How I started in IT

I have always loved video games.

My earliest memories was back in the early 2000’s. Every Christmas, my Dad and I would bust out his old Sega Mega Drive and play Sonic the Hedgehog and Desert Strike for hours. Not long afterwards he replaced the Mega Drive with a Playstation 2. The jump from consoles was enormous. I remember seeing the likes of Colin Mcrae Rally 04 and thinking ‘theres no way the graphics will ever get better than this’. The PS2 kept me company for the next 10 years of my life, but with age comes more technical problems.

The Playstation had a tendency to not boot the game when the disk was slightly scratched. (There was nothing more stressful as a child, waiting for the Playstation 2 logo to appear after starting the console. This meant the game was booting at least). This happened to my copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. My parents never allowed me to play it, so my buddy let me borrow it in school. I popped the disk in and the dreaded ‘Disc read error’ message blinded me as I was in my room with the lights off. I ran to Youtube to try and fix the issue. I landed on a video that said rubbing tooth paste on the disk would help. Even at a young, I thought this was madness, but I was that desperate to play GTA.

After rubbing half of the tube on to the disk, I dried it out and popped it back into the console. It actually worked. I could not believe my eyes. How did rubbing toothpaste on a disk fix the issue? To answer that question I needed to answer another question. What even is the issue? What does ‘Disk read error’ mean? What’s being read and how is the console reading anything? This is where my curiosity began to grow. Figuring out that the Playstation reads microscopic bumps of data on the disk with a laser opened my eyes. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. That technology still amazes me and that is how I found my passion.

From then on, I was always curious about tech. I wanted to know how devices worked. Video games was still at the forefront and it was a huge driving factor. Or should I say Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was the driving factor. In 2013, San Andreas released on the IOS. I was 13 years old at the time, so I had no means to buy it. Of course my parents were never going to let me play it so I had to think of another option. The answer was J.A.I.L.B.R.E.A.K.I.N.G (shhh). Believe it or not but you don’t have full admin rights on your IOS device. Apple always has some control. Mostly for security reasons, but if you jailbreak, you can bypass these restrictions and do whatever you want. That’s why I spent multiple hours in my room, doing surgery on my iPod touch.

After a successful operation, I was now playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on my iPod. Not only did I have an amazing time roaming Los Santos as Carl Johnson, but I also felt a sense of accomplishment. Messing around with computers and electronics was a creative outlet for me. I was never good in school and I’m sure laziness has a big part to play in that , but also the crippling pressure of exams. I did enjoy one element of tests though and that was getting a laptop. Being diagnosed with Dyslexia has it’s perks.

I got to do my exams on an ancient HP device that looked like it had been pulled out of the bin 10 minutes beforehand. This was back in 2015, teachers in rural Ireland had no idea what they were doing. ‘Spell check is disabled on these laptops’ I was warned. Sitting in an empty room with a teacher who was more focused on reading her book than me, I hovered over to the spell check and realised I could just toggle it on. I didn’t have the guts to do it, looking back, I am 100% certain they would not have caught me. I probably could have left it on and they still wouldn’t have noticed.

I was always intrigued by tech, but I never took it seriously. Never thought I would be ‘smart’ enough to go down that line of work. Which is rich, considering some of the tickets I have received. College took me down a different path. After dropping out and following my partner to Amsterdam, I finally decided to take a risk and apply for a Helpdesk role at a school. Working at a sandwich shop on the Prinsengracht had taken it’s toll on me and I knew it was time to take a risk.

With nothing but a dream walking into that interview room, I had nothing to lose. I got the job a week later. Looking back, it was the best move I ever made and I have loved it ever since. I was lucky enough to start my career with a fantastic team around me.

About 2 weeks into my new role, I was struggling with a really high tech problem. Something mere mortals wouldn’t know how to fix. Only IT wizards who had the magic touch could solve. Someones windows camera was not working. After looking at it for 10 minutes (I mentally checked out 5 minutes beforehand, I was just trying to look like I knew what I was doing) the sysadmin came over and took a look. He reached his hand to the top of the laptop and slide the privacy slide off the laptops camera. ‘Ta-dah’ he laughed. I laughed too (I was crying on the inside). He sat back down and said,

“Thats what we call in the business an I.D.10.T”

Me – “What is that”

Sysadmin – “Write it down and you’ll understand”

I got out a piece of paper, thinking I was about to learn some serious high level IT secrets.

I started laughing. I knew I was in the right line of work.