Hello World, Intoducing myself to the SteemIt crowd!

Time to stop lurking and tell you a bit about myself and why I am here.

Who am I:

I am a semi-retired IT Professional (fancy name for someone who keeps computers working). I worked 20 years for a company that hired out IT people like myself to help small business owners who could not afford full time IT support. Now I do some IT for a small non-profit to earn some extra money. I started my career as a UNIX support person with SCO UNIX. Then due to that market having more paying customers, I started supporting Windows computers. I did not give up my love of UNIX based computing.

Why I am here:

I have three technology related things that I enjoy working with and learning.

1. Raspberry Pi

I have been a UNIX/Linix user from the 1980's and when I discovered the Raspberry Pi single board computer in 2012 I was hooked. It's small size, low power and low cost makes it ideal for small projects and as a learning tool.

1. Python programming language

I have done programming in various languages, but have decided at this time that Python is the one to learn. It also was part of the reason for the name Raspberry Pi and is very often used in programming the Raspberry Pi.

1. Solar power

As I grow older and wish to have less of an impact on the environment, I became interested in solar power. I do not have the money to invest in a full on solar powered home. My brother gave me a couple of used solar panels and batteries. So now I am experimenting with a small scale solar power system. Additionally I only power my collection of Raspberry Pi's from solar power.

Tying it altogether:

I am now able to experiment with solar power by running the Raspberry Pi's and then writing programs in Python to monitor the power coming from the solar panels. I also have a Raspberry Pi that is logging temperature both inside the house and outside. As I am now trying to write about my experiences on SteemIt @rishi556 has started me looking into how to use Python programs to monitor and work with the Steem blockchain. Of course I will be running these on my Raspberry Pi's.

Why the persona @mytechtrail

I had attempted to start a blog 5 years ago, but did not put alot of effort into it. At that time I decided to call it My Technology Trail as I was trying to document my trail thru various technologies.

[Special thanks to @rishi556 and the gang on the Platforms discord for being so welcoming.
Also thanks to posts by @nerdi, @spencercoffman and @iamwhatiamnotfor prodding me to do my introduceyourself post]