My Experience, Education, Courses and Certifications
I have several years of experience and education that pretty much runs the gambit. A little history on my adventures in the Technical areas.
I started learning programming in the mid 80’s during high school programming in BASIC at Cheboygan Area High School. I went to a computer camp around 1984 at Mount St. Joseph’s in Cincinnati, OH and did some development with BASIC on an Atari computer.
After graduation high school in Cincinnati 1989 I attended Xavier University for a semester and took a PASCAL course using Borland software. Shortly thereafter I joined the Navy.
While in the Navy I was an Operations Specialist and worked as a radar operator, surface control operator, navigational charts and as the JOTS II operator. I also was using the UNIX operating system and did some office related work using Word Perfect.
Upon leaving Active Duty Navy I attended the University of Cincinnati pursuing a degree in Computer Science. During my time at the University I took a wide variety of computer classes learning such computer languages as Mathematica, Fortran, C++, LISP and Prolog.
I left Cincinnati after a few years and moved to San Antonio Texas. While in San Antonio I attended the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to continue on my Computer Science degree. While there I took classes in Java including Data Structures. I also was co-enrolled at San Antonio College taking courses in Unix and scripting with BASH.
Also while in San Antonio I worked at various different jobs as a temporary for Kennmark Group. One of my first assignments was using MS Access to keep track of various legal documents for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. My next assignment was at United States Automobile Association (USAA) doing such jobs as editing MS Office documents, supporting the various software, assisting with converting SQL Server database to Oracle, assisting with setting up there automated phone system and developing web pages with MS FrontPage for their intranet. I then started working for Economic Research Services (ERS).
While working for ERS, I was hired permanently and moved to their offices in Tallahasee, FL. I worked closely with their developer and helped create an MS Access application using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) amongst various other technical duties including setting up servers and networks. The application was created to scan, ocr and store documents for litigation assisting paralegals, legal secretary’s and attorneys with research. During this time I earned an Associates in Arts for Computer Programming at Tallahasee Community College (TCC) taking courses in Visual Basic.NET, SQL, SQL Plus and Web Development.
I then moved to Tampa where I worked at the Hillsborough County City Clerk’s office doing data entry and helping them with their scanning nad OCR software based on my experience with ERS Group. After a few months I started working at the City of Tampa.
During my time with the City of Tampa I had worn many hats and eventually ended up working for their Water department as an Application Support Specialist. My duties included converting and supporting several MS Access VBA applications to C#.NET Windows Applications. I also created various Easytrieve mainframe reports for their monthly reporting. The departmental technology teams were then consolidated under the Technology and Innovation department.
While with the Technology and Innovation department I started out on their Application Maintenance team continuing to work on the water applications and reporting as well as migrating the data from the main frame to SQL Server. I worked closely with the COBOL programmers on the conversion as well as moving the reports to Crystal Reports. I eventually moved over to the Relational Database Management (RDBMS) team.
Working with the RDMBS team was invaluable. Not only did I work as a SQL Server DBA but I also created and maintained the application and web servers. I assisted the web team with setting up their Drupal development environment with Windows and SQL Server. I also spearheaded setting up the servers for a content management system, Sire, which eventually was bought out by Hyland and to be replaced with OnBase. I set up all the development, test and production servers for the application, web, database, OCR and PDF. I also spearheaded creating, configuring and maintaining the application and database servers for the Mulesoft ESB environment. During this time I created a learning management system to help keep track of the various training requirements for the T&I department which I created with C# an Silverlight. I also learned and used my programming and scripting knowledge to create various Powershell Scripts. After some time I was considered the Powershell go to person for scripting and automation needs.
I then was promoted to Senior Applications Programmer Analyst and moved to the Enterprise Platform Solutions (EPS) team to help support the SCCM software. I not only helped support the SCCM software but was third level support for most application and assisted the team with any programming or scripting needs. During this time I got certified MCP/MCSA with Office 365.
Also while with the EPS team there was a need to support the Genetec Security system that was initially implemented by the City of Tampa Police department (TPD) but needed support for other departments as well. Along with a TPD detective I setup various servers for the application, mobile, web and database as well as several servers for each location for video storage. I continued to setup, support and provide training as cameras and access management was added to the various departments including TPD, Fire and Rescue, Convention Center, Parking and Parks and Recreation. We grew from 1 department and 60 cameras to about 10 departments and 600 cameras and were in the process of adding the Florida Department of Transportation to our Genetec system. We were also integral and assisting setup for events such as Wrestle Mania and Super Bowl.
During my time in Tampa I also attended Hillsborough Community College (HCC) pursuing a degree in Database Administration and Web Development and was also co-enrolled at the University of Florida. While at HCC I took various classes from Web Development with HTML, CSS, and Java Script; Scripting with Perl and PHP as well as DOS, PL/SQL, Flash and ActionScript. I also took a game development, AutoCAD and GIS while attending HCC.
At the University of South Florida (Polytechnic) I received my Bachelor’s of Science degree in Information Technology taking classes in C#, Python and Project Management.
I also continued to serve in the United States Navy Reserves and had several different duties including Technology. I was the IT division lead petty office and assisted in creating databases to track our passports and other requirements. I also worked for CINCUSNAVEUR in London assisting their Legal Department with various MS office and MS Access related projects. Worked two weeks at JIATFE converting their servers from Windows NT to Windows 2000. Recalled to work for 9 months with NRD Miami supporting all the recruiting commands throughout south Florida and was recalled to Italy to work for Chief of Naval Operations Europe and Africa to help convert applications from Microsoft Access to SQL Server. I retired from the Naval Reserves in 2012.
After 17 years with the City of Tampa I moved to Tennessee and currently work as a contractor at Ft. Campbell for Tenax Technology. I am currently converting old ASP applications to .NET 5/6 applications using C#, Blazor, and Entity Framework, updating Python Django applications and more recently as a Red Hat Linux Administrator.
I continue to keep my various skills up to date by attending various meetups, code camps and SQL Saturdays both online and in-person as well as take courses on Udemy, Coursera, EdX, Skillsoft, Lynda, Pluralsight and LinkedIn learning.