Introduction

Hello everyone, I finally got around to actually making a post here. Figured I should probably start off by introducing myself. I'm not much of a formal person so here goes nothing.

My name is Hok, at the time of writing I am employed as a Senior Site I.T. Specialist at a global healthcare diagnostics company called Roche in Pleasanton, CA. Much of my day-to-day tasks consists of providing 2nd and occasionally 3rd level I.T. support to our onsite employees in the form of: hardware and software troubleshooting, onsite network support, I.T. solutions building, providing instructional services, and unofficially I perform a lot of automation of our workflows via coding and scripting solutions. I've taken part in large, high visibility, and high impact projects that affect not only day-to-day operations at our Bay Area sites but also in projects that directly affect patient care in both CLIA and GMP environments. I have personally planned and executed large computer domain moves, and scripted automating computer configuration tasks to bring non-standard hardware into compliance with I.T. security standards for the company. I've also served as a Linux administration subject matter expert on a large data migration project moving hundreds of terabytes of company project, biostatistical, and patient healthcare data from Windows based network file shares to a RHEL based solution.

I am a graduate of the California State University system from CSU East Bay, with a degree in Computer Science with the addition of a Data Communications and Networking option. I've always loved technology growing up as a 90's kid. I look fondly back to my family's first PC which was an old i482DX2 and also where my siblings and I were exposed to the internet via AOL and experienced the rise of the dot com movement. My gravitation towards an education in computer science obviously stemmed (get it?) from this exposure, I began writing scripts and macros for mIRC in junior high and I suppose it's all history from there. Computers and tech have been integral to my upbringing and of course that's also where my passions lie. I did take a break from school from 2005-2012 to pursue a career in the military which I will go into a bit later, but I did eventually return to school and obtained my degree in 2017. I am also planning to pursue graduate studies as well, because well, learning is fun and technology is cool. I enjoy coding, and just about all things computer related, who knew magical rocks could be so cool.

I am also a former U.S. Marine, I took a break from school to pursue this adventure from 2005-2012. I served as a logistician involved in the planning, coordination, and execution of loading personnel and cargo onto military ships, rail systems, and aircraft. Despite the field that I was assigned to I was always drawn to the more technical aspects of the job. Military radio systems, wireless communications, and encryption were instrumental in ensuring we executed our jobs in a safe and secure manner to maintain operational security, and is quite frankly just awesome to learn about. I could talk much more about this but I was honorably discharged in 2013 from the service, and will probably leave it at that.

Cheers! And I hope I get to share something of interest on this blog!