Max Michaels

Lead Systems Administrator

[email protected]

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

– Elbert Hubbard

Professional Passion

From early on in my life I have had a passion for technology in general. I would sit in my parent’s business and tear apart how things worked, I wanted to know how and why something worked. This led me to have a great aptitude for analysis and understanding systems configuration and operation in a production environment. I have taken that passion and continued to learn everything that I can about a vast area of expertise. From high-level systems administration to coding and deploying applications from scratch, I enjoy it all!

My interests have always encompassed a lot of different technological topics. When learning a new skill set, I don’t stop till I can grasp the ideas behind it and understand it fully. I am motivated by my passion for technology, I learn anything needed and accomplish tasks set forth.

Professional Experience

I took my passion for technology and used it as fuel to pick up and learn a variety of skills. I have worked for 7+ years now as a self-employed IT contractor supporting small and mid-sized HIPAA compliant businesses with all their technology needs. This has exposed me to many technologies such as Active Directory, XenServer and Hyper-V virtualization, various networking environments, VoIP solutions, Endpoint management, and security just to name a few.

Not stopping at IT I taught myself to code at a young age with the advice of professional contacts I made in grammar school. Starting with Perl and Python then moving to web development in high school when I successfully launched and managed various web sites for online communities and non-profit organizations. University studies led me to add Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and Java to my list of languages I have learned. My passion for video games led me later to modding frameworks for Minecraft, Rust, and later FiveM (GTA V) where I taught myself Lua and most recently learning C#.

Education

  • DePaul University
    College of Computing and Digital Media

Skills / Certifications

  • Forcepoint Web Security Systems Engineer Certification
  • Linux and Windows Server Administration
  • Windows Active Directory Administration
  • Network Infrastructure Deployment and Administration
  • Database Administration
  • Media Creation (Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Avid Media Composer/Pro Tools)
  • Web Development

Interests

  • Technology
  • Camping
  • Hiking