The following are my greatest achievements that span my 27 years in IT.
GNS3 - Manager of Information Services and Documentation Specialist
THE most important moment of my life. I applied to be GNS3's first employee. They were funded by the community and I began learning how to distrupt a 2.4 Billion Dollar Bootcamp Market. I believe that if you're willing to work hard, you should be able to earn your experiences working with the Cisco IOS images. GNS3 agreed and selected me since I can do two very important functions for the start up. I can support the over 1 million new users AND write about my experiences in articles. The following is my writing.
The Official Getting Started Guide to GNS3
The reason I chose this title is to convey a number of points. 1.) I placed the word Official since there would be many articles written ABOUT GNS3, but this is a concise walkthrough reviewed by Jeremy Grossman, Mark Blackwell, Stephen Guppy, Dennis Martin and yours truly. 2.) It's meant to get you started. Another gentleman named Chris Welsh was writing a GNS3 book from No Starch press. 3.) This was the first major release (1.0). This began the rapid adoption of this version as GNS3 was pursuing partnerships. My vision was to partner with major tech companies and spin up 'camps' within the GNS3 website (formerly called the Jungle). Either way, this was a crucial document for us.
Automation Platform Integration with Resolve Systems for Charter Communications.
GNS3 was acquired by Solarwinds LLC in 2016. Consequently, they had an entire army of marketers and they no longer needed me to write for the platform. After giving me a bucket of money; I searched for the best place to try out my sandboxing with GNS3. I caught the eye of a director in Charter's OSS team in Denver, CO. I agreed to jump on a team and work through the issues of integrating with Time Warner and Brighthouse networks. I chose a platform called Resolve systems and since it was a fairly robust framework, I worked closely with Resolve and the OSS team to pitch the idea and expand the automation platform. This was a multi-year project. Within that time, I came up with the following concepts. 1.) The three level document. 2.) The self-heal system.
Edmonds College
Edmonds College is where I currently work. There are a number of things I was able to change. The first major project was to design the network for a 40 million dollar building aimed at servicing STEM initiatives. This multi-year completed during COVID. At the same time, they wanted me to tackle the AWS issues. I used my experience at Charter to build a true DevOps team across multiple teams. In six months we had a functioning AWS Enterprise environment. It is fully network segmented based upon a developer's life cycle. This also lends to the SSDLC concepts I learned about while studying for my Masters. Edmonds also encouraged me to use that education to analyze and pinpoint areas of concern. Thirdly, I'm very proud of being one of the first in a cohort aimed at radically changing how students learn. That initiative in our team is the means of change for the campus. No matter what happens from here on out, I am very proud of working with all kinds of people from across campus. Further, I love teaching part time and I'd like to teach full time and share my many experiences...particularly within the Education space. Out of all the verticals I've worked in (Medical, Telco, Education), it's Education that is most rewarding for me.
Inventor ~ Methane Digester
Back in 2009, I found a way to capitalize a natural occurring phenomenon involving methane gas. It just so happened I had an Algebra partner at Ventura College. He turned me on to John Fry's book on methane digestion. I'm a firm believer we can generate ample supplies of energy if we harness new technology aimed at getting the most out of my methane digester. I believed it so much, I went through the long arduous and painful process of dealing with the USPTO. I even went on an AM radio show called "Garden Gossip". I know this would revolutionize our world. I realized that this kind of idea is pretty much 'squashed' by much much bigger players than myself.