Hunter fennell

Born and raised in “small” town Edson Alberta, I was always drawn to technology, mainly as a kid video games, I tore apart my consoles to check out was going on in what seemed like wizardry to my young mind, to the distain of my parents.

My first ever device my conscious mind laid eyes on was an old Gameboy Advance SP, my brother and I went through 3 of them because we we’re interested in the technology, as he and I aged on through our younger years we understood the delicacy of our technology and often looked to guides on how to maintain or alter our gaming equipment to get the most out of them.

My family eventually invested in a family computer, and it was something I had a fixation on, I watched videos on how computers work, and how to maintain upkeep on a computer that was often never shut off. The computer was running slow? My brother and I we’re often called on to help.

As time went on into my teenage years, I was given a pre-built that ran hardly anything. I then landed a part-time job and saved up just enough to build a custom PC with an AMD CPU and a 2070S, I spent my free time gaming on this machine, and learning about virtualization and how to set-up Oracle VirtualBox on that computer, I even attempted some Arch Linux installations, which was hard, Arch was my first exposure to a Linux based OS which was pretty rough at the time and given my limited Linux experience at the time.

During this time my family mildly spread the word that I was the computer technician, while majority of the cases I was exposed to we’re minor, a few of my mother’s colleagues had their family reach out to me about building computers for them, or finding laptops that would fit their needs and wants.

Following my graduation in 2021 I started following in my father’s foot-steps and decided a labor position at a Mill would assist me in making enough money to attend NAIT, while at the time I was unsure what specialization I wanted to do whether it be Network Engineering Tech, or IT Business Analyst, a classmate of mine pointed out that NAIT has a System Administrator program that was right up my alley. I had a goal to focus on.

While at this Mill, I noticed my father left a name for myself there, for me. Not even 4 days in I had someone my father mentored approach me on how to build a gaming computer. So we sat down on a day off that was lined up in out schedules and I priced out a build that was within a 2.5k budget at the time, we opted for an Intel CPU with a 3080.

My first year of classes went smoothly! Dean’s honors in the first semester, but I unfortunately barely fell short of that mark in my second semester. (Taking 6 classes is hard!) Ending it off with a 3.4 GPA, I am still very proud of myself for this, and intend on being doing even better in my third and fourth semesters.