# My Tech Head Intro.



## WhyNot (Jun 21, 2011)

Kung said:


> If you're a computer tech, please give your credentials (what you do, how long you have done it, etc.) so we can get to know you and your experience.


Since I sort of just jumped in when everyone was least expecting (myself included) I may as well introduce myself.

Short summary background. I started my first PC & IT Services business from my home in 1998, in 2001 I opened the first shop of this kind in the county I live in which was extremely underserved. In 2003 I expanded into another underserved location and by 2006 I had 12 employees. After some time, working too many hours and the stress of running all of this by myself, I found all my employees their next job and then I sold my businesses.

Although I still have been doing some contract work with previous clients in a four state service region, I haven't really "jacked back in" for about four years as far as residential services are concerned. But I'm about to/in process of starting another PC repair/it service business in the new area I'm moving to, which is also underserved. Seems to be my specialty as the type of clients I would like to stick to usually aren't ...uhm...well fit for a larger shop.

Anywhoo...I guess if we want to get technical:

Roving IT Professional with substantial well-rounded experience in network roll out, data migration, middle ware troubleshooting, client/server install, technology training and presentations. Focused on excellence in customer service as a field technician with emphasis on solving issues before they are problems.

Self Employed IT Contractor/Consultant
April 2007 â Present

Server and workstation migrations, roll outs and turnovers
Networking design and install
Break - Fix
Diagnostics and troubleshooting
Boot - Nuke
PC Staging
Server Staging
End user education
Technical Documentation
Middleware Integration
Legacy Integration
Overall residential and commercial end user support

Self Employed at *company name omitted*
August 1998 - August 2006

Owned and operated computer repair and networking services and support firm.
Managed all aspects of business
Oversight of employees, contracts and clients
Network planning, documentation, optimization, legacy integration, administration
Network administration and help desk support, Windows NT, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Server2003, Citrix Client, DB2.
PC & server repair and troubleshooting (hardware and software)
Training to private individuals, small to mid-sized business and county, state, and federal organizations. 
Facilitated & designed seminars, workshops and training sessions for employers and volunteer/community education organizations.

*VoTech name omitted*, Studied Blueprint Reading and Geometric design, certificate course, 1992
*VoTech name omitted*, Studied Diesel Technology, 1995 (I drove semi! wheeeee! It's awesome, everyone should try it.)
United States Army, 1998 - Medical Discharge for condition prior to service. 
*University name omitted*, B.S. Information Tech/Systems, 2004

I'm also a divorced single mother of an outrageously smart and beautiful 20 year old lady, I'm 37 and basically a decent gal that is about to move about 1000 miles to an entire new world and get on with homesteading. YEAH!!!

*shivers in boots*

Hope all is recieved well even with the privacy omissions. I would hope that would be understandable. I can come across cold and professional...and impersonal, it's just the way I talk...can't be helped much but truly I am not trying to put on airs or anything crazy like that...I just am who I am.


----------



## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

Good CV. I'm primarily self-taught, but I have a bit of a head start on you. I developed the first version of my primary program in 1995 and we have been living off it since then. The first programs I sold were at least ten years before that. <shrug> Doesn't much matter. I'm curious about some problems and try to help when I can. Thought it was kinda kewl when InvalidID nailed that last one but we kept sailing on. Reminds me of that old axiom that I sometimes forget - "OK, is the power cord connected to the wall?"


----------



## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Good intro. Yeah, I'd say you're qualified to help people with viruses. 

I thought I'd sticky this because I don't think we actually HAVE a 'street cred' thread yet. LOL

My own credentials:

My current job is as the Lead Tech for the Desktop Services Branch (under the Desktop Service and Support Division) for Fort Leonard Wood's Network Enterprise Center. (







)

Basically, whenever the 'Customer Services' branch (the 'online guys') can't remote into the computer, we go out/onsite and fix it. We get more than a few workorders that we SHOULDN'T get; I've discovered over time that in almost ANY IT department, the 'remote' guys tend to be the red-headed stepchildren. LOL I've been doing it for almost 2 years, and I love it. The neat thing about my job is that once you reach the GS-09 level (those who know the government civilian GS schedule know what that is), you essentially manage. While this isn't completely true in the IT sector (being as almost ALL geeks love to be 'hands on'), it DOES mean that I get to pop up and put out the fires, get facetime with customers, and solve problems before they are problems, as WhyNot put it. 

I also enjoy living in Missouri.  There are things I'm not crazy about - for instance, I'm not a fan of the HUGE freaking horseflies here. But I do like the fact that my drive is a whopping 20 minutes (and around here that means it's 20 miles), that I get to live in the country, etc. Being as it's somewhat rural, I also get to help a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't get any help - or would get substandard help. (Most of the work I do on the side is for people who got hosed over by a 'professional' in town.)

Have my MCSA, MCP in Office (whoopty-doo), and my Security+. I'm about to have my BS in Management Information Systems.

Prior experience:

2004 - current: Independent Contractor/Sole Proprietor. Do a ton of stuff on the side, such as admin servers (which most people here know :gaptooth, install/maintain/troubleshoot networks, computers, etc.

2005 - 2007: Network technician at a hospital in southern Missouri.

2003-2004: Tech support at a company that produced special education administration software. Got laid off due to budget cutbacks.

2001 - 2003: Systems Maintenance Technician/Systems Admin at CINCLANTFLT (now known as COMLANTFLT). Basically the same thing I do now, but with a MUCH bigger emphasis on Naval/NATO communications systems.

1997 - 2001: Senior Network Engineer, USS Enterprise (CVN-65). Our ship (and more specifically, our IT team) was the first Naval carrier that I know of to have the Naval "IT-21" system installed on it. We helped design and install (and subsequently I learned to troubleshoot and run) a network using multiple ATM switches/routers to handle internet, VoIP (when needed) and tactical communications, both on the unclassified and the classified side. I started out with a bad reputation, simply because my supervisor didn't like me (to this day I still do not know why); and when I left I was literally the ONLY guy on the boat who knew how to do what I did. The battle group commander literally begged me not to leave. LOL

Before that, I went through a ton of Naval IT and communications schools. That's about it.


----------



## WhyNot (Jun 21, 2011)

Harry said:


> "OK, is the power cord connected to the wall?"


"It IS NOT a cup holder!" :sing:

This totally reminds me of this one woman who calls the shop up and says she left her modem there to be repaired. In my head I'm thinking external. She had come in when I wasn't in the shop and the guys were all out on calls...so I'm searching...searching...searching for this modem. I say, "Are you sure you left a modem here? Because all I see are computers on the benches." She gets freaked out...and then...then it hit me. I said, "While I look one more time, tell me...what was wrong with your modem when you brought it in?"

*I need a drumroll here for her answer*

She said, "He said he would replace the cdburner."

Yup. The burner in the modem. :rock:

I'd be completely self taught if only I weren't foolish enough to think a piece of paper would get me somewhere. Long story, I'm still sore about it. BUT that's okay! Because I make/made/can make more per hour than in house techs when I take a larger contract.  

(don't get me wrong, schooling is awesome, I learned how to write academic papers and tech tomes and that I can teach and do public speaking...it's just...well..it would be nice to know it's not necessary when it's not, you know..BEFORE you actually go) 



Kung said:


> My current job is as the Lead Tech for the Desktop Services Branch (under the Desktop Service and Support Division) for Fort Leonard Wood's Network Enterprise Center.


My first reaction, "OH! I'm so sorry!" 

I'm glad you like your job. Nothing worse than a tech that hates their job, resents their position or thinks their sewer don't back up once in a while. You can usually tell when a tech can't stand their job...it's so depressing...because it's really a lot of fun. Well it IS fun until you get "those people".

I found that I prefer those "underserved" as well, as you pointed out in your "moonlighting"...helping the people that have been brutalized by larger or inconsiderate/dishonest shops...and..I'm sure for less money than they had to fork over to the others. I've found it's much easier to get 25.00 from 100 people than it is to get $100.00 from five people. And the five people that can throw $100 around like it's tic-tacs...I probably don't want to be nice to anyway LMAO (you know what I mean)...and the 100 people squeaking out an extra 25 bucks that week...well they are just awesome. Usually.


----------



## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

You're stickying this??

Yeesh. I spoze I'm now supposed to act like I know something. Alright, a little more. Back when I was in theatres, I repaired the unix-based ticketing computers, and figured out not only the secret passcodes but how to have them let me access teleprocessing files. I set things up so that the computer at my office polled all the theatre computers in the circuit, unassisted in the middle of the night, then my programs massaged that data into reports, then called my computer at home and emailed those reports, which then printed out at home, then the office computer call-forwarded all calls to my home phone, so I could sit and peacefully review the reports at home over a cup of coffee, and then the office computer was set to transfer all calls to my car cell phone during my 35 minute drive to my office (about an hour after I was "supposed" to be there.) When the company was bought out, I was already bored, and had previously worked for the company doing the buyout, so I opened my own business.

When I wrote my version of a theatre ticketing program, I wrote every single line of code - absolutely no includes or calls to outside stuff - 100% mine. Thousands of lines of code and all sorts of capabilities. Was offered $100K by a competitor just to stay out of the business (I didn't accept the offer). Advance day sales, reserved seating, had credit card integration and removed it, so on and so forth. I've customers from Washington State to Florida, Maine to California, as well as the Caribbean.

Until I realized I needed an ongoing income from support and upgrades I did straight sales of the program. A few times I had old customers call back after over five years of not a peep - because their hard drives had crashed and they FINALLY needed support to do a re-install. The program is that stable and simple to use. The latest upgrade has had ZERO call-backs. I've refused to migrate the program to other languages because of the security issues and realization that the primary reason for the pushes is so MS can make more money off developers.

With networking, I've run into all sorts of totally undocumented issues with caching all the way from L1 and L2 caches to caching within the NICs and hubs; OS problems and stuff most people never run across. My error handlers are actually more to handle MS errors and hardware issues than issues within the program.

However... I no longer keep up with computers and changes like I used to, so trying to help out with folks problems keeps me a little more sharp than I would be otherwise.

Enough of this horn tooting. There is much more stuff that I DON'T know than I know. If you stuck me in a structured class, I'd probably fail, but make the instructor go "how did he do that?" at the same time. 

Besides, I also have a lot of unrelated stuff I do. I change up my life periodically just to learn new stuff.


----------



## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

WhyNot said:


> My first reaction, "OH! I'm so sorry!"


Oh, don't get me wrong; there are parts of the job that are bothersome at times, for sure.  But to be blunt, you cannot beat the stability and benefits. And my job is such that the vast majority of the people I help are just normal people - I travel all over "FLW" helping Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Air Force and civilians out.


----------



## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Harry Chickpea said:


> You're stickying this??


Muhahaha. :gaptooth:

Bluntly put, IT guys can smell/tell a good (or bad) IT tech a mile away. So if you're still posting here it means Big Brother has vetted you.

Muhahahaha. :gaptooth:


----------



## WhyNot (Jun 21, 2011)

Kung said:


> Oh, don't get me wrong; there are parts of the job that are bothersome at times, for sure.  But to be blunt, you cannot beat the stability and benefits. And my job is such that the vast majority of the people I help are just normal people - I travel all over "FLW" helping Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Air Force and civilians out.


Oh my reaction is based entirely on my own experience with government computer systems. It is my hope that they have improved but every so often I hear............stories. 



Kung said:


> Muhahaha. :gaptooth:
> 
> Bluntly put, IT guys can smell/tell a good (or bad) IT tech a mile away. So if you're still posting here it means Big Brother has vetted you.
> 
> Muhahahaha. :gaptooth:



So ah...my packets have been sniffed...:hrm:. I hope that was the day the deoderant was working.


----------



## defenestrate (Aug 23, 2005)

Okay, a brief rundown.. I've been into computers since I was fairly young. My first computer experience was with an Apple IIc in about '84 (I know because the first BASIC program I ever wrote, on that machine, was a boot-up login program that I thought of because of the movie WarGames which, at age 7, was the coolest thing ever). I learned different versions of BASIC and little machine code tricks for a small handful of computers, and got into BBSes in the late 80s, running one for a while in high school. About a week after I graduated HS I started working as a PC/peripheral tech at an HP VAR (back then, there were lots of retail establishments of various sizes catering to area needs before PC prices really tanked and the big box stores took over everywhere) - at the same time, I was working for McAfee antivirus in my spare time (I ended up doing online tech support because I had spent several years studying and collecting viruses and used to do a lot of support on their BBS while getting on to make sure our business had the most recent version of the software).

In '98, I first became an ISP administrator - after a few years of regular use with Solaris and Linux, I was the guy at the PC shop who knew the most about how servers should be run, and I pretty much put everything together by hand - assembling servers, install and config, security issues, etc - from the telco demarc to the terminal server to all production machines, alternating tech support and anything I might be best suited to handle. I started admin job for a much larger ISP about a year and a half later after developing a decent reputation for the work. Since then, I have been an IT/telecom consultant and contractor, working at companies like IBM, SunTrust, Tekelec and FedEx (the last being the most recent and probably my favorite UNIX work as I was able to do sr. admin and automation work at the top of the organization). I was injured last fall and have been on unemployment and taking care of my fiancee (she has pretty debilitating fibromyalgia) though I am looking forward to getting a regular gig, be it in consulting, contract, or full-time work.

As mentioned above, I have been serious about understanding security issues since I was a kid, and have mostly worked in sysadmin type positions since the late 90s. I love working on UNIX and on telecom equipment such as the SS7 switches (these are the switches that move the signaling information for phones such as caller ID, SMS messages, and the setup and breakdown of calls - they also handle things like when you change a cell provider and port the number to a new one - the block of numbers is still assigned to the original carrier, but the number is mapped over to the new carrier so things are invisible to the end user). I use primarily Windows and FreeBSD (and WebOS on this tablet), but have messed with a pretty good variety of hardware and software, from regular home use to building out and administering "clouds" at some pretty sizable companies. I am self-taught and love learning new things, and try to be helpful with tech stuff when I can.


----------



## jefferson (Nov 11, 2004)

Welcome WhyNot. Glad you are here. Enjoy the board, the banter, and don't take anybody to serious. You are among friends; even if there is some tension once in a while. Never, ever be afraid to express yourself.


----------



## WhyNot (Jun 21, 2011)

Thanks Jefferson  Been away from the computer section for a while...I did make my 1000 mile journey and....life happened...and probably will again but I can help out again for a while. No worries about the expression of self...heh.


----------



## The Ferret (Aug 11, 2012)

Opps,sorry should have posted here first,but saw a problem I have been dealing with all day.

Lets see,back in the day (early mid 70's)did my time writeing code and running a main frame IBM.Started building computer kits when thay came out,Did 5 years computer op's in the U.S.M.C.Ran my own shop for over 10 years,many contract jobs doing this or that in the IT field.Working as a network admin/tech for a school system now.


----------



## TMTex (Apr 5, 2013)

I suppose I could add my info here. I'm the Automation and IT Manager for the company I work for. I'm the primary programmer for process controls and the Human-Machine Interface (HMI). I also help the Electircal Department troubleshoot problems when they request it. 

I started programming on the TI-99/4A in 1982 and taught myself Z80 Assembly language on the ZX Spectrum in 1983. In the Air Force, I was one of many mainframe administrators for, what was then, a state of the art Sperry system. You'd laugh at the thing today.

I started programming Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and HMIs in 1993 and continue to do so today. I've also been programming security and building automation controllers and software.

I'm a certified Penetration Tester/Ethical Hacker and work to keep the company's computer systems safe. This includes manually attacking malware and viruses and blocking various attempts by foreign countries (you know who you are) to access our FTP site. 

I'm also one of two licensed Master Electricians on the site.

I keep the various networks and IP phone system going. We have multiple DSL modems and bridges of varying types that I also configure and secure. I manage 3 Windows servers and co-manage another.

Luckily, I just got my first assistant and am training him. Eventually, I should be able to goof off a little here and there.  

I'd be glad to help when I can.


----------



## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

NICE - a PenTester!  I do the same thing somewhat on the side, and for the gov't.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

TMTex said:


> I started programming Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and HMIs in 1993 and continue to do so today. I've also been programming security and building automation controllers and software.


Industrial automation is a noble profession. In my pre-Internet life I was an engineer in the oil refining business. I had a lot of exposure to PLCs, but mostly I worked with the larger Distributed Control Systems (DCSs). I actually worked for Honeywell in Phoenix for a year in 1990 designing advanced control systems for refiners around the country. But programming wasn't really my thing, so I went back to being a process engineer in a refinery.

I wasn't involved in the installation and implementation of the DCS (mostly the Honeywell TDC-3000). They had people who did that. My part was in programming advanced control schemes for various refining processes and boilers. It was through advanced control that the refiners saved enough fuel and improved production enough to pay for their DCS, and even more.

Honeywell kind of poo-pooed PLCs because they only marketed the bigger DCS machines. But PLCs are no longer just localized single-unit control devices. Some PLC installations have become large, and the line between the PLC and DCS has become blurred. Some PLCs offer the scalability, redundancy, and advanced control capabilities of DCS computers.


----------



## TMTex (Apr 5, 2013)

Kung said:


> NICE - a PenTester!  I do the same thing somewhat on the side, and for the gov't.


Yeah, it's just an additional duty for me. Not exactly a money making skill, but important nevertheless. 

@Nevada - Yep, the PLCs have come a long way since they started. We started with old '80s style processors that we programmed with huge "portable" programmers running 10MB tapes. A 1 Mb link went throughout the plant and was considered fast communication at the time. 

Now, with 1Gb ethernet and SCADAs, we're much more capable.


----------



## SeanInVa (Oct 3, 2013)

Hope to help some people out as I can - here's my info:

Professionally - I have been a software developer since about 1998 or '99. I started writing small Access apps for my boss, and then graduated on to developing web-based database applications using the Oracle stack (including their dev tools. so horrid). I did this while working for the US Navy (contractor) developing components of their munitions tracking system - basically, we modernized the system the Navy uses to track ordnance across the entire fleet - both wholesale and retail applications.

In 2007, I made a transition over to a home health agency management platform as a developer. We coded in .NET using MS SQL on the back end as a desktop app - farmed the conversion to the web out to India - what a huge mistake that was. I ended up being the lead/senior dev on the project. We became one of the bigger players in the arena, winning several state-wide contracts to provide software for their medicaid agencies. I now work for another company, (not my) family owned, doing the same thing but on a much smaller scale - we're just getting the thing off the ground.

I also own a very small web hosting company, started in 2003, and have been the sole employee the entire time (so sys admin, support, sales, etc)

I have no certifications, as I feel they are mostly useless professionally.

Non-professionally:
I was one of the four founders of the PostNuke Portal/CMS PHP project back in the early 2000's.

I am completely self taught, mainly via stacks and stacks and hundreds of dollars of computer books, and the internet. For "pc repair" I learned by opening the thing up and tinkering. My dad is also a software developer, and also programs hardware via and HDL language so I have learned a bit from him.

I have been working with computers seriously since about 1995. had fun with the BBS back then, even ran my own for a time. 

And as Kung stated elsewhere - I am nowhere near perfect or "know it all". I have major gaps in knowledge since I didn't attend college (such as specific algorithms) and I learn things as I go.


----------

