About the Owner

My relationship with technology started at age 6 with educational video games (JumpStart) and quickly advanced into the likes of Doom 95 and Mob Rule. I remember my Dad giving me his old Windows 98 laptop and tinkering with 3.5” floppy disks on Microsoft Word. I eventually tinkered with Lego stop-motion and would edit them frame-by-frame to add laser effects, compiling them together, then adding music.

I started tearing apart old family computers around 12, trying to piece together the best parts. I built my first PC at 15 once I had saved up enough money from my paper route, and have built many more for friends and family over the years. I used to install Linux on external hard drives so I could play games in study halls. If there was a BIOS password, no worries! I’d just open the case and re-seat the CMOS battery! Gaming continued to drive my passion for technology.

I started my professional IT career in high school fixing Frymaster circuit boards, Ithaca recipt printers, and other restaurant electronics. I quickly got pulled to help with the PC repair side of the business as well. In my free time I’d host my own Minecraft LAN parties (Thanks Mom for hosting us and making pizzas). I’d host the server myself on a spare old laptop and port forward the laptop IP on our router, setting up a dynamic DNS URL with our public IP, and sending it to my friends who could only play from home.

I went on to get my degree in Information Technology & Management at Illinois Tech. During this time I was a Network and IT Security intern with the same company for about 2 years, including during the school year. I later got another internship closer to downtown at a proprietary trading company. I set up Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to image Dell Precision towers with Windows 7. I learned how to set up and move very complex trader setups, some of which had 4 separate desktop PCs with 10 monitors total in a completely unique configuration for each trader. I started making diagrams for each trader’s set up so I was confident it was moved and set back up identically.

Once I graduated, I started working for a financial services company on their Help Desk and very quickly got promoted to Systems Administrator in just over a year. I set up MDT again here but for Windows 10 and lead the project to get the entire organization of over 500 endpoints across the U.S. upgraded. I automated our user provisioning process with PowerShell, putting users into the right groups based on AD attributes, mailbox configuration, etc.

Over the years I’ve been given some very consistent feedback…

• “You pick up new things extremely quick”

• “You consistently give 100% and shine amongst your peers”

• “You’re extremely kind and helpful”

• “You don’t make me feel dumb”

• “You always do the right thing, or try to if it’s out of your control”

• “You: don’t beat around the bush/give it to me straight/are direct”

• “You’re not afraid to make yourself look dumb by asking a question, admitting what you don’t know“

• “You keep your ego in check”

• “You’re a good listener”

…and have come to some discoveries and self-truths.

• I’ve struggled to find meaning & purpose in the corporate world.

• IT is not what it was 10 years ago, and won’t be what it is today in 10 years. I need to embrace this.

• I’m the type of person who always thinks about what could have been done better or more efficiently.

• Good work is hard to come by in any profession.

- Pete Marciano