My first post - Hello world!

Hi Everyone,

I want to introduce myself to the Steemit community.

I'm a husband, a technology professional, and a tech tinkerer.

Husband:

I'm very lucky to find to perfect wife for me. She's the love of my life and the most important thing in my life.

Here's a picture of us in the Rocky Mountains (at Athabasca Falls, close to Jasper, Alberta, Canada).

We are blessed to live relatively close to Jasper, about a 8 hour car trip from where we live. Now, 8 hours may seem like a long way to travel, but we live Fort McMurray (the Oilsands capital of Canada and the very same place you witnessed burn to the ground on the news in May of 2016). Fort McMurray is about a 4 1/2 hour drive from the next major city (Edmonton), so any out of town trip we take is going to be a bit of a drive. If you are taking the time to drive to Edmonton... well, Jasper isn't really that much further.

Technology Professional:

Yep, someone pays me to deal with their technology. To be a bit more specific, I am the acting Chief Technology Officer at the college in Fort McMurray (Keyano College). I've been in the industry since around 2000 and my entire tech career has been at Keyano. I started working at the college as a student, got hired on full time before I was even finished my courses, and have subsequently worked my way from computer technician to Chief Technology Officer. Well, technically I'm the "acting" Chief Technology Officer... maybe I can convince my boss to give me the job officially. That will be a post for another time.

In my job I set technology direction for the college, manage a team of 12 IT professionals, and help fix the things that others can't get to work. Generally speaking I'm less into the nuts and bolts of the technology nowadays and more into the planning of how to use the technology. I'm a little sad that I don't get my hands dirty as much with the technology anymore but I also enjoy the planning, building, and architecture of enterprise solutions.

Here is a picture of our datacenter (this shows about half the room):

Tech tinkerer:

What do I like to do in my spare time? Well, I like to tinker with different tech. Here are some examples of some of the things I'm interested in/tinkered with:

• I like home automation. I'm using z-wave devices in my home, including light switches, a thermostat, and a door lock.
• A few years back, I built a server that I installed FreeNAS on. I've run a number of virtual servers (jails and more recently bhyve instances) on this server. Since getting this server and installing/configuring the services, my linux/freebsd skills have improved dramatically.
• I've got a raspberry pi and an arduino. It's fun to play with these devices and to pick one of the many projects that others have done with this equipment and build something.
• A couple of years ago, I got into cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. I started mining a bit and learning a lot. The blockchain is fascinating technology and has so much potential (some of which I think is starting to be realized in the world today). Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain has led me to the steemit community!

Hello World:

Anyone familiar with programming will understand "Hello World". If you are not familiar with the idea of Hello World, you can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Hello,_World!%22_program

This post is my "Hello World" to the steemit community. I hope that the community is as good as it appears to be. I hope that I can share ideas and be a positive influence on this community. I hope that I find entertaining content and posts here just as much as I hope I am able to provide some entertaining content for some of you.

I must wrap up this post and I think the best way to do so is to let you all know that it is late here (nearly midnight... way past my bedtime) and that I am in desperate need of my beauty sleep.

I hope to interact with some of you in the coming days and posting on other things I find interesting.

Please feel free to check me out on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bearlydave
I'm also on twitter (but I don't do much tweeting): https://twitter.com/bearlydave