Hi, I’m Michael. I’ve been in the technology industry for over a decade. I founded Qutzl LLC to help small and medium businesses across central Pennsylvania with remote support, hosting, and practical technology consulting, and I write Qutzl Insights the same way I work: clear steps, real tradeoffs, and advice you can use on a Tuesday afternoon.
Work & Clients
Through Qutzl and earlier roles throughout the years I’ve supported organizations across a wide range of industries, with clients all over the world. The stack changes; the job stays the same: keep systems reliable, keep people productive, and don’t overcomplicate what doesn’t need to be complicated.
That work has spanned oil and gas operations; finance and compliance environments including banks, financial advisors, and credit unions; videography shops; brick-and-mortar and online retail; religious organizations; hotels and motels; disaster cleanup; and more. I’ve also completed research and testing projects for companies, some of them among the largest in the world, and for universities.
Different sectors bring different constraints: audit expectations in finance, uptime pressure in hospitality and retail, field realities in energy, and careful handling of member or congregational data in community organizations. I treat each environment on its own terms and leave it better documented than I found it.
Education
I earned an Associate of Science in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State in 2016, then a Bachelor of Science in the same program in 2018. As a freshman work-study help desk technician, I spent 20 to 40 hours a week supporting Penn State systems: account resets, deployments, and the everyday tickets that show how people actually use technology.
From sophomore through senior year I interned with the lead technology instructor at Penn State DuBois. That role opened the door to real lab and production tooling: project work, help desk support for students and staff, classroom and lab maintenance, and deep exposure to Linux, macOS, Windows, VMware, Citrix, SANs, networking, and backup platforms. The hours stacked up quickly (thousands before graduation), and I kept learning by building.
Toolkit
A partial list of platforms I work with regularly. Where a tool runs part of a Qutzl service or the Chef’s Kiss app, I’ve noted which. Qutzl’s Service Providers page lists the vendors that handle customer data and what each one does.
Platforms & systems
- Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, Windows XP through 11, Windows Server 2008 through 2025
- Linux distributions: Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, CentOS, Arch, and Alpine
- Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, which also runs Qutzl’s own mail and documents
- Apple Business Manager and Jamf
- TrueNAS, Synology, QNAP, Home Assistant, Nextcloud, and WordPress
- iOS and Android development, with Expo for app builds, push notifications, and app monitoring
Cloud, edge & containers
- AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle Cloud, Vultr, DigitalOcean, and OVHcloud
- Cloudflare: DNS, Tunnel, Workers, Pages, R2, Access, and WAF
- Workers KV, Durable Objects, and Workers Analytics Engine for rate limits, abuse controls, and usage logs behind Chef’s Kiss
- QUIC.cloud for caching and optimization on the LiteSpeed sites Qutzl hosts
- Docker hosts and Docker Compose stacks
- Redis and Valkey for caching and lightweight queues
Web & hosting
- Astro for sites and content apps
- Apache, Nginx, LiteSpeed, and Traefik
- MySQL / phpMyAdmin and PostgreSQL
- cPanel, WHM, and CWP
- NameHero for Qutzl’s cPanel web and email hosting and the WHMCS client portal at billing.qutzl.net
- NGINX Proxy Manager
Virtualization & networking
- XCP-ng, XCP-ng Center, and Xen Orchestra
- Hyper-V
- VMware vSphere / ESXi
- Ubiquiti UniFi (routing, switching, Wi-Fi) and UniFi Protect
- Cisco, Brocade, Ruckus, and MikroTik for switching, Wi-Fi, and routing
- pfSense
- OpenVPN, Tailscale, NetBird, and Pangolin for remote access
App backends & sign-in
- Convex for realtime databases and backend functions in Qutzl apps, including Chef’s Kiss
- Supabase and Firebase backends
- Self-hosted Better Auth with PostgreSQL for Chef’s Kiss accounts, which replaced Supabase there in October 2026
- Clerk for the Chef’s Kiss admin dashboard and sign-in on a few other Qutzl tools
- Sign in with Apple and Sign in with Google as optional app sign-in
- UploadThing for app image storage
- RevenueCat for in-app purchases and subscriptions
- Open Food Facts for Chef’s Kiss pantry barcode lookups
- Google AdSense for advertising on the Chef’s Kiss website and Google AdMob for ads in its free mobile tiers
Development & AI
- GitHub for repos, Actions, and related workflows
- Self-hosted GitLab for source hosting on Qutzl’s own servers
- Ansible for configuration and repeatable server work
- n8n for automation and integrations
- Cursor for ops scripts, site work, and agentic coding
- T3 Code as a workspace for AI coding agents
- T3 Chat for research and drafting when a second model helps
- Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok models for AI features in Qutzl apps, directly or through OpenRouter, plus self-hosted open-weight models
- Chef’s Kiss chat and recipe import on GPT models, and recipe covers from Gemini image models with Seedream as the fallback
Operations, monitoring & email
- Self-hosted Uptime Kuma and HetrixTools for uptime, server resource, and blacklist monitoring
- RustDesk, built with RDGEN, for the Qutzl Support client, with self-hosted relay servers on an OVHcloud dedicated server
- Amazon S3 Glacier for long-term backup archives
- Mailgun for account, notification, and support email
Payments & app stores
- Stripe and PayPal for payments in the client portal
- The App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, and Galaxy Store for app purchases and subscriptions
How I work
- I respond quickly, including evenings and weekends when something is on fire.
- I prefer plain language over buzzwords; clients should always know the next step.
- I’m flexible on hours and available for emergency support when it matters.
- I aim to over-deliver: leave the environment better documented than I found it.