East Coast
High Tech Employment

1999-2001 Anatel Communications

Initially I did software testing of a "toolkit" product. I also incidentally did installation packaging of that same product.

Testing of a toolkit product required not only the usual functional and stress testing, but also API testing. I was the first guinea pig for new releases of the software. The assumption is that if I can write test/sample applications that use the software, customer developers will also be able to use the software without major problems.

Later I coordinated testing of a semi-custom "MGCP Gateway" product intended to be located in telephone company central offices and interconnect DSL subscriber lines with an IP network. (MGCP is Media Gateway Control Protocol, one of four families for controlling Voice over IP devices. The others are H.323, Megaco, and SIP.)

1996-1999 DataRamp, Inc. subsidiary and PC DOCS

At the DataRamp subsidiary I provided technical support to evaluators and users of DataRamp products that provide remote database access over the Internet.

Most of the support work was what's usually called 2nd level or 3rd level. I supported potential and actual OEMs, VARs, enterprises, and individuals. I also kept an eye on the provision of 1st level (also called front line) support.

I also passed along customer feedback to the appropriate individual inside the company: webmaster, developer, project planner, strategic planner, etc.

When the DataRamp subsidiary closed I moved to the mother company, PC DOCS. There I completed procedures for robustly building product automatically every night, and keep procedures up to date as environment and product contents change. Nightly product builds give developers immediate feedback. Having automated processes ready allows every delivered product build to be done unattended at night, leaving me free during the day to deal with anomalies and special requests.

I developed automatic execution of test scripts on every new build. Nightly product tests gave develpers more immediate feedback. Problems identified early in the release cycle could be resolved without major schedule impact.

I maintained a source control repository used by more than 45 people, doing regular maintenance and solving all problems that arose. The source control repository system was VSS. As the source control repository server system was in Florida, I selected then installed remote control software.

I supported Remote Developers, using both dialin RAS and Internet PPTP, either resolving their problems myself or acting as ombudsman with the relevant network administrator. The services provided by the organization focused on the slightly different needs of traveling sales people. This work included identifying and handling configuration problems, performance problems, and access problems.

1994-1996 FTP Software

Initially I worked in Product Support, which is the senior level call escalation group within Technical Services providing the following services for the organization:

• Defect Management
• Advance Troubleshooting
• Escalation within Development
• Onsite Support
• Tool Development
• Training (technology transfer of information within department)
• Patch Management (critical defects)
• Help Support POD members with Supportabililty/Maintainability issues/escalation.

I've also developed a number of both logistic and strategic reports, based on information pulled from our RDBMS using SQL via PowerBuilder.

Beginning in December 1995, continuing full time into February 1996, and extending part time through April 1996, I worked on a project to make large amounts of support information available and easily searchable via the world wide web. The information is now available to both a restricted list of external partners and to internal users. Also, the website search capability part of the project was used on FTP's external web server and on parts of FTP's internal web.

Recently I've worked in the Consulting Engineering group, first as a fill-in and now as a permanent member of the group. There I develop in C/C++ both new code and enhancements to existing code to meet the particular requirements of specific customers. Much of what I develop is tailored to be called from a higher level scripting language such as Visual Basic.

1989-1994 Sun Microsystems

Fixed NFS interoperability problem reported by a large customer. Ran daily meetings with customer, Sun developers, and the other vendor. Captured, interpreted, and forwarded activity traces. Duplicated problem in lab. Situation resolved as a win for all parties.

Analyzed cost of X-terminals vs. diskess workstations. Published paper in proceedings of Sun User Group.

Developed method for planning and measuring network disk performance using the new metric NFSops. Presented it to technical sales engineers when Sun entered the server market. Wrote it up and distributed it electronically.

Implemented portions of system administration application using a new distributed, class based, object-oriented framework and API. Analyzed problems, updated specs, wrote code, tested, debugged, maintained.

Twice enhanced a product build process to programmatically generate patches.

Periodically presented technical information to front-line supporters of MS-Windows application adapter product. Developed materials for these presentations.

Set up and maintained distribution of MS-Windows application adapter product support information via email, auto-responder, netnews, anonymous ftp, and world wide web. This world wide web publication, which no longer exists, was the Wabi Technical Knowledge Base.