Godfather of Tech?

Ok, introduction time here. No, it probably won't be quick, so sit back and relax.

I am a self-taught technical person with a passion for fixing Windows-based PCs, everything from an old notebook to a enterprise-class server. While I don't consider myself a genius or someone who stands out above the crowd, others around me do, especially my wife, who calls me a frakkin' genius [hey to the BSG peeps].

That ability to troubleshoot, resolve and repair has gotten me pretty far from my small-town roots in Graham, TX to the fast-paced atmosphere of the Fort Worth and Dallas Metroplex.

I currently own a small business in Graham, TX that I work on the weekends and I work a full-time job for a VoIP provider during the week.

So, on to the name.

A friend of mine, Mark Gibbs, coined that phrase (among many others) during our tenure at FlashNet Communications in Fort Worth.

FlashNet was a startup ISP when I joined it in 1996 working in the sales department. After about three months of working a terrible 1:00-10:00 shift, the President of the company, Scott Leslie, asked me to take over the technical support department.

I was fairly excited to do so, but I knew the relationship between sales and tech support was a tumultuous one. I wasn't sure how the tech guys would handle a 'sales guy' managing them. I wasn't really a 'sales guy', I just played one to make enough money to survive. Don't get me wrong, I was good at it, but my passion and knowledge was PC support.

I had just spent the past five years building and repairing PCs as well as managing a group of technicians at a local computer store. The sales position was the only one available at the time when I applied and I really wanted to get in on the ground floor of this Internet thing.

I heard the whispers and saw the questions in the faces of the eight or so support people when the 'sales guy' was introduced as the Tech Support Manager. Years later, after winning them over and becoming great friends with those original support people, a number of them confessed they originally questioned Scott's mental state when he appointed me to the position. They also told me of the questions they would come up with to 'test' me to see if I knew anything about supporting PCs.

I suppose I passed with flying colors.

A few years after starting there, I had moved out of front-line customer support and into more of a sysadmin role. The tech support manager at the time, Daryl, had called a tech meeting to discuss whatever issue of the day was occurring.

As the group met outside my office I kept an ear pointed to the conversation, trying to pick up on what was going on. Gibbs peered over the crowd and saw I was listening to the meeting from a distance and gave a bit of a nod toward me.

Instinctively, I nodded back. To Gibbs, I suppose, that appeared to be a Godfather-type move and he coined the term, Godfather of Tech. Thinking back, I can see how that must have appeared and why he would get that impression.

I embraced the nickname, along with a number of others people given me over the years. More on those at a later time.