Hi, my name is Karl, I'm from the UK and in my mid 30s. Online I typically go by the name of ‘the_angry_angel’.

Work

I'm currently employed as a remote polyglot (read: jack-of-all-trades) (sys|net)admin, with a side helping of dev, at a small IT support company based in the UK. I've been working remotely for about 13 years.

I'm a passionate individual who often gets too invested in work.

From 2004 I've worked at multiple IT support companies and gained a wide range of experience with different environments; from single digit to hundreds of users and multiple offices across the world. On-premises, cloud and hybrid. Both with and without in-house IT departments.

As a result I have the ability to adapt quickly according to customer's needs, and understand how to present technical solutions with succinct business cases, if necessary.

On the traditional (sys|net)admin side it would be impractical to list everything I'm familiar with, but here are some key words that may help;

  • Windows Server (including but not limited to Active Directory, Hyper-V, Exchange, SQL Server, DPM)
  • Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Ansible, Puppet, PostgreSQL, Nginx, etc.)
  • Containers (Docker, and prior LXC)
  • Ubiquiti, Juniper, Cisco, pfSense
  • Asterisk, FreePBX and 3CX
  • IBM and Dell server hardware
  • Git (including Github and Gitlab)

On the dev side I've worked with everything from PHP, Python, Ruby, Elixir, SQL (in various forms) to Nodejs, as well as a variety of languages in between. I am most comfortable with backend work. I occasionally dabble with frontend, but recognise it is not my strongest skillset.

My current passions in the workspace include;

  • Automation (both for server and dev - i.e. CI/CD)
  • Clustered virtualisation
  • IPv6
  • Monitoring
  • Odoo
  • Cloud Services (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc.)

Personal

Presently my personal time is largely made up of DIY. I bought a house that required a lot more work than I expected and it's sucking up more free time than I thought. Nearly 3 years later I'm still at it.

In the rest of my free time I tinker with code for various projects and play the odd game here and there.

  • I love heavy, chugging metal and rock music, but I'm unable to program with it on.
  • Most of my personal computer systems run various forms of Linux or other unix-like OS’.
  • I used to mirror the lugradio episodes. If you're here because of a broken link, I'm truly sorry. I did try and clean things up.
  • This blog was previously syndicated on Planet SysAdmin, and Planet #PHP.
  • I used to moderate for the LFS Forum.

Open Source

Although much of the dev I've performed at work is typically for closed/private/in-house projects and do not see the light of day I have made small contributions to several larger projects over the years (such as grafana, logstash plugins and cockroachdb and various Odoo plugins).

What little I am able to make available on my personal account can be found at github.com/theangryangel.