Genuine Geek Media is the home base for James Schoepf. IT Professional Services Manager by day, gamer and gearhead by night (and weekends, and lunch breaks, and any other time the kids are asleep).

By day, I lead a team of cloud engineers focused on AWS cost optimization. We find the waste, fix the architecture, and save companies real money on their cloud spend. It's technical, it's rewarding, and it gives me more opinions about EBS volumes than any human should have.

By night, I'm a husband, a dad, and a guy who splits his free time between a controller and a wrench.

The Car

I've owned a 1986 Pontiac Trans Am since I was 15 years old. Twenty-three years and counting. It started life with a tired 305 and a Quadrajet. It now has an LS-swapped 6.0 with a cam, a FAST intake, and enough personality to turn heads at every car show. You can read the full build story here.

The Games

I'm a casual gamer in the truest sense. Not casual like I don't care, casual like I have maybe an hour after the kids go to bed and I'm going to spend it wisely. Slay the Spire 2, indie titles, retro collecting. I'm not chasing leaderboards. I'm chasing one more run before sleep.

I collect physical games across Game Boy, NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360. Not for investment value. Because they're mine and no server shutdown can take them away.

The Site

Genuine Geek Media is organized into three sections:

The Sprint is news and hot takes. Gaming industry moves, tech announcements, and the kind of analysis that connects dots other outlets don't bother with.

The Workbench is deep dives. Build logs, technical walkthroughs, cloud optimization playbooks. Hands-on content with real photos and real numbers.

The Paddock is conversations. Podcast appearances, interviews, and collaborations with people doing interesting things in tech, gaming, and motorsport.

The Name

Genuine Geek. Not performative geek. Not "I watched the Marvel movie" geek. The kind of geek who has a homelab, a project car, a shelf of cartridges, and opinions about NAND flash pricing.

Silicon and steel. That's the intersection this whole thing lives at.

Connect

The best way to follow along is the RSS feed. No algorithm. No engagement bait. Just new content when it drops.