Experience

PAST EXPERIENCE

I done a lot of things over the years, but these are some of my most proud accomplishments.

Photocomm (now Kyocera Solar)

Working with one other Engineer, I helped developed the most accurate solar module test appliance ever created. The two of us wrote all of the software and designed all of the hardware over a period of one year.

When we finished “The Suntower,” it was more accurate than the Kyocera and the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) solar module test stations. Both measured exactly 10% above and below ours’, and they had a 10% accuracy rating. Either they were lying, or we were pretty damned accurate.

Started GadgetWiz

Wrote the software and spun up the website for Gadgetwiz.com. It was a peer-to-peer rental site. It never gained much traction, and I let it go after a year. I put some serious effort into it though. That was long before I read Bob Parsons’ Rules of Success. Those are some of the reasons I’m bringing the site back up.

“Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it.” – Bob Parsons

I’m considering making some changes – including the open source distribution of the Source Code. First, I need to audit the code to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid (password in a text file or something). Stay tuned for this.

GoDaddy

I was a lead Systems Engineer for GoDaddy’s email system for several years. I oversaw the systems as they grew from 43 servers to almost 3,000 servers in that period.

When I started, the servers wouldn’t make it through the morning before we encountered capacity problems. When I left, we were running 5 9’s. I worked a LOT of hours getting from one place to the next.

I think back to the day after I was asked to Admin the email system. The person who usually solved the SPAM backlog every night broke his arm, and was out for a month. That brings me to something else that Bob said, “Solve your own problems.”

Red5Studios

I was a Systems Engineer for a Red5Studios, and worked on the systems necessary to auto-scale and monitor the systems necessary for the operation of the MMOFPS game FIREFALL.

Started Mugmail

Mugmail was the first web-based email system deployed that allowed customers to bring their own domain. I created the entire system by myself. It nearly received a write-up in Wired magazine, but bad timing scuttled the venture.

Starting Zalaxy

This is my main venture right now. Take a look at my website Zalaxy.com. My intention is to open source the software for this venture as well. Stay tuned.

Blockchain

I just started working on Zalaxy when a friend asked me to stop by Microcetner and buy a graphics card. The moment I saw the people standing in line, I realized I was looking at something really cool. Now I’m investigating blockchain technologies. I’ve already built a couple of mining nodes and a staking node, and I’m trying to dig deeper into blockchain programming. This is the biggest thing since Mozilla hit the internet (incidentally, I personally watched James Clark announce Netscape back in 1994).