Stephen Hill
San Jose, CA 95129
Vancouver, WA 98665
+1.360.513.4476 (cell, leave a numeric message for fastest response)
AIM,Yahoo IM: nehpetsca
Email: stephen@gmail.com
MSN: nehpets@zo.com
Homepage: http://nehpets.zo.com/
Resume: http://nehpets.zo.com/resume/
Work examples: http://www.zo.com/~nehpets/resume/examples/
SUMMARY: I am a strongly experienced senior level unix/systems administrator.
I have worked in primarily Developer support or operations environments, with
a wide variety of systems tools and services. My more specific skills apply
primarily to process improvement, in automation or data collection, or mass
scale interactions. I have been involved with training as well as liaison or
personal relation work. I can rapidly adjust to working in new environments,
or with new tools as appropriate or as they become available. A stable work
position is of far greater priority than the income levels, and I enjoy both
challenging/dynamic and static work environments. Willing to work contract
based positions, partial hours, or full-time.
OBJECTIVES:
-> Further my understanding of developing unix and network technologies
-> Unix or NOC environment, working with or supporting a team
-> Seeking positions at mid to sr level of requirement
LOCATION/HOURS:
-> Work in the San Jose / San Francisco bay area
-> Enjoy graveyard hours and 8 to 12 hour shifts
-> Enjoy daytime hours, but not 'swing' shift
-> Prefer to work off hours where slow commutes involved (10pm - 7am, 11am - 2pm)
(San Francisco, Fremont, Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz)
RECENT TRAINING:
-> CSS project-based learning, basics
-> Photographic work (Nikon D70)
-> Ruby 1.6 / 1.8[.1], with-reference-book basic-level scripting experience
SQL / CGI interfacing
-> MySQL administration and table maintenance (4.1.3b app & data upgrade from 3.23)
-> Tcl 8.4 / 8.x improvements familiarization and code rewrites
Socket communication, increased performance, library/modules
-> Filemaker 7,8 advanced functionality, web functionality, split file development
Rewriting and bulk transfer of fm6 & prior up, security functionality,
ODBC interaction, split structure & interface designs for upgrade rollouts
WORK HISTORY:
05/1995 - present
International Expatriate Consulting (http://www.ieconsult.com/)
Database Designer
International/Immigration relocation data systems (contractor)
Commercial data management database (Filemaker Pro, Mac/Win)
Office connectivity and maintenence (Mac/Win)
This is one of my long-term contract interactions. It is
a combination of tech support and office management, as well
as sub-contracting to IEC clients for similar work, and a
series of major project in filemaker pro for production of
database systems. Most of this work has been for immigration,
relocation, association management, and service provider systems.
In addition to the long term development and support, I
currently maintain a small remote colocation containing servers
for filemaker service for IEC clients, web service, and email
services, including backups and conitinuing customization.
Examples of this work are available upon request.
03/1995 - present
zo.com (self-employed) (http://www.zo.com/)
Senior Systems Administrator
Filemaker7 development/administration
Network services for consulting clients and small businesses.
This is a contract company of my own. It has fluctuated over
the years from my primary source of income (most clients not listed
as part of this resume), to inert during periods of heavy employement.
I also maintain a set of internet services as zo.com, running on
primarily FreeBSD, occasionally solaris, and including full user
services, such as sendmail, POP3, IMAP (including secure access),
apache2 with several installed and custom cgi packages, some aid
in html or cgi design, DNS/bind, occasional remote access, irc,
some private IM services, user support, etc. Perl and expect are
my primarily tools, although I've begun to work with ruby as a
future solutions tool.
Contract services are primarily office/personal systems support,
Filemaker Pro database development, internet services development,
and training.
For office systems support, I'm involved at a purchasing and
installation level, hardware and software, and work with clients
to get both personal and business networks setup, secured, and
able to operate for extended periods of time without need for
external resources as possibile. Desktop/laptop sync, wireless
and remote access technologies, and security and disaster recovery
while on business trips are primary contract areas.
For internet services, I've operated as consultant primarily,
helping clients to understand their needs and resources and find
professionals and service providers to fit needs and budgets.
My Filemaker Pro work is extensive, and ranges from simple
single-dimension systems to very complex solutions. Focus is on
process reproduction or improvement, and high levels of user
comfort and workflow ease. Some of these systems have been
designed as subsidiary data systems to interact with larger
in-house systems of a different database structure, or as front
ends to other database structure. A lot of data transitioning
and data consistency projects have been involved as well.
This is used as both a source of income, as well as a source
pool for unpaid work, to continue to develop personal skills and
familiarity with tools and servers.
09/2003 - 05/2004
xo.com (http://www.xo.com)
Manager: Lou Zellner, San Jose/Fremont
Senior Systems Administrator (NOC)
Graveyard systems monitoring and outage response.
I was hired into this company for senior experience and graveyard
ability/preference. Primary functions involved simple actions as
remote hands/eyes for monitored customer outages or customer requests,
as well as an internal technical resource, and some occasional deeper
level of solaris support on managed servers. Most machines in this
position were linux or windows.
I was laid off during a restructuring involving mass outsourcing.
10/2000 - 09/2001
GlobalCenter (www.globalcenter.com )
(Acquired by Exodus)
Senior Systems Administrator/Graveyard TAM shift
Graveyard shift advanced managed hosting group.
This was offered to me primarily due to the interest in the
the combination of my senior levels of experience and prior
graveyard experience and preference. The position was primarily
a reactionary one, monitoring and customer response, although it
was a relatively busy graveyard cycle. I worked for a couple of
'legacy' buildings with a machine group comprising primarily of
Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, win2k, HP-UX, AIX, and cisco hardware
and software. Customer response varied from simple remote hands
and eyes, hardware failure diagnosis, scripting/automation aid,
disaster recovery, and development aid requests.
I was migrated to a multi-tier managed hosting group that was
being implemented to eliminate redunant internal hosting groups,
and used as an internal resource for solution development while
on graveyard still.
I was laid off from this position in a massive Exodus
restructuring. Following this, I worked primarily contract
positions for quite some time due to industry fluctuations.
11/1999 - 06/2000
Mediaplex (www.mediaplex.com )
Senior Systems Administrator/Team lead position
Farm design and user training.
I was hired into mediaplex to aid in a transition from an older
simple image farm (linux, freebsd) farm structure, to a highly managed
solaris/java high-SLA environment. I worked with a small team of
3 sysadmins, a tools group and the NOC/junior crew.
It was our focus to evaluate hardware and software solutions,
for both cost and effectiveness, and to design and implement a
high-availability farm with disaster recovery for multiple sites,
including a path of development rollout. (development to qa to perf
to operations). Internal infrastructure and internet was also
maintained, as well as a primarily FreeBSD desktop environment.
The farm system developed involved primarily Netra T1 units,
just as they were released, with some larger units (220r, 420r, 450,
etc) for data processing and database distribution. The farm
environment allowed for complete redundancy in function and admin
access, allowing for full peak capacity with full 50% outage of
systems or farms. It was a self-installing, and capable of a high
degree of self-healing/self-maintenance, as well as a on-the-fly
system function rearrangement (allowing all unit resources to be
realigned to provide any of the various services as part of the
distributed group.) Hardware involved included ciscos for network
and terminal access, the sun netras and others mentioned for systems,
BigIP and 3DNS for distribution, a number of hardware firewall
solutions (ipfw, FW1, PIX). This also utilized NIS, DNS, sendmail,
NFS, ssh, and a variety of apache/SSL. Most of the primary service
was with various customized java/web servers maintained by the
developers.
I was involved in migrating off a corrupted NIS+ to a controlled
NIS/YP system, as well as the linux to solaris migration. Split
horizon DNS for the infrastructure, and access to internal/external
interfaces of the farm structures. I helped to develop the processes
involved in the monitoring/data collection system, as well as much of
the automation and configuration/data distribution. Training of
other personnel in both the design, and development of entry-level or
junior noc/sysadmin training.
After reaching most primary completion milestones, and being changed
to have an internal focus on the development level of systems, internal
focus changes resulted in my layoff as unnecessary to the operations
group. After this, I proceeded to return to small contracts work as
zo.com until the next position.
08/1999 - 11/1999
Globix (www.globix.com )
Senior NOC Graveyard systems admin.
I joined Globix to operate as senior / graveyard NOC at a new
colocation/services facility in santa clara shortly prior to their
public opening. I was involved in the process of developing some
of the NOC user systems and monitoring/ticket queueing activities,
as well as helping in the process development. Primary NOC
activities were based upon installation/setups, ticket response,
and managing client systems upon request or failure. There were
some internal/client services machines with project level work as
well. This was primarily Linux (NOC machines) and Solaris (Services
machines). The monitoring system was a development of apache, nocol,
MRTG, remedy. I was also utilized to train some of the junior members
in both customer relation and systems.
After a time, I was pulled out for use by Professional Services,
and worked offsite at a client location to aid them in the migration of
an apache/ssl + oracle8 solution from linux to HP-UX 11. This project
was completed and documented.
I was offered a superb opportunity at Mediaplex while working with
Globix during a still primarily idle initial period, and chose to move
on due to the design functions and senior level work offered.
01/1998 - 08/1999
Redbrick (Acquired by Informix 01/1999)
Informix (Acquired by IBM)
Database warehousing & analytical software company.
Unix systems administration & network management.
I hired into Redbrick in order to move into a more extensive
working environment. They were a database warehousing software
development company, although I was not intimately acquainted
with our product line or services as I was well removed from that
level of function. I came in to work as part of a three person
unix sysadmin team, with a seperate windows sysadmin team.
This was primarily a developer/engineer and lab support position,
with additional work managing the minimal IT and internet
infrastructure, as well as networking, MAN/WAN, and some remote
access. (10baseT, 100baseT, Fiber, Frame-relay, HDSL, ISDN, modem).
The infrastructure/internet services consisted of sendmail, pop,
netscape3 and some apache, DNS, ftp, DHCP, NIS (not plus), X11,
and list management (majordomo) primarily. The demands on these
systems were fairly minimal.
The primary functions at this position involved the labs.
This involved a large number and very wide variety of operating
systems and differing hardware and version solutions for development,
QA, performance, and builds. The primary operating systems were
SunOS/Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, AIX, with a number of other systems,
including Digital UNIX, MP-RAS, DYNIX/ptx, SVR4/MP, etc. The
hardware ranged from simple servers (such as ultra2) to large
cabinet servers and some SP machines. These were maintained with
a central backup system/network, as well as a large UPS system for
key systems. Responsibility was for both hardware and systems,
and software install or support upon developer request, primarily
database installations.
My work was normal ticket queue group case work, combined with
a proactive level of systems process automation and installation
automation. This also involved development of monitoring and bulk
administration and data gathering activities, as well as a large
projecting implementing perl4/perl5 across the entire realm of
servers (far trickier at that time than it would be today). The
ticketing system here was remedy.
I was part of the 24x7 response queue, and was involved with
an IMAP evaluation and rollout planning during my tenure, as well
as the "y2k" testing and planning project.
We were acquired by Informix, and during that course, I was
retained for transitional activities, and then eventually located
the position with Globix to move on to a preferred work environment.
05/1996 - 02/1999
ISP Networks, inc. (Acquired by Fastmetrics)
Internet service provider (employee basis till 01/98,
contract support/consulting after 01/98)
I was hired into ISP Networks to enhance the technical operations.
At the time, they employed a single primary technical employee,
and worked primary dialup with a base of HDSL clients as well.
Due to circumstance, I became responsible for setup and maintenance
of the entire setup after a very short time, as the primary
sysadmin became unavailable for a number of months.
My work at this company was effectively complete design,
implementation, training, automation, maintenance, testing, etc
for a full internet service and connectivity provider.
The company was setup with SunOS (4.1.x) and irix (5.3/6.2)
servers, with the irix machines being used for web services. Over
the course of my work there, we utilized several different network
products, consisting primarily of Livingston, ascend, cisco, and
proteon. With expansion during my tenure to become a very heavily
ISDN, Frame relay, and eventually ADSL/XDSL provider in addition
to HDSL and growth into a digital modem / 56k services.
Some of the primary functions of automation and maintenance
involved the production of scripted/database facililties to allow
for extremely small employee base, including non-technical fields
(such as sales and billing) to have access to and complete control
over various aspects of a clients services, including settings and
activity. This included primarily DNS (~700 domains, forward,
reverse portable and non-portable, SWIP, NIC interactions), sendmail,
uw popd, wu-ftpd, netscape 1.x and 2.0 web services, and radius
connectivity options, as well as OSPF and BGP routing provisions.
Most of this scripting was done with a combination of perl4,
some perl5 enhancement as it developed, bourne shell, and expect
for interactive systems monitoring and maintenance. There was also
a series of monitoring and data collection scripting, designed to
track usage, and provide a systems health and expansion determination.
Another primary function at this position was for tech support.
This included all levels, as I was at most times the sole technical
support resource 24x7 during most of the time. Development of call
tracking and ticketing systems (filemaker pro development, use of
preexisting and migration off off a filepro system). This process
involved the network support, services support as listed above,
desktop internet support for various mac, win (95, nt4 primarily),
and unix systems, including some support for user-run services.
This also involved user-side hardware, often ascend or farallon
hardware, and some web/cgi work.
Due to my level of involvement in the structure, when I moved
on to a new opportunity, I remained contracted for work as they
continued to train new individuals for the systems, and work to
acquire and develop a new employed technical resource.
1988 - 1996
Apple HR Dept
Relocation Dept, Benefits Dept (contractor)
My work at Apple started primarily as a combination of macintosh
systems and network administration, with some user training, and
general office maintenance (database management, entry, file
management). This work was with the Relocation department.
I provided hardware and software tech support and installation.
I also helped to design and implement the server infrastructure for
the group, including remote access (ARA), quickmail, meeting maker,
restrospect backup, file and database servers, print service, etc.
As time went on, I was contracted to provide some of the above
tech support services for other groups within the HR division.
I was the primary aid for a large relocation database design
project in fourth dimension, and database developer for the
filemaker/filemaker pro projects for various relocation, benefits,
sabbatical, education, insurance, etc projects for these groups.
In the course of work, aside from a variety of user and server
applications, I worked with a very large variety of mac hardware
old and new at the times, peripheral gear, connectivity, display,
desktop, laptop, and server. Installations included both normal
MacOS and some A/UX involvement for server work.
I lost this position during an apple full-contractor elimination
run, at which point several large projects were cancelled and I
was not invited back in a long enough time that I moved on to
a mixture of salary and small contract based jobs.
KEYWORDS: (key listings only)
Network familiarity:
802.11a/b/g wireless, ADSL/SDSL, Cisco, ethernet (10, 100meg primarily), FDDI, Frame relay, HDSL, IP, ISDN, modem, VPN
Operating Systems: (order of familiarity)
Solaris, SunOS, FreeBSD, Windows (2000/XP primarily), HP-UX, Sun JDS, linux, IRIX, AIX
Services:
Apache, DHCP, DNS/bind, Filemaker Pro, FTP, IMAP, Jumpstart, Majordomo, MySQL, NFS, NIS, POP, samba, Sendmail, SSH, X11
Tools:
Expect, Perl, procmail, RCS, remedy, ruby, Shell scripting (bourne, C), TCL
REFERENCES:
Available upon request