About Me

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These days I run a full-service VoIP and PBX company. We cover hosted voice, on-premise phone systems, call center work, network and wireless infrastructure, custom software, and equipment sales. I came up through the technical side and still stay close to it. In personal and professional life, I tend to span a wide range of topics Ñwhat follows is the long version of how I got here.

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 simple 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 1MB of 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 BBSs in the back. I dove into the world of BBSs 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 Future Crew used to do, with ANSI and MOD music playing.

We upgraded to a 386dx40, this time with a 40MB hard drive and 4MB of RAM. I learned to add memory, swap hard drives, and all about hardware. I met friends at middle school who were interested in computers, and we learned from each other. We hung out all the time and nerded 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 rollout, and worked to supplement the district IT staff repairing computers. I was in drafting and 3D animation competitions, 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 small global freight forwarder. A few years later, they hired me again to work part time as an IT employee Ñfixing computers, running their network, and training users.

Early Career

Right after CompUSA, I went full-time into a string of telecom and IT roles. I got certified as a low-voltage cabling installer and took a job as a DSL technician for Covad Communications, traveling all over Texas installing DSL at residential and business locations. I worked in a call center for Prodigy Internet helping dial-up users get online. I also took on contract work Ñmy first was a Windows 2000 to XP migration for Shell Oil. Throughout all of this, I kept the part-time IT gig at the freight forwarder going on the side.

Career Growth

Eventually the freight forwarder offered me a permanent full-time position. I took it, was promoted to manage IT, and later became IT Director. They gave me a long leash to modernize, and I used it. We moved the network from IPX over a 10Mbps ethernet-and-coax hybrid to a full modern TCP/IP setup, came off UUCP onto proper email, and walked through every era of internet connectivity along the way Ña bank of modems, then DSL, then bonded T1s, then fiber. The server room went from a Windows NT box to a rack of Linux servers running Python web apps, and I cut my teeth migrating internal Pascal apps to Python and Perl. That’s where I really learned Linux, too.

I stayed at that company ten years, then we got bought out by a big player in the industry. I was still top IT, although my title changed since titles and salary had 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.

VoIP and ISP Years

In 2009 I got an offer to manage a VoIP provider. I started as General Manager and eventually became Vice President of Operations, running the company day to day. I’d stay there about eleven years. Over that time I got deep into wide-area VoIP systems and ISP operations Ñwe ran a full ISP with T1s, DS3s, and metro ethernet, plus fully multihomed BGP across multiple data centers in Texas. I was involved in every aspect of the business, and as my usual roles go, I wore a lot of hats Ñvoice engineering, network architecture, customer-facing work, and the business side.

Today

When COVID hit in 2020, I left to start my own VoIP company, and I’ve been running it full time ever since. We’re a full-service VoIP provider and PBX integrator: hosted voice on our own Asterisk and Kamailio architecture, in-cloud phone systems we install and manage, phones we sell, and day-to-day support of customer systems. Call centers are a big part of the work, and a lot of what I do for them is custom reporting tailored to how each one operates. The stack behind it all has evolved a lot over the years Ñlots of APIs, plenty of Perl, Python, and Go where it makes sense, and everything lives in the cloud now. Network design, low-voltage cabling, wireless installs, custom programming, and equipment sales are all part of the regular work too.

Interests

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Hobbies: