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I am a systems and software architect as well as a sysadmin and programmer. My choices mean that I have touched many different areas of computing since I began in the early 1990's. I have fun.

I hacked my way into learning what it takes to do what I am now able to do. My most expensive operating system purchase is based on the method of retrieval rather than any cost charged for the contents. That OS is Linux. Way back before there was standard Internet access there were large networks such as AOL and Compuserve. They charged by the minute and were sloooooooow. 1200-2400 baud was typical at that time. I was happer with 9600 buad and was in heaven with the addition of ISDN lines. Bonded ISDN lines freed me to explore even more.

I am an automation expert. I began learning about machine automation when I worked in a mainframe environment. I found ways of making things easier for myself as a mainframe operator. I had fun learning how to program in the Basic programming language. I used it to automate steps used to transfer data from floppy disks. This data would end up as a basic foundation for typesetting jobs that ran on the mainframe.

I am an ETL expert. I began learning about the ETL process as I rewrote a C program intended to extract files, process them and then load them to the mainframe via an IRMA card.

During this time period I also began to learn the C programming language along with several variants of Basic, including a variant called Basmark QuickBasic for UNIX. I eventually landed the company system administrator position and began to learn PERL. It was PERL that would become my go to language for decades, even when using other languages for primary production use.

I wrote:

• My first cgi program written in C that ran under a new web server called Apache
• A small image processor written in C - it only fixed GIF headers but was a fun way to learn about binary files
• An NCurses data entry system which ran on SunOS and Solaris and was written entirely by me using Basmark QuickBasic
• A text file processor and formatter which prepared customer supplied word processing files which were loaded to the mainframe from a PC. This was written in C.
• A proof of concept 370 Assembeler language to C language transpiler. I helped the R&D guy do this in Basic. We only got to about 90% correct code but it was very fun. The PC Server 500 that is described below negated the need as we could continue to run our Assembler programs unedited.

I sysadmined:

• SunOS and the transition to Solaris on a pair of mid-range Sun machines with Xterminal thin clients
• Several network attached HP printers. These were high end machines that were expensive to fix
• First run Pentiums based PCs along with a handful of older PCs
• A one-off SCO Xenix System V machine used for accounting
• SAMBA shares to attached PC and SunOS/Solaris machines and printers

I was also the guy that got to play with a new hybrid system which ran OS/2 along side System/390 on the same hardware platform. We bought a IBM PC Server 500 to allow us to keep using our existing IBM 4341 attached storage and printers.

I am blessed to have had such a beginning on my journey as a computer scientist. I was exposed to a lot of new and old technology for the time. I am grateful I had the opportunities that were presented to me; and I am glad that the GNU project has great compilers for free. I spent a lot of cash for Borland Turbo C and the professional version of Borland C/C++/Objective C compilers for Windows in the early days of my exploration.

All of this on my first job with Datapage Technologies which began with as a paid internship which turned into a promotion to company System Administrator.