafting career.

5 years later, I was driving a truck in the Denver area when a couple of co-workers suggested I come over and game with them after getting my first modern computer. This re-sparked an interest in computers. My PC wasn’t fast enough to run the latest games of the times and I couldn’t afford to buy a PC. One of the guys loaned me his PC repair book and I set out to build my own. I successfully built myself a new computer that could handle the games, however, I was also introduced to the Blue Screen of Death. I quickly became good at reloading my entire OS at least monthly. You had to love Win95 and Win98. At this time, my online persona was born – Nyteshades, or Shades, I’ve used this name in MMO’s, on forums, and all over the net for the last 12+ years.

Brief History

The Solbourne IT Team 2000-04

I moved to Texas in 1999 and picked up a job working for a mom and pop computer shop as a PC Tech. Talk about trial by fire. I learned a great deal about how to interact with customers, as well as fixing computers, servers, networks, and few other things on a shoe string budget. I worked there for a year before marital issues sent me back to Denver. Once back in Denver I was fortunate enough to land a job at Solbourne Computers in Boulder. At Solbourne I was hired as a PC Tech but within 6 months was promoted to Systems Administrator.–

While at Solbourne I was blessed with a great deal to learn, management that trusted and believed in their employees, and a corporate culture that believed in having fun. The company motto was “We work hard, we play hard”. For a small company, with 80 plus remote employees, it proved to never be a dull moment. I was also blessed with the best manager I have had to date. Bernd was not only my boss, I consider him a friend. I miss the fun we had….

However, life changes and towards the end I was eager for new challenges, as well as a chance to go back to school. Unfortunately, it took a death in the family to manifest that chance. In November of 2003, my wife’s step-passed away in Tulsa and we opted to move closer to help her mother.

This move gave me the chance to go back to school. After moving to Tulsa, I landed a job at EDS as a Sr Systems Admin. I supported the Linux/UNIX/Tandem boxes for the Sabre project. In English, I was supporting the Application and Database for Travelocity’s website, which if you didn’t know is based in Tulsa. Three years later, talk of outsourcing my position, weight gain, and sleep problems from working rotating shifts, sent me looking for a new job. I ended up as the Systems Administrator for Okmulgee Public Schools. In all honesty, I was a one man IT department for an entire school district. Not what I had in mind. 9 months later I landed a mainframe job at Union Public Schools in Tulsa. Closer drive and new toys to play with where I still remain.

In November of 2009 I completed my Bachelors of Science in IT/Software Engineering at the University of Phoenix. While in college, I discovered a sense of enjoyment, fascination, and passion from writing programs. As I feel have ran the course of my Systems Administration career, I would like to transition into Development. That passion is what brought about, in part, this website.

This blog site

Enjoying a Fall Afternoon

What’s the point of this site? Honestly….it’s a combination of a rant zone for me, a place to post my homework, as well as a place for me to post code snippets. Mainly it’s a place for me to talk about development, share my discoveries, my coding failures, and allow me to track my development as a Developer. As time goes on, this site will evolve as I learn more about an online presence and how to present one. More importantly, this site will help me find my way in the online world by containg a record of where I’ve been.

Stuff I do for fun

My life isn’t all about the computer though. I enjoy hiking, camping, fishing, and all kinds of things. Just to it break it up, from time to time I’ll post some of these things up as well. Everything from riding my motorcycle on the street and the track to working on my projects – cars, house, trips….ya know, just add a little deeper human element.

In the End

Overall I’m curious to see where this site goes….how it evolves….what I learn….and who I meet along the way. So enjoy the site….let me know what you think….and please, if you can share guidance with me, by all means do so.

Thanks for checking out my site,

‘Shades’