Hi, I'm Vance

Hey, I'm glad you're here. For the better part of ten years I worked in restaurants — the long shifts, the dinner rushes, the thousand little fires you put out before anyone even notices. I loved the people and the pace, but tech was always the thing tugging at me after the last table cleared. Eventually I stopped ignoring it.

My way in was as a metaverse developer at Threedium, building interactive 3D experiences for the web. That was the moment a hobby turned into real work. It got me comfortable with computers and the command line, and hooked on the feeling of chipping away at a problem until it finally gives. I built this site myself, hand-coded with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

These days I'm pointing all of that at IT. I'm studying for the CompTIA A+ — the classic first step into the field — and rather than just watching videos on the couch, I'm building a hands-on home lab and writing down everything I learn. Funny enough, all those years on the restaurant floor handed me the part of IT support you can't really study for: staying calm when things break, explaining things without the jargon, and being kind to someone who's having a rough day.

The A+ really rewards people who've gotten their hands dirty, so that's where I spend my time — installing Windows and Linux in virtual machines, poking at the command line, wiring up little networks, taking real PCs apart, and breaking things on purpose just to learn how to put them back together. You can peek at the whole lab over on the home page.

And I write. The blog is part study journal, part guide — how to pass the A+, build a lab, and land that first IT job. If anything here helps you get certified, get hired, or just feel a little less lost, then it's done its job. Stick around, read a few posts, and don't be a stranger — say hi below.