A combination of sysadmin and netadmin, I'm the go-to guy for the Sayre Area School District if you want something done with technology. I handle everything from endpoint computers to servers and all of the infrastructure in between. And cameras. Don't get me started on cameras. I'm continuing my trend of having a position that allows me to dip my toe into nearly any aspect of technology that interests me.

SixBit is a piece of desktop software designed to help small sellers get their inventory online quickly and help handle all aspects of the e-Commerce process. While here I brought my troubleshooting skills to bear on issues with the software and implemented several tools to help. I've learned a lot about SQL while on this job. I designed and implemented a VOIP phone system using Asterisk which cut costs considerably. I also designed and implemented the network here. My primary focus however is customer support. I enjoy being able to wear many hats in the workplace and I get to do that in abundance at SixBit.

Support.com handles phone support for companies contracted with them. If you are a Comcast or Dish Network internet user and have had an issue with your modem/router, you will probably be routed through the Comcast or Dish team at support.com. It was nice to work from home (can't beat the commute) and I got to help a lot of people get back online.

At the county IT office I did a lot of break/fix and the occasional request to solve a computing problem. I managed the VPN access lists, handled the 911 center's Computer Aided Dispatch system and maintained several SQL Server instances. The county was on an old DEC VAX system for much of my time there and we handed off a lot of that processing to different vendors during my time there. There were still reports and backups to run on the old system though. Learned a lot about troubleshooting in an undocumented environment.

For a few years I bounced from temp contract to temp contract performing various IT roles for a multitude of different customers. One week it would be maintaining and verifying backup sets for Canberra industries (cool place with a lot of neat hardware) and the next week I'd be doing a Windows 2000 rollout for an insurance company. Just your basic "spare" IT guy. Learned a lot about how to be flexible and how to maintain expectations in a new environment.

At OCI I was tasked to do things I didn't know if I'd be able to do: build a dial-up ISP, re-work an existing cable ISP to allow the owners to get out from under a $1000 a month service contract, customize PHPNuke CMS websites, integrate ASP-based billing into our Active Directory, set up and administer an Exchange server... the list goes on and on. Gave me a good idea of what's possible if I put my mind to it. Can't say I got any of those things done quickly, but I did get them done. Unfortunately, OCI went under in the summer of 2004 due to poor management, but the tech side under me was doing well at least.

So my official title was "Customer Engineer" but that always sounded shady to me, so I labelled it "Field Technician" since that's what I was. This was my second job out of the military, the first being a short stint on the United Parcel Service help desk in Pittsburgh. At Maintech I went to customer locations and swapped out hardware. It wasn't much but it paid well. I learned that there wasn't much of a future in hardware troubleshooting and break/fix as it was clearly a dying field that was beginning to become marginalized even in 2001.

I can credit the US Air Force for my love of learning. There I learned basic electronics and how to read schematics. As I went along we got re-purposed into more generalized fields, as we had been the last component-level repair facility in the Air Force. Working on old NOVA 800 and 1200s gave you a good grounding in what a computer system is and it was a great base to build from. I learned a lot of my troublethooting theory there as well. I got to go to classes on older systems that were actually past their prime. Since there was a mission involved that required these systems to remain operational DEC, IBM, and Loral pulled folks out of retirement and off of other projects to come in and teach us IBM 3090s, VAX hardware systems and Silicon Graphics Indigo and Crimson systems along with all of the peripherals involved in keeping the SPADOC system (Space Defense Operations Center) up and running.