I’ve always been interested in solving problems and making things more efficient. From Legos to Erector sets, my mind always wanted to figure out how things work and how to make them better.
My exposure to IT started by my dad in the early 90’s. I was constantly borrowing (to his annoyance) and reading his computer magazine subscriptions (PC Magazine, BYTE Magazine, PC World) to gain insight into this new, exciting world. I learned a ton helping him build a small 10Base-T LANtastic network in our home with two computers running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and a OKI Data dot-matrix printer. I would play around with MS-DOS and batch files, customizing autoexec.bat to do all kinds of fancy things. In high school, I took a Pascal programming class and loved working out the logic needed to solve the problems presented by the teacher.
At the age of 19, I got my first IT job providing tech support. Windows 95 was the latest and greatest thing out, and soon after starting I upgraded all desktops. Eventually that company got a T-1 connection, which meant surfing the Internet and…e-mail! I worked with a consultant to get Microsoft Windows NT 4.0/Microsoft Exchange 4.0 installed and configured, along with the first release of Microsoft Outlook deployed to all desktops. This sort of productivity was amazing!
Fast forward 23 years, and I have gone from desktop support to system administration to now system automation. I am passionate about automating processes, both simple and complex alike. My work now primarily deals with PowerShell/C#, Git/TFS, and soon CI/CD pipelines.
And now I want to share what I have learned over the years. I would not be where I am now without countless people helping and teaching me along the way, especially my dad…which leads me to the name of my blog: Dusk Consulting. My dad was a musician and when I was very young (0-4 years) had a band named Dusk and a recording studio called Dusk Recording Studios. He had license plates that said DUSK and DUSK 24 that I always admired. After he passed in 1998, I decided that at some point I would honor him in some fashion, and I am proud to finally make that happen with this blog.
My dad, Larry Shamus Jr., behind the scenes at Dusk Recording Studios
Dusk - The Band