New Beginnings

Like a lot of young professionals my age, I grew up using technology to communicate with friends and watched social networking blossom from the early days of IRC and ICQ to AOL Instant Messenger and various blogging sites all the way to where we are today with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I have maintained several personal blogs over the years, but this is my first professional blog so hang on with me as I adapt to the difference in writing techniques.

Let's start with a little about me, I am 25 and a Systems Analyst for a booming IT Consulting company in Southeast Alabama. My first computer was a Commodore 64 my father brought home from work and I have faint memories of playing Donkey Kong and Wheel of Fortune on that machine. The more I tinkered, the more I got hooked and eventually I got into building my own machines. Like most other young teenagers, I enjoyed gaming so me and my buddies a few times a month would bring our machines to our houses, hook up a 5-port hub and go to work. This went on for several years and after experimenting with several different majors, I decided that the IT and technology space is where I needed to be. I received my B.S. degree in Information Systems from UAB in May of 2011.

Enough about me, let's attempt to answer the real question on everybody's mind, what is the purpose of this blog? I plan to keep a historical account of my current projects and any errors that I encounter along the way, for my benefit as well as anybody else who may run into the same issue. For today, let's start with something fun, my new super computer build. My boss wanted each of us to build a new machine so that we could stay current on how to do so, and gave us a pretty fair budget to accomplish this. Below are the specs on the machine I priced out:

The List
Asus P6T6 WS Revolution MoBo
WD 2TB 7200 RPM drive
Intel Core i7-970 Gulftown 3.2GHZ Six-Core Processor
WD 450GB 10000RPM drive x 2 (RAID 0)
ATI Radeon HD4670
CORSAIR 850w power supply
OCZ 120gb SSD
24GB DDR3
CoolerMaster HAF 912 MidTower Case

The Pictures

Still waiting on the motherboard to show up so I can finish the rest of the build. Thanks for reading and I look forward to updating this regularly.