Many people often ask me how I learned everything I know about computers and everyone assumes the standard answer of that I went to college and learned everything from classes, however this is not the case. While school has its purpose for teaching business practices and procedures it simply cannot prepare anyone to handle computer repair in the way I am experienced and ready to facilitate your needs.
Sometime around 1996 my mother bought our first family computer(sort of exciting at the time, as I never really had access to a computer and back at that time schools had very few of them and access was beyond limited as they were treated like million dollar machines that you were not allowed to touch). At first I dabbled in a few computer games here in there not really paying much mind to anything and the internet at that time was only available via dial up which we did not even have setup at first. I enjoyed my time on the computer and basically I was the only one who ever used the computer. Sometime in 1998 our new computer quit turning on, no power at all(this is where most people throw the computer away and buy a new one because they do not know any better.)! Using my early knowledge and ingenuity I called a few repair shops and bugged the guy for answers and I determined that the power supply broke and we ordered a new one, at that time many computers used proprietary power supplies specific to the brand and were very expensive. I convinced mom to drop 100$ and buy one. After installing the new part the computer magically came back to life and worked as if nothing ever happened!
As time progressed(1999) we got dial up service and I started to play multi player online games with users all around the world, and then the rabbit hole opened as I got heavily addicted to playing a particular game online that did more than challenge my skills as a player but it opened more than one avenue to learn. Unlike a Nintendo or Xbox system which are locked to only have certain settings available and only the provided controllers and hardware provided with them. Computer games have exponentially more customization from simple things to being able to set what keys do what actions all the way to the type of hardware your computer has that yield a wide range of benefits to many things such as how fast the computer runs and how much quality is put into the display of the images(or how well/fast you can see an enemy trying to come after you in a game). About this time its nearing the year 2000 and quickly technology growing faster than most can keep up with year to year and at this point I built my first computer without having ever doing so before. I did my research and harassed several computer repair shops to get answers and advice, and eventually made a hefty purchase which if I recall was about 2,400$ in computer parts for a brand new computer with a gaming video card.
In the gaming community I have learned how to setup game servers, voice chat servers, game cheats and hacks, connect with special chat communities that are hidden from plain site, and many many more things that I was exposed to with my peers from playing video games. It developed even further into designing entire levels in games and how to make them interact with the game world. You can draw a door frame and knob but it's not a door until you tell the game it's a door otherwise its just a rectangle that looks like a door to you.
The amount of things that can be done with a computer are countless and at this point in time I realized how much I LOVE computers and I want to work with them all the time. My high school hired me as a campus technician and I went on to work for my College as a support technician at the helpdesk which brings us to about the year 2004 when I finished high school and started this business!
Thanks for reading I just thought I would share how I got started in the field and why I enjoy it so much. Fixing a computer is in no way "work" or "boring" to me and I would continue to make repairs for as long as I am able.
-Jeremy Hopkins
