# About Me

2026-04-09 Scan

Once upon a time I ran a WordPress blog called BitBouquet. With the changing pace of my life, I made the decision to switch to a simple static site for my content.

Hello, I'm Hazel. Nice to meet you!

I love IT infrastructure! I believe that grasping the underlying technologies and systems that move peoples lives and businesses is an incredibly important asset in our modern age, and this blog serves as a testament to that mentality. I strongly believe in the power of FOSS, and the importance of self-hosting in this cloud-ridden, engagement obsessed, LLM-ified internet we all participate in.

#### A brief history⌗

My journey with technology started after I graduated university with a bachelors degree in commerce, and a minor in economics. Despite that, I somehow ended up working as a supervisor at a certain canadian computer store.

Through that job I re-discovered my love for computers and became interested in the deeper side of repair, and server technology. I started self-hosting a NAS, and got involved in various online communities which helped expand that curiosity into a real job.

In 2023, I got a job with an MSP as tech, and eventually moved into an escalations role. It was an amazingly stressful job, with so many opportunities to learn. When people joke that MSPs are like an IT bootcamp, they’re not lying!

Fast forward to 2025, and I started an independant Japanese import arcade with my friends in Toronto. The business has grown to a point where I was able to quit my IT gig. We do contracts all around Canada for various gaming and anime conventions, all while running a downtown storefront.

#### Projects⌗

- sweetgum: A stripped down v83 MapleStory server with a single map structure, designed explicitly to be a chatroom with a dress-up element.

- bm2dnix: Continuation of the nixac project, a combination of utilities and scripts to aid in the process of running Beatmania IIDX on linux systems. (deprecated)

- lycoris: A fully automated & containerized self-managed media library hosted through Plex/Jellyfin.

- bitbouquet: Former personal blog that housed all my tech ramblings and personal stories about identity and transition. It used to run a public AI upscaler (waifu2x) that utilized a fancy CUDA container.

- blossomworks: My multi-site, fully managed network stack. It hosts this website!