Contact information

Skills highlights

Career Goals

• Training the next generation of open source experts
• Building interesting Linux/PC based gadgets or appliances
• Lowering the barriers of entry into electronics and programming aspects of computing for all Australians
• Providing environmentally friendly and healthy computing
• Systems Automation
• Promoting the philosophy of open source (sharing the good stuff) for everyone's benefit

Availability

I am available for hire through EverythingLinux Pty Ltd which is a service organisation supporting the Linux operating system and associated open source packages. For periods of time spanning less than a week the company's normal rate would apply. For longer periods such as 3 to 6 month contracts I would be able to negotiate a sole contractor rate but would need to be contactable by EverythingLinux from time to time and this amount of time would not be billable to you.

At the last update of this page on 26th of July 2007 I am available for long term work.

Job History Summary

Formal Qualifications

Hobbies and Interests

Detailed Skillset

Work history in detail

Undisclosed training company

I am limited by a non-disclosure agreement. I was called in twice, the first occasion they needed someone to assess, train and examine an apprentice as a bridging measure between two courses. I had 3 days to assess the level of Unix capability, train the candidate and test that he had the required ability. The second time was teaching a supplied set of lessons. Both included practical components.

Corporate Express Australia

I was initially employed to be part of the Electronic Commerce team as a programmer. This entailed writing NetXpress version 2 in mod-perl along with another team member. I learned general SQL skills with MySQL whilst doing this. As part of the job I dealt with internal and sometimes external customers using a web based request system and the phone.

Later when contracted back through EverythingLinux I was solely responsible for the day-to-day maintenance tasks, code changes and all support requests in order to free up the team of 3 programmers to spend about a year writing the next version.

NetXpress is essentially a front end to Corporate Express's in-house mainframe ordering system. Communication involved fetching stock levels and other data as well as sending purchase orders.

The other important aspect of my initial job at Corporate Express was dealing with all the traditional EDI gateways that also allowed invoices and orders to flow through external messaging systems. I consolidated approximately 6 DOS based systems which required daily manual transcription by sales staff into a single automated Linux system. I gave a talk on the system at an EDI forum when asked by one of the providers (NEIS).

Everything Linux Services

Right from the start Everything Linux ran it's operations on the Linux operating system. At that time there was no where near as many commercial applications available as there are now. Soon after joining the company in 1999 we went through the whole Y2K compliance thing, then I was responsible for writing a simple database driven point-of-sale (POS) application for use at the 2000 IT Expo. The next major project was our GST implimentation. From then on I was largely responsible for maintaining our in-house warehouse systems.

Other duties included conducting Linux Training courses, doing ad-hoc and regular Linux support for our customers either over the phone, over the internet or on-site, training and managing junior tech support staff, plus taking sales calls. Later on I became involved in the systems that gather data from supplier websites to keep our projected availability information as accurate as possible.

Our technical support of Linux went right from chosing hardware to install on, assembling or repairing hardware, to doing installations, customisations, software development, integration with other systems. Essentially anything the customer might demand that was Linux related.

Expedite Australia

Expedite Australia was formerly known as Vitel and was born from the need to transmit messages cheaply and to many destinations simultaneously. Their inital service was TELEX based which was then upgraded before my time to do faxes and later on voice and internet email. For example a client in China would be able to send using TELEX to a bunch of FAX recipients through one of the expedite nodes dotted all over the globe.

Expedite's Sydney's 24 hour operations centre was responsible for running all their nodes in Australia and New Zealand which by the time I left included Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland and Wellington. Various systems of hardware and software such as serial multiplexers, Telex modems, leased line equipment, ISDN PRI interfaces, Wyse serial terminals, PC terminal emulators, DOS based FAX cards, OS2/Warp, SCO Unix, Novell Netware, SunOS were all utilised to provide an effective system to their clients. Essentially if you had a message and a list of recipients to send it to, Expedite could get it there quickly.

Right from the start I was employed as the Operations Manager's right hand man. I was responsible for maintaining LAN infrastructure in the Sydney Operations center as well as performing regular operator duties and later on became the defacto administrator for their newest system whilst waiting for a formally trained administrator from the UK.

On my first week I commented how I'd never seen a worse pile of cabling at the back of a cabinet... so I was given the job of cleaning it up which took me approximately 2 weeks and resulted in apporoximately 200Kg of cable waste.

Expedite demanded reliability of systems and to achieve this we had regular maintenance checks established by head office in the US. We were smarter and I was involved in automating many of those maintenance tasks and having them produce the required reports thus freeing us up to do pro-active tasks.
Tasks included but were not limited to

• Automatically dialing all the indial lines with a modem to complete required line testing procedures using our Linux box
• Performing system garbage collection (ie removing clogged jobs) - scripts initiated from the Linux box.
• Automatically scheduling the orderly migration of fax jobs and doing a preventative reboot of a 30 channel fax node and automatically bringing it back online
• During the late 1990's Australia's phone numbers were changing from 6 or 7 digit local numbers which caused havoc with existing customer lists. I devised an excel spreadsheet macro which would correct the fax numbers which also took into account Telstra's change timeline.
• Also implimented the above algorythm into other broadcast list management utilities under DOS and Linux.
• Automated the conversion of formats between old and new systems using QBASIC.
• Liased with larger customers as well as smaller ones
• Trained up and acted as a team leader for operators at all hours of the day and night.
• Single handedly moved the Auckland node cabinets from one site to another on New Year's Eve and made on the spot changes due to line allocation stuff up with NZ Telecom. This involved orderly shutdown of all equipment, labelling of cables, removing wiring looms and re-cabling at the new site and liasing with the US on some routing issues on some of the older equipment.
• Performed on-site fault diagnosis to assist NZ Telecom fix ISDN issues.
• Performed commissioning of new nodes in Melbourne, and most of a completely new site in Brisbane. Both involved bolting computers in cabinets and wiring them all up.

Background