hey, i'm

Trevor Botha

Tech nerd, gamer, musician and motorhead!

Who I am and what I do

My career

I’ve been passionate about technology since my high school years. I started my career at a small company in my hometown, doing internal IT where I learned to build computers, run network cabling, and even setup servers.
A couple years later, I started my own IT company – National Technology Solutions – and the rest, as they say, is history.

My hobbies

As you can guess, I started gaming even before I got into computers and the tech world. I still remember putting 200+ hours into games such as Final Fantasy VIII, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, and so on. Ah, the good old days. I strated playing guitar when I was around 20, but have been into the metal scene since my teenage days. As if guitars and computers were not expensive enough, I developed a serious liking for cars – specifically Subarus – at the end of 2021.

Skills

Networking & Firewalls

Mikrotik, Cisco Meraki

Recently I have been mostly working with Mikrotik and Cisco Meraki firewalls. I have a lot of experience with Ubiquiti as well. For switching, I have mostly dealt with HP, Netgear and TP-Link switches, but I have setup a few Cisco CLI switches and access points. I have managed networks with multiple VLANs and WAN interfaces.

Windows/Linux OS and Servers

All Windows versions, mostly Debian for Linux

I have worked with Windows Server since my first IT job. In my current position, I am working more and more with Azure AD. As for Linux, I am pretty proficient with Debian. My entire home lab is pretty much setup on Debian, using Proxmox VE as my virtualization platform. I have setup some webservers using CentOS as well.

Troubleshooting

I'm a very efficient Googler

I believe I am pretty decent at troubleshooting issues by myself. I always try to understand how the system works, front to back. This way when we run into issues I find it pretty easy to identify where to look for the cause of the issue. learning Linux by myself has also turned me into a pretty efficient Googler.

Customer Service

Over 13 years of customer facing experience

I have been working with customers since my first job. Even with my first IT position being internal support for the company, we still had some outside clients as our hometown did not have many IT companies. I quite enjoy helping people and it brings me joy when we can “save the day” and ensure our customers can continue working.