Hello!  I’m Cathy. I took my first computer basics class at Northern Michigan University when I was 18 and immediately was hooked. I was attending school on a grant and unfortunately didn’t have the funds to continue my education at that time. Cut to a few years later, I’m working as the receptionist for the American Heart Association and my boss, who also managed the MIS Department, asked if I’d be interested in getting some overtime helping with the conversion from an IBM Display Writer to a Digital MicroVax II.  I jumped at the chance.  It wasn’t long until I moved into the MIS Dept of three, and was installing and troubleshooting terminals and printers, doing application support and working on the first Tandy PC they brought in. 

I did that job for about 7 years and by that time I had become bored with my role, and I wanted to learn more. There wasn’t a way forward with my current employer so I started interviewing. I found an opening for an IT Coordinator position that was explained to me as IT reporting and Project Management and the pay was better so off I went. Unfortunately, once I got into it I found out that I was really the IT Director’s administrative assistant.  Getting coffee for meetings and answering my boss’s calls. I was miserable.  I had some hard conversations with him about the mix up in expectations.   Eventually a position was created for me which was akin to a junior system engineer, and I started working with the Novell guy, doing system management, managing the companies PCs and eventually got into training staff on the Groupwise email system. After a rough start, it ended up being a great learning experience.

Eventually I had to move on again in order to learn more and increase my pay as I was now a single mom. Over the years I’ve had to change jobs quite a few times.  I definitely have had my share of lucky breaks, but I don’t agree with the philosophy some people have of “You’re lucky to have a job”.   I think you make your own luck and your own opportunities, and that hard work pays off.   If you want something go out and get it!

So that’s how I got to where I am now, working as an IT Consultant doing a variety of project management, system implementations and support in the Citrix and Microsoft spaces.  If you or your company are looking for assistance in these areas or others such as backup, storage and VMWare you can check out TRC Group here.

What’s this website about?  Well for one I wanted to teach myself how to create a website, so there’s that.  It’s definitely a work in progress!  The main point of it though is to share my experience with people that might be thinking about getting into IT but don’t know how, or think you have to have a degree.   I also use this site to share solutions to problems that were hard as hell to figure out in the hopes I can save someone else a lot of time and effort.  There are so many people out there sharing their experience that have helped me over the years that I really want to give back.

So that’s the short version of my story. If you find any of this useful, please leave me a comment or if you have any questions drop me an email at
cathy@it-adventures.com.  I’d love to hear from you! If you are looking for any fun apparel or tech gear check out my shop here.