Dad's Tech LabIt’s Me, Jimmy G
Hey there, I’m Jimmy Gillam! Thanks for checking out my blog. I just wanted to give you a little background to who I am, what I’m all about, and what drives me.
Check out my personal site, It’s Me Jimmy G, to learn more about me!
First and foremost I’m a husband and father of two. At the time of writing this, my daughter is 19 months and my son is only a week old! Having the time off from work is what gave me a little time and motivation to get this blog up and running. My wife and I got married in September of 2022. We’ve been together a total of 5 and a half years now. She is an amazing partner to journey through life together and an even more amazing mom. I absolutely adore our daughter. She is so cute, goofy, and so smart. She’s the best mix of my wife and I. Even though my son and I haven’t known each other long, I can’t wait to see him grow up.
Having kids is exhausting, but it is the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had.
I’m from the south
Go Dawgs!
I’m a Georgia Bulldogs fan through and through. Saturdays in the fall you can find me with friends and family watching the Georgia games. Just because I’m a tech nerd doesn’t mean I do it all the time. I also love to get outside and golf (I’m absolutely terrible), kayak, fish, and as crazy as it sounds I like getting out and doing yard work (as long as it’s not in the middle of summer). I do love my video games, but don’t get much time for that anymore either lol. My family, but especially on my wife’s side, loves to have game nights to play card games and board games. It’s going to be great getting the kids playing over the next few years. I love technology, playing with stuff in my home lab, and tinkering with things, but you still need to get out and experience life. Like all things in life, you need to have a good balance ☺️
Where I’m at now…
I was a software developer leading a small team in a startup like atmosphere for the first 11 years of my professional career. I started as an intern, got the job when I graduated, and went on to lead our team for many years. I got to experience learning from some veteran developers, being tasked to build a brand new payroll product with a brand new stack, to growing that payroll product to move millions of dollars every week, supporting companies and employees not just with getting paid, but also filing their taxes. It was a great experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I got to start with just full stack development, went down a design road for a bit, focused in front-end development, back to full stack, a lot of both relational and non-relational DB work, I got to work with IT for cloud infrastructure and monitoring, a lot of mentoring younger developers (and learning from them too), working with product, design, QA, and clients, devops, heck I even managed our O365 licenses and administration, security, certificates, even badges and networking within our office lol. I really got to be exposed to everything and learn from a lot of people, and I’m very grateful for that. It goes a long with one of the things I always tell people…
In our profession, your most important job is to never stop learning
I loved the people I worked with and the product I built (it was my baby), however I did get burnt out doing so many things. It was easier on me before I settled down with a family, but once I found my person I knew I had to have better work/life balance. Then when kids came a long, I really realized out burnt out I was and needed a change.
I decided to switch things up in early 2024, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for. I found an opportunity with another local company. I won’t go into too much detail, but it was not what I expected and I ended up leaving after a short 5 months. In that time, I did get to play with some new technologies and push out quite a bit of updates. It just wasn’t for me. However, it was a great learning experience. It was the first time I really stepped outside of my norm, did interviews for the first time, tried something new, and although it didn’t work out I learned a lot not only about new technology I introduced, but I also learned I needed to push myself. I learned how to manage situations better in new environments. I learned where some of my weaknesses were. I learned that the role I put myself into wasn’t what I was wanted to do.
To be honest, I’m still not quite sure what I want to do, but I’m getting closer.
In my current role, I’m working from home as a solutions architect for a major company here in the US. It’s been a great experience diving into an enormous ecosystem, learning from people a lot more experienced from me, and seeing things from a different viewpoint. I really do miss being hands on and coding, as well as working with other teams, and mentoring younger devs. I think in my next role I want to have a good balance of what I’m doing now and what I’ve done in the past.
My side projects
When I get the chance, one of my favorite hobbies/income drains is working on my home lab and making our home smart. I started out years ago building a bluetooth garage door opener with an Arduino. Then came my Raspberry Pi era. I still have RPi 2’s, 3’s and Zeros laying around doing nothing at the moment. Then I graduated to where I’m at now where most of my stuff is running on an old thin-client PC. It has an OK processor, I beefed up the RAM, installed Proxmox, and I have it running about 3 or 4 VMs and about 6 different containers. I’m not quite out of RAM and CPU on it, however I’d love to upgrade it in the near future. I’ll get into more details in my posts, but I’m running Home Assistant, piHole, Trillium, my Unifi Network Server, Caddy, a few other web apps and containers. It’s been a great learning experience setting up networking, security, infrastructure, remote storage, automation, and more through it all. However the one thing that has changed our lives (even just a little) is Home Assistant.
I started out just putting in some motion sensors and smart light switches. Then I started adding more sensors, more automations, and more integrations. I’ve added leak sensors, vibration sensors, door sensors, sound sensors for fire alarms, moisture sensors, a weather station, and more. Even though we don’t notice the little things we’ve gained everyday, you better believe we notice them if I take the server down for some reason. Home automation isn’t about replacing existing functionality in your home, it’s about supplementing how things already work in your home to make your lives easier. Simple things like turning on lights when we walk into rooms, notifications that our dumb washer and dryer are finished, to being notified about a leak, or even bedtime routines for our daughter. It’s the little things that really get you and you miss them when they aren’t there.
Where I see myself going…
I would love to own my own business within the next few years. With a young family, it will probably be more like 5 years, but I’m working towards that goal now. I’d love to have a business that sets up new homes with smart home technology and retrofits existing homes with it as well. I’ve also got a few app ideas (don’t we all), including one or two that I’m currently working on. I’d love to do some consulting. I like getting out there and helping people and businesses do both little things and big things.
Until I go out on my own, I’d love to get back into a role where I’m more hands on doing both architecture, development, and mentoring younger devs. I’m not a big fan of remote work. I do miss the social aspect of working in office. I think there’s huge advantages of just sitting in a room with other devs knocking out problems, or working with product owners face-to-face to figure out exactly what they want. However, with all of our family close to us and the changes in the world since COVID, I think I’ll be working remotely for a while.
My ultimate goal is to be my own boss. I’d love to push myself and our employees, provide great services to people both on the web and locally, and get more time to spend with my family.
We’ll get there one day. Dad’s Tech Lab is just a stepping stone in getting there 😃