About Me
Hi! My name is Robert Kalnins, and I am an End-User Computing Technician.
I have a passion for streaming, and I enjoy working on a smorgasbord of various tech related subjects.
This page is a brief introduction to who I am and what I do.
I've been in IT for 4 years now, and in my time I've done the following:
- Worked as an MSP log and flog grunt at a big name org
- Spent another year working at a white glove MSP - learning from amazing mentors and drinking from the firehose.
- Coming up on two years at a corpo job doing end user computing for retail
Don't judge me by my cover though - peep the passions/projects
Personal Projects
Here are some of the projects I've worked on:
-
Spun up a homelab
- Vmware ESX, later migrated to XCP-NG/XoA stack, migrated 10 out of 11 VM's successfully
- (Couldn't make OpenBSD work Xen, did a new install on an old ThinkPad instead)
- Active Directory stack for playing with domain controllers, pki/certs, IIS, group policy, etc
-
Ran a Project Zomboid hardcore (HC) server on VPS
- Ran for 8 months with over 99% uptime - inclusive of scheduled maintenance
- Custom systemd service to ensure reliability for my HC server
- Utilized built-in Linux terminal multiplexer (screen) to run and maintain access to the terminal for my HC server
- Used "Creative Engineering" and "Minimum Viable Hack" principles to create a novel respawn system using bash
- Setup HashiCorp Vault for secrets management to avoid storing keys in .env files
- Setup PostgreSQL database for tracking player respawn costs
-
Setup and created a Zomboid server for another community
- Used open-source framework
- Web panel for simplified administration by non-technical admins using a tool called web-lgsm
- Simplified mod management through a tool I created using Google Sheets
- Included changelog so that any issues caused were able to be traced back to changes made and reverted easily
- Used bash scripting, API integration, and modification of the web panel to add a "sync" feature
- Scripted VPS provisioning to reduce migration overhead AKA prepped for vendor issues or network failures
-
Built a resume generator that runs locally in the browser
- Used pdfkit to generate resumes as PDFs directly from input files containing skills, experience, and other sections
- Created a demo website where users could enter details live and generate a formatted PDF resume
- The long-term vision was to remove the toil of making tailored resumes by creating a system where:
-- You maintain a profile with everything you’ve done, every skill you have, and every experience that might be worth including
-- You paste a job advert in, and AI context-matches your skills/experience to the requirements
-- The system drafts a resume using your own words and timelines and suggests edits for ATS relevance
- The "genius" of it? The AI isn't writing the resume—it’s just mapping what the user already knows to what’s being asked for, keeping the human element intact
- Didn't fully complete it, but the concept was **simple, effective, and powerful**
- Generated resumes generally passing online ATS tests I could find
-
Created simple Lua mods for Project Zomboid
- Mods to enhance gameplay experience on my HC server
- Another to utilize one dev’s framework to call functions from another dev’s gameplay mod allowing Twitch chat integration, with permission from both
- Created a placebo mod that doesn't do anything to demonstrate more clearly to people what you can do with the vanilla game
- Currently has +3000 subscribed users and is in +600 collections - this was more of a marketing stunt than anything else but it was really fun
-
Created a simple Python bot using the last.fm API -
- Displays my currently played song on stream in real-time
Skills
Systems & Automation
- Windows Server administration (comfortable but mostly homelab experience)
- Linux system administration (confident in CLI, systemd, and automation, but not a guru)
- Systemd service creation (made custom services, but wouldn’t call myself an expert)
- Bash scripting (written a bunch, sometimes hacky, but gets the job done)
- Terminal multiplexing (screen, tmux) (basic usage, nothing fancy)
- Process automation (used scripting to remove toil, but no full DevOps pipeline experience)
Databases & Security
- PostgreSQL database administration (set up a DB, wrote queries, but not DBA-level)
- Database design for game servers (made a functional one, wouldn’t call myself a data architect)
- HashiCorp Vault for secrets management (set it up, used it, still learning best practices)
- Secure credential storage (avoiding plaintext passwords = good, deep security knowledge = improving)
- Sophos Certfied Architect (Got to meet a business need - not a real architect, am familiar with next gen firewalls and modern EDR)
Game Server Hosting & Modding
- VPS provisioning (scripted setups, prepared for vendor issues, but not cloud-native level)
- Game server hosting (Project Zomboid) (8-month uptime, built systems around it, solid at this)
- Multiplayer server administration (dealt with crashes, configs, updates, and community issues)
- Mod management for game servers (automated some of it, made tools to help others)
- Web administration panels (Web-LGSM) (used and modified it, didn’t build from scratch)
- Lua scripting (modded some things, but not a game developer)
- Game modding (Project Zomboid) (experimented, made things work together, no deep engine work)
- Twitch integration (made some fun toys for my community to use)
Scripting, APIs & Dev Work
- Python scripting (written functional scripts, not a software engineer)
- Last.fm API usage (used it to display music on stream, but not an API guru)
- Resume generation automation (built a working prototype, the AI piece is a WIP)
- PDF generation with PDFKit (functional, learned as I went, not a print formatting expert)
- Frontend web development (basic stuff, made my own tools, not a frontend dev)
- AI-assisted content matching (explored, conceptually sound, needs more testing)
- Context-aware automation (used it in small projects, but not at scale)
Networking, Troubleshooting & IT Glue Work
- Network troubleshooting (I break it, I fix it, but not a network engineer)
- DNS troubleshooting & familiarity (understand DNS records, propagation, and resolution issues)
- Configuration management (basic automation, no full Ansible/Puppet experience)
- Software deployment (done it in corp IT, but not a packaging expert, familiar with BigFix/Workspace one)
- IT documentation & knowledge sharing (written a fair bit in my time)
- IT security fundamentals (know the basics, always learning more)
- Debugging & troubleshooting scripts (trial and error, get it working in the end)
- Reverse-engineering existing mods (can read code with time, but can't instantly jump in and start making changes)
- Open-source tool adaptation (took existing things and bent them to my will)
- Creative problem-solving (definitely a strength, especially for janky but effective fixes)
- IT "glue work" (connecting disparate systems) (strong at this, making random things talk to each other)
- Self-hosting applications (got things running, dealt with breakage, learned from it)
- Git for personal projects (comfortable but not a hardcore version control nerd)
- Process scripting & automation (solving annoyances with scripts, not enterprise-grade automation)