About Me

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I like to do a lot of everything. In personal and professional life, I span a wide range of topics.

Early History

I started my dive into information technology when I was about 9, I got a tiny one line display toy computer for Christmas. It took programming in BASIC and I began writing basic programs on it, to ask questions and play little games. Around age 12, my father brought home a 386sx PC with DOS 5.0, and Wordperfect on it, he didn’t use it much, so I took it for myself. It had a 20mb hard drive, and 128mb ram. It had ProcommPlus on it for dialing into his work UUCP mail. I had already been picking up Computer Currents magazine from a local book store, which had numbers for BBS’s in the back. I dove into the world of BBS’s, and learning software. I spent my whole summer that year staying up late into the night, working on the PC. I learned Pascal. I learned DOS. I wrote some simple “demo” software, the kind like Future Crew used to do, with ANSI and MOD music playing. We upgraded to a 386dx40, this time with a 40mb hard drive and 512mb ram. I learned to add memory, swap hard drives, and all about hardware. I met friends at middle school that had interested in computers, and we learned from each other, we hung out all the time, and nerd-ed out about computers.

High School

High school was all about computers for me. I took drafting all four years. I took computer science until they had no classes for me to take and let me do independent study for a year. I took electronics. Independent study became a group of five kids who supported the school’s technology roll out, and worked to supplement the district IT staff repairing computers. I was in drafting and 3d animation competition, and computer programming club. When I got a car, we used to drive down to 2600 meetings at the Houston Galleria.

First Job

The week I turned 16, I went to CompUSA and applied for a job. With all my computer experience, I got hired for the upgrades counter, recommending memory, hard drives, etc. I picked up a Slackware book from a guy we called Nightrain (Eric). I had a few computers now, and was able to dedicate one to run Slackware. I learned Redhat. I learned Debian. I loved Slackware though, because it was my favorite and the original for me. I learned Apache setups, and had a small network in my room at my parents house, with a 10mbps hub, and ethernet cards. I registered a domain and was building websites. Later that year I got hired part time to make a website for a company. A few year later, that company would hire me to work part time as an IT employee, fixing computers, networking, and training users.

Career Growth

During my part time work at my first job, I also worked on other projects. My first was a migration project for Shell Oil to Windows 2k from XP. I got certified as a low voltage cabling installer, and got a job as a DSL technician for Covad Communications, which took me all over Texas installing DSL at both residential and business locations. I worked in a call center for Prodigy Internet helping users get connected to dial up. My part time gig was still at my first job. Within a few years at that first company, I was offered a permanent position for full time employment. Eventually, I was promoted to manage IT, and eventually would become IT Director. We migrated networks from Novell Netware to a full TCP/IP network with Samba for networking.

I stayed at that company ten years, and then we got bought out by a big player in the industry. I was still top IT, although my title was changed due to titles and salary having to match up with the new corporate culture. We grew the company from three worldwide offices to over forty offices while I was there another few years, until I got an offer to manage a VoIP provider. I was hired to run the company, basically as COO. I’ve been involved in every aspect of the business, and as my usual roles go, I wear a lot of hats.

work in progress.. more tbc

Interest

Professional:

Hobbies: