i currently work for a unix systems admin contracting company. in
silicon valley contracting is very popular and i was lucky to get
in early with a company that has a very good reputation and is
doing quite well. see below for a listing
of my adventures in the real [unix] world. an online version of my
resume is available.
then
i worked for a summer doing database setup and firewall administration
for a company called solid
concepts. they author cad-file viewing and measuring software
and offer rapid prototyping services. while working for them, i
established a good repore with their internet service provider,
smartlink.net.
before
while i was in highschool, i authored and co-authored a variety
of software. one summer, i co-authored more than 25,000 lines of
foxpro code to implement a multi-location video store management
package and point-of-sale system. i also wrote a network chat
system for personal use of myself and my classmates so we could
waste time during programming class. i also authored an
english skills study program and actually got minimal improvement
measurements from pre- and post-tests taken by students who
were subjected to my 640x480 graphics and colored text screens.
most of my job here was maintaining a set of perl
scripts that ran a massively parallel backup
system. this was a large excercise in perl
programming and code documentation. also learned
the basics of unix dump and restore and how
to replace hardware in sun servers au natural
and in artecon rackmount cases. also got to
power up and down auspex towers and gain
experience with networkappliance servers from
a user level.
worked on a small three-person unix systems
administration team. we reconfigured a
small company's worth of machines and unix
servers marked by dpix's breakoff from its
parent company, xerox parc. gained general
day-to-day solaris administration skills
including manually reconfiguring machines
and checking in and out of rcs the dns
table files a thousand times a day. it was
kind of cool working at the company that
designed the computer mouse.
did some of my best written and documented
perl coding on a project to build an
in-house filesystem based website checking
and validation system. my scripts brought
to light orphaned files, duplicate
pages, and broken links. learned enough
about postscript to write a custom
page-assembling script for a html slideshow
printing system i wrote. shared an office
with miko matsumura, the java evangelist, and
listened in on his phone conversations with
alan baratz.
dove into object oriented perl programming
to write an access control backend for the
networkappliance corporate website.
wrote conversion scripts to convert flat
ascii data tables into an dbm-based relational
database. wrote a cgi script that handled
a variety of online forms, eliminating the
need of one-cgi-script-per-form mentality.
another perl experience. as the mis intranet webmaster,
i reformed, reorganized, and rekindled the internal
website with a fresh look, cleaner navigation, and more
information. as the corporate email systems administrator,
i took hold of a piece-meal infrastructure and replaced
the lacking parts with new, faster hardware. i took part
in enterprise-wide discussions about email and groupware
infrastructure with cio-level management. as the directory
services administrator,
i created from scratch an array of management and reporting
tools. the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the data
increased rapidly and a system of monitoring and maintaining
the data was created. the hardcopy corporate phonebook is
now gleaned directly from the directory service. i also
lined my cubicle walls with bubblewrap.
