About Me

I’m Jerry Parker, a technical leader, lifelong tinkerer, and someone who’s been keeping things running in broadcast and IT for over 30 years. I live in the Texas Hill Country, where I split my time between enterprise software operations, small business ventures, and hands-on creative and restoration projects that keep me curious and caffeinated.

I enjoy understanding how things work, whether that's a modern enterprise system, a 40-year-old computer, or an idea that starts as a simple experiment and grows into something much larger.

What I Do (Professionally Speaking)

I currently serve as the Director of Operations at MusicMaster, Inc., where I lead support, onboarding, and enterprise deployments for one of the most widely adopted music scheduling systems in the industry. If you’ve listened to the radio any time in the past few decades, you’ve probably heard content scheduled by our software.

My day-to-day includes customer operations, managing new clients, expanding real-time integration partnerships, helping improve our Nexus API, and assisting and managing teams across multiple departments. I work at the intersection of engineering, software, support, sales and strategy — and I thrive on making complex systems feel simple, scalable, and reliable.

Before this, I spent over a decade as VP of Operations at Presslaff Interactive Revenue (PIR), where I helped grow a niche service provider into a global platform for audience engagement. I led development teams, oversaw server farms, wrangled SQL databases, ran support, QA, and IT operations — and learned how to scale a company without losing its soul.

Where I Started

My background is rooted in broadcast engineering. I’ve built radio stations, designed facilities from the ground up, and maintained the entire air-chain for multi-station operations. I’ve worked as a Systems Engineer at CBSI, managed engineering for national network programming at Jones Radio Networks, and kept everything running at Bay Broadcasting.

Those years taught me not just how to fix things, but how to anticipate failure before it happens, how to keep a cool head under pressure, and how to blend technology with real-world deadlines. That mindset still drives how I lead today.

What you'll find here.

On this site you'll find restoration stories, engineering projects, software and infrastructure work, thoughts on leadership and operations, and the occasional experiment that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Take a look at some of my most popular projects: An SX-64 restoration, a Zenith Z110 Repair, an LED Cube Art piece, and a PET 8032 Keyboard Modernization Project.

Looking for more? Browse the archive.

Side Hustles & Hobbies

I’ve always had side projects. Some are practical, like Rain‑Sense, a venture I launched to build real-time monitoring for rainwater storage. Others are just for fun like restoring vintage computers from the ’70s and ’80s. Every one of them works, and every one tells a story.

Over the years I’ve run tech services firms, design studios, shipping centers — a mix of things under the umbrella of Parker Family Enterprises. Some lasted longer than others, but all of them taught me something I still use today.

And I write. Short stories, essays, and reflections — usually with a bit of humor and a solid left turn somewhere in the middle. I make things. I rebuild things. I like it best when something didn’t work five minutes ago, and now it does.

What I Believe

I believe in tools that work. In systems that scale. In solutions that last. I like being the person people turn to when something’s broken — not just to fix it, but to figure out why it broke in the first place.

I believe in mentorship, in learning by doing, and in building teams where people feel like their contributions matter. I’ve led big projects, built departments, guided teams through tough transitions — but I still think the best work happens in small groups, with people who give a damn.

I've never been very good at leaving things alone. Whether it's a radio station, a network, a vintage computer, or a piece of software, I'm usually trying to understand how it works and how it can work better.

Let’s Talk

If you’re here to talk shop, collaborate on a project, solve a weird problem, or swap stories about restoring old PC's, I’d love to hear from you.