part of me thought itd be funny to fire up an ai personality model and have it write this post. its my first post after all. everything on the internet is garbage now anyway why not contribute to it? maybe thats why i decided against it.
man this has been something. five years ago when covid was popping the fuck off and we were in between it wasnt real and being forced not to leave our houses, stand on lines for hours just to get into a store to get ground beef, and try not to die i guess, there i was, tinkering in my basement trying to master vmware vsan hyper converged infrastructure.
ok. wait. lets go one more step back. my first server was a dell c6100 cloud server. you know, the ones prone to catching on fire because they were heaping piles of garbage? yea, that. and i loved it. it was amazing. i didnt care it burned 500w just to be powered on. i didnt care that it used ddr2 ram and was slow as shit. i didnt care that it would randomly take massive dookies and go haywire.
it was my first server. it was mine. and i fucking loved it.
ok. back to vmware vsan hci. my job wanted to use it, i had no experience in it, and they wouldnt send me for training or pay for me to learn it so i was up shits creek without a paddle. vmware vsan hci might as well have been another language to me because i sure as fuck had no idea what it was.
looking back it was this that started the fire. my server cluster piecemealed together with bubble gum and string. i learned it and i got comfortable with it. and then i had to get rid of it.
that led me to everyones favorite website. craigslist. oh what a fun experience that is. leaving out all of the scam texts, scam calls, choosing beggars, it was a positive experience. i met cool people. i heard cool stories. and i realized theres a real interest here and it made me feel good. i was slinging shit at great prices and it made things affordable to people.
people that lost their jobs.
people that wanted to get promoted.
people that wanted to learn new skills.
people who wanted to get into homelabbing.
people who wanted to grow their homelab.
people who ran small businesses.
people in school.
it was the stories and conversations that launched me into what im doing today. i met people who wanted to not only buy, but sell me stuff. and i made contacts. lots of them. some i outgrew. some got greedy. some stopped selling. but i kept going.
after craigslist came facebook marketplace. i didnt last too long there. its worse then craigslist and is, quite frankly, a pile of dogshit. chargebacks that screwed me completely. scammers galore. choosebeggars. nonstop harassment. it was a complete nightmare.
that led me to ebay. i figured this was the end of the line. ill try and sell off what i have, and move on. ebay is littered with itad (it asset and destruction) resellers who literally have zero idea of what they are selling. i’m convinced of it. their listings are all generated slop, their packaging practices are sus at best, and their support is even worse. you know how i know this? because I ALSO used ebay to buy my servers. i personally know how much it sucks to drop several hundred dollars on something, only for it to arrive packed with fucking toilet paper, if i was even that lucky.
and even with the slop resllers (there are some good ones, don’t get me wrong) i didn’t think i’d have a shot in hell to compete. i mean its completely nuts. i figured i would have zero chance and it was going to be a complete waste of my time.
but thats where it got interesting. i was able to compete with them. slowly of course. over time i made more and more sales. and thats when i realized i was doing something special. because i was having those same conversations i was having with people over craigslist, on ebay. same stories. and it made me feel good knowing i wasnt ripping people off, and that i was helping them get to where they wanted to go.
is that weird? maybe. maybe im losing my mind. but that is what drives me today. last year, 2024, ebay sent me an email. its all bullshit im sure, but they told me i outperformed 99% of all other server sellers and that i was top 5% seller on ebay. and yes, i’m super fucking proud of that:
that blew my mind. what the hell happened? i dont know. but as long as i keep helping people, and feeling good about what im doing, ill keep going.