When meeting someone new, an introduction is in order, so here is my introduction.
I am a “Geek” and I mean that in the sense that I seek to understand how everything works. Not just what buttons to push, but what the buttons do and why I might want to push them.
I went to a major technical institute in the early 1980’s and failed out after 2.5 years as a Physics major. I then leveraged my experience at the school’s student run radio station into a string of jobs in Broadcasting on the engineering side of the house. UHF TV stations on channels 67 (1.5 years) and 62 (6 weeks) and then 7 years at a VHF TV on channel 6. During this time I worked on everything from video cameras, audio equipment, video tape machines (2″ quadraplex, 1″ SMPTE C, 3/4″ U-matic, and even Hi-8), RF transmitters and receivers (55,000 watt UHF and VHF, 2 watt microwave, among others), and anything else that might break. I then spent 6 months as Chief Engineer at a small AM/FM (50,000 watt clear channel AM, not the company, but the class of AM station) fixing everything and even doing a full asset inventory and valuation (for the bankruptcy court, a long and different story). At about this point I finished the Associates Degree I had been working on at the local community college in Math & Natural Science, with a 4.0 GPA. I then spent about 2 years doing Sound professionally; systems design and installation, repair and maintenance, loading shows in and out, mixing, just about everything in the realm of sound.
It was at this point that my career changed directions from audio / video / RF systems to computers. I worked for 6 months part time as a Technical Writer editing class materials for a Unix Administration Class. That led to a full time job offer and I started down the path of IT in 1995. I have worked at or with three different “High Tech Startups” since then, typically on the systems management side, but I have also spent time doing web and other application development as well as managing a storage system of 250 TB (back when that was a lot of data) for a group of 800 lawyers.
Today I am no longer an independent IT Consultant, but a full time employee of the third high tech startup I was involved with. We aren’t really a startup anymore, but we are transitioning from being a small group of people working together to a small company working together. I mention all of the above so you know the diverse technical background I hail from.
