Not Exactly
IT Work.

Sometimes our humble computer shop has looked like a guitar factory, a classic SAAB garage, or an episode of American Restoration. Crazy things — nothing near IT gear — have been fixed up and fabricated at Lake of the Ozarks. None of it made money for the company. All of it was worth doing anyway.

The same hands that terminate your fiber also wind guitar pickups. This is not a coincidence.

There is a personality type that cannot leave a broken thing alone. That applies to a misconfigured firewall, a dead keyboard with a good PCB, and a bass guitar that deserves better pickups than it shipped with. The Skunkworks is where that instinct goes when there's no client work on the bench.

The Shop

Cdoc soldering bench — torch, multimeter, fiber, crimpers

The bench. CDOC.NET multimeter, butane torch, solder, fiber patch cable, crimpers, vise. Ready for whatever comes in.

Vintage black desk telephone — Cdoc Skunkworks

Vintage desk phone. Because sometimes the right solution is analog. Also because it's a beautiful object and someone had to save it.

Musical Instruments

There is something satisfying about building your own instrument.

It has nothing to do with the IT business. It has everything to do with why the IT business works the way it does. You don't half-wire a pickup any more than you half-configure a firewall. The standard is the standard, regardless of whether anyone is paying for it.

Three instruments came through the shop. Two basses and something that doesn't have a clean category. All of them work. None of them were easy.

Pink bass guitar mid-surgery — Lace pickup install

Pink bass. Lace pickup install, mid-surgery. Wiring diagram on the bench. This is how you do it right.

Black 5-string bass — purple flames, pin-up pickguard, gold hardware

Black 5-string. Purple flame paint, custom pickguard, gold hardware. Fully set up and playing.

Homemade resonator instrument — wood body, aluminum cone

Homemade resonator. Wood body, aluminum resonator cone, fabricated from scratch. Doesn't fit a category. Sounds great anyway.

Black bass pickup cavity — three pickups loose, purple flames visible

Cavity work. Three pickups routed and staged. Purple flames visible on the body. The detail work is where it counts.

Yamaha keyboard. Arrived intact. Did not stay that way for long.

Yamaha keyboard fully disassembled — ribbon cables, PCB, speakers

Full teardown. Ribbon cables, green PCB, both speakers out. Everything labeled before it came apart.

Yamaha keyboard internals close — ribbon cables and circuit board

The guts. This is what a 61-key keyboard looks like when someone who can't leave things alone gets hold of it.

Painted Towers

These started as surplus towers. They became something else. The purple one is a Linux file server. The swirl is a test rig. The red/yellow/blue is the Cdoc Hyper-V environment. All three run production workloads. The paint is a bonus.

If you want your custom server painted, we have experience with that. If you want it plain black, see the Proto Lab page. Either way it'll work.

Purple painted tower — Linux file storage server

Purple. Linux file storage. Security enhancements not available from any vendor. The color was a personal decision.

Blue green swirl flame painted tower — Cdoc test rig

Swirl flames. Blue and green. Cdoc oval on the front. Test rig. The paint job took longer than the build.

Red yellow blue painted tower — Cdoc Hyper-V environment

Red/Yellow/Blue. The Cdoc Hyper-V environment. Runs production virtualization. The paint has no effect on uptime.

"None of this made money. All of it made us better at the work that does."

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Not ExactlyIT Work.

There is something satisfying about building your own instrument.

Not Exactly
IT Work.