Well I guess start with the obvious right?! I’m Matthew Ouellette. Most people simply call me Matt or in other arenas and on some platforms “Packet” which I’ll get to. Maybe if you know me from my home town it might even be “Mattrick”. For a bit of humor I suppose you can call me Omelet as well since no platform can understand my last name although I prefer Biscuits and Gravy for breakfast food 🙂 If you are reaching out to me feel free to use whichever you’d like. I don’t get upset by the use of my full name or nick names so it’s all fair game.
I grew up in Northern Lower Michigan which is a strange term. It is kind of a Michigan problem as “Up North” can mean Northern Lower Michigan or the Upper Peninsula depending on topic/conversation. It essentially means I grew up south of the Mackinac Bridge that leads to the Upper Peninsula but up in the northern part of the lower peninsula. AKA not down near Detroit or the Ohio/Indiana borders. The town lived in sits on Lake Huron in a little bay called Thunder Bay.
Growing up there was the typical small town “up north” living as a kid. I played baseball, soccer, hockey, and an array of other summer activities including skateboarding, bike riding, and fishing. Yearly tradition was a week camping in summer with my grandparents cooking over fires and just getting away. You knew all your neighbors and walked into their house to borrow the milk as they were eating dinner. True small town vibes. Help everyone and ask my friends to this day I back my late mothers actions and promote #BeKindToEachOther. This is also where my technology interest came to be. My father worked his entire career (at least as far as I can remember and he’s told me) in the telephone industry which meant I spent some time at his office (CO’s) punching down wires for the fun of it if we passed by on road trips. No No No don’t worry they were non-terminated blocks! I wasn’t aimlessly as a youngin playing with production wire blocks.
Of course, as you can imagine being a kid in a small town that is very outdoors and playing sports I had all the common childhood injuries. Broken bones, stitches, bruises, all the cuts and scrapes the world can hand you. Oh well I say, the truth is all the hardships taught me a resiliency to push through and keep going. In fact I broke both wrists at the same time and still sat with my hockey team on the bench, when the game was over I walked out on the ice to shake the other teams hands and boy-oh-boy you should have seen the look on moms face! I’m sorry for the scare and yes I understand if I slipped on that ice with both arms in casts up to the elbows I would have likely broken my arm above the cast but kids will be kids. Bless you mom, I’m sorry and I miss you dearly.
I played in a band throughout my high school years but learned quickly I wasn’t going to make any real living off of that so I went off to my community college and earned a degree in computer networking. The natural choice came from my fathers work, and our house being early adopters to the Internet because of it. After graduation with an associates degree I moved away for job opportunities and really began to cut my teeth in the technology arena.
Now residing in Southwest Michigan halfway between Chicago and Detroit I’ve moved through my career from Staples computer tech, to small and large healthcare, and now doing design and deployment as a VAR engineer. Throughout this time I’ve studies multiple technologies around and outside of certification paths. I put this blog together to help share my experiences in doing so.
Outside of technology I’ll be found still playing my drums. It’s hard to give up such a fun and stress relieving activity such as that! I also continue to play hockey on an adult league once a week just to keep up the old skating chops.
Most often I’ll be found hanging out with my pup Aurora either going for walks our grilling out in the backyard. She’s not much of a pup anymore however, she’s still a small celebrity amongst friends. Aurora is the official mascot of the Packet Pilot blog and is affectionitally known as the Packet Pup.
Feel free to click around and let me know if you have any questions for comments. Aurora says Woof!