This blog is here to really give a little back to the other users of the net, hopefully some of you will find this interesting and useful and perhaps entertaining, let me know with your comments!
I believe it all started off when I was quite young and my parents bought me some Lego. I was soon getting hold of as much Lego as I could and building everything I could think of. At some point I got a 10 in 1 electronics kit which was awesome (future reminder to self – get one of these for my kids).
This soon led me to bigger and harder kits, followed by lots of Lego Technics, then my Dad’s commodore 16. Not long after, he acquired a 386 PC as a result of a bad debt, as it turns out, that wasn’t so bad after all. Lots of time was then spent getting stuff to run on it, and then playing lemmings until the early hours! I then got hold of a screwdriver and realised I could take things apart, this was the best things ever, until my remote controlled car never worked again. Thankfully though, this didn’t stop me on my mission to find out how everything worked!
Not long after I was building my own PC’s as I worked out it was quite a bit cheaper to do it this way and it turns out I learnt quite a bit doing that too. I then started selling PC’s to friends, undercutting the big retailers and making a few quid. All the money earnt was soon spent on upgrades, I still can’t believe I shelled out around 250 quid of my hard earned cash on a dual speed CD-ROM and a 16 bit sound card all them years ago!
It soon became apparent to me that there was lots of money to be made from all this technology, and while everyone else was playing NBA Jam on the SNES I was busy attending computer fairs at the motorcycle museum, buying blank CD’s and label printing kits, and setting my CD-Writer to make ‘backup’ copies of some games and certain expensive encyclopaedias through the night. (I’d like to thank Bill at this point, who’s rebate voucher I kept from the returned encyclopaedia and then sent off with the photocopy of the receipt, helped to fund my gadget lifestyle!) It also turned out that my creative side came in quite useful when creating NUS cards and other ‘novelty’ ID’s. Anyway, I wont go into to much detail, but you get the idea.
So it’s safe to say I was a bit of a geek when I was younger, but I also loved playing footy. This was a bit of an issue, because as far as I could tell at the time, geeks were not supposed to like sport. This love of lunchtime footy soon resulted in me getting sacked as IT prefect at school, which probably wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened. I liked playing on the BBC micros and spending hours on end typing in code from a book from the library, and then twice as much time again trying to find all the syntax errors! The game would generally then work and I would soon realise that it wasn’t actually that good after all, but hey, nothing ventured and all that. But, after getting caught copying code because of ‘hacking’ into somebody else’s account I kept out of the IT room for a bit and concentrated on making money.
There’s quite a bit missing to this story, and I couldnt possibly start to list all the people I need to thank and everything else that made me who I am today, so I’ll save the rest for my autobiography, one day…
Anyway, at school I did kinda well at CDT and Maths so I decided to go to Sixth Form College in Solihull where I studied CDT, Computing and Business Studies. The first 2 were obvious choices for me, and I heard that Business Studies included a trip to Disneyland Paris, so that was a no brainer. Officially the worst ever group to be taken to Disneyland Paris, no prizes for guessing who enabled us to get served at the bar!
After Uni I went back to Dore (or DDAT as it was known at the time) to work as an IT Support Engineer, one thing led to another and soon I was working as Global Systems Engineer and flying all around the world looking after and setting up franchises. All good things have to come to an end though and in May 2009 the recession hit hard and the company went into administration. Luckily, the core of the company was rescued by a group of investors and Dynevor then took over. I’m working in Stratford-upon-Avon now as a Senior Systems Engineer where things are going well. I basically look after the network, any tech support and keep everything running smoothly.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I’m sure I’ll think of more to add here later.
If you really love the blog, or found any bits useful and fancy buying me a coffee or helping to fund a few more of my future gadgets, then please hit the donate button at the top of the screen.
About
Hi. My name is Dave Harris. I’m from the West Midlands, UK and I work as an IT Systems Administrator.
In my spare time I enjoy going to the gym, cycling, playing footy and poker with the lads, spending time with my beautiful
fiancéewife, watching the footy, playing with cars and as many gadgets as my wallet allows.This blog is here to really give a little back to the other users of the net, hopefully some of you will find this interesting and useful and perhaps entertaining, let me know with your comments!
I believe it all started off when I was quite young and my parents bought me some Lego. I was soon getting hold of as much Lego as I could and building everything I could think of. At some point I got a 10 in 1 electronics kit which was awesome (future reminder to self – get one of these for my kids).
This soon led me to bigger and harder kits, followed by lots of Lego Technics, then my Dad’s commodore 16. Not long after, he acquired a 386 PC as a result of a bad debt, as it turns out, that wasn’t so bad after all. Lots of time was then spent getting stuff to run on it, and then playing lemmings until the early hours! I then got hold of a screwdriver and realised I could take things apart, this was the best things ever, until my remote controlled car never worked again. Thankfully though, this didn’t stop me on my mission to find out how everything worked!
Not long after I was building my own PC’s as I worked out it was quite a bit cheaper to do it this way and it turns out I learnt quite a bit doing that too. I then started selling PC’s to friends, undercutting the big retailers and making a few quid. All the money earnt was soon spent on upgrades, I still can’t believe I shelled out around 250 quid of my hard earned cash on a dual speed CD-ROM and a 16 bit sound card all them years ago!
It soon became apparent to me that there was lots of money to be made from all this technology, and while everyone else was playing NBA Jam on the SNES I was busy attending computer fairs at the motorcycle museum, buying blank CD’s and label printing kits, and setting my CD-Writer to make ‘backup’ copies of some games and certain expensive encyclopaedias through the night. (I’d like to thank Bill at this point, who’s rebate voucher I kept from the returned encyclopaedia and then sent off with the photocopy of the receipt, helped to fund my gadget lifestyle!) It also turned out that my creative side came in quite useful when creating NUS cards and other ‘novelty’ ID’s. Anyway, I wont go into to much detail, but you get the idea.
So it’s safe to say I was a bit of a geek when I was younger, but I also loved playing footy. This was a bit of an issue, because as far as I could tell at the time, geeks were not supposed to like sport. This love of lunchtime footy soon resulted in me getting sacked as IT prefect at school, which probably wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened. I liked playing on the BBC micros and spending hours on end typing in code from a book from the library, and then twice as much time again trying to find all the syntax errors! The game would generally then work and I would soon realise that it wasn’t actually that good after all, but hey, nothing ventured and all that. But, after getting caught copying code because of ‘hacking’ into somebody else’s account I kept out of the IT room for a bit and concentrated on making money.
There’s quite a bit missing to this story, and I couldnt possibly start to list all the people I need to thank and everything else that made me who I am today, so I’ll save the rest for my autobiography, one day…
Anyway, at school I did kinda well at CDT and Maths so I decided to go to Sixth Form College in Solihull where I studied CDT, Computing and Business Studies. The first 2 were obvious choices for me, and I heard that Business Studies included a trip to Disneyland Paris, so that was a no brainer. Officially the worst ever group to be taken to Disneyland Paris, no prizes for guessing who enabled us to get served at the bar!
After college, it was off to Aston University to study computer science, where I had the best years of my life. I did a placement year for Dore where I worked on the development team, working on the intranet which was all ASP with a SQL Server 2000 back end. I then completed my final year and walked away with a 2-1, which I was pretty happy with. I also met my girlfriend in the final year, who is now my Fiancée and we’re getting married next year
We just bought a house together (February 2010) in Solihull so expect many DIY posts as a result of that.
After Uni I went back to Dore (or DDAT as it was known at the time) to work as an IT Support Engineer, one thing led to another and soon I was working as Global Systems Engineer and flying all around the world looking after and setting up franchises. All good things have to come to an end though and in May 2009 the recession hit hard and the company went into administration. Luckily, the core of the company was rescued by a group of investors and Dynevor then took over. I’m working in Stratford-upon-Avon now as a Senior Systems Engineer where things are going well. I basically look after the network, any tech support and keep everything running smoothly.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I’m sure I’ll think of more to add here later.
If you really love the blog, or found any bits useful and fancy buying me a coffee or helping to fund a few more of my future gadgets, then please hit the donate button at the top of the screen.
Cheers,
DAVE