Welcome!

I’m Cristian Naranjo, a homelab enthusiast, movie buff, video game connoisseur, and all-around nerd.

I got into this industry as a kid. Like many others I spent my time learning and playing with emulators, navigating LimeWire and The Pirate Bay, jailbreaking iPods and early iPhones for friends, spinning up VMs for distro hopping, breaking and fixing computers, and learning from having a parent who worked as a sysadmin.

My passion for tech, the dopamine hit of fixing a problem and finding solutions for others made it an easy career choice. I joined the Army straight out of high school as a 25U, a commo soldier. I worked at the brigade level in the S6 shop, held a Secret clearance, and learned a lot about security and cryptography.

My Army experience deepened my interest in security and I knew then that I wanted to make that my end career goal. I believe strong foundational experience is essential in this field, so I ran head first into MSPs, help desk roles, and any contracts that offered exposure to all of the new and relevant technologies/services. As of now, I have more than twelve years of general help desk and IT experience, have supported many clients across different industries, and always look for ways to grow my skills and keep up with relevant cyber news. My goal is to move into sysadmin work and later transition into a SOC analyst role.

Outside of work, I completed an intro to web development program with CodeFellows and a cybersecurity technician course with Covered6. I hold CompTIA Security+ and ISC2 Certified in CyberSecurity certifications. I build all of my computers and run my own homelab. Now, I wanted to start this blog to practice technical writing, documentation, and web hosting and hopefully showcase my future builds and projects.

So thank you for taking the time to read this far, hopefully some of my posts can teach you something even if its what not to do :D