It's my job to understand the hardware and infrastructure that our platform works on, and then make that hardware and infrastructure better. This could involve new server technology, new storage, better process improvements, or new concepts in how we might best discover, prove, buy, deploy, and operate our gear.In other words, I'm lucky enough to imagine or find cool stuff, implement it, test and benchmark it, and make it happen operationally.In my spare time, I get to consult on a number of interesting and complicated daily operational issues: end-to-end performance debugging, benchmarking, kernel and driver debugging, writing custom utilities, and making bad stuff less of a recurring problem.

Provide all aspects of Operational Support and Management for large BI environments including multiple petabytes of Netezza and Hadoop.

All things Netezza and Big Data.

Started as DBA and SA support ( and vendor watchdog ) for our "Callmine" system - an approximately 40TB Oracle data warehouse. The solution ran out of gas, so I was asked to go find something better.Spec'd and migrated the platform to a new Netezza 10-800 100TB data warehouse with a new vendor to watchdog. Within 12 months, we expanded to two Netezza 10-800 boxes, then added a TwinFin 96 about 10 months later, and now finalizing the addition of a TwinFin 120. Having 2PB of data is entertaining.Also acting as general unix guy - selecting and implementing servers and dbs to serve needs from multiple teams, providing leadership on process and direction.

Manage "Off Board Systems" - a group of up to 18 folks keeping the customer facing systems ( WAP, SMSC, MMSC ) running 24/7. Quite the exhausting life.

Came back to (then) Western Wireless to help split off Voicestream to a separate entity. Had a great time re-spec'ing and rebuilding the TRIS+ core billing system and building/managing the PUBS group - "Production Unix Business Systems".

Contracted to Boeing Defense and Space as a Unix Systems Administrator, working primarily for the Joint Strike Fighter program.Got to play Unix Commando - they sent me to other shops where folks were having unix issues they couldn't solve, and I solved them. Got to widen my skill base to include SGI, IBM, and Linux. Fun times.

Left CSC Intellicom to come to Western Wireless and be the System Administrator / Database Administrator for the TRIS+ Billing System install. Had two HPUX servers when i arrived, grew to 50 when I left.