I work on open software, sometimes as part of my employment, sometimes on request, and sometimes just for things I want to do for myself and then throw out there in case they benefit anyone else. These days I mostly code in Ruby.

One of the founding members of The Apache Software Foundation when it was incorporated in 1999, I've been active in the Foundation ever since.

VP of conference planning for Apache Software Foundation; chair of ApacheCon.

Member of nine-person board of directors of the Apache Software Foundation, since the ASF was incorporated.

When the Apache Geronimo project appeared to be in serious trouble and in danger of imploding (or being imploded) due to personality conflicts and confusion about goals, I volunteered to take the chair position as an uninvolved party. Over the following year I succeeded, eventually, in getting the project healthy and back on track. Having accomplished my task, I resigned in November of 2006 in favour of the project's choice.

I write articles on technology and open software for multiple outlets.

I started writing "software" for Monroe programmable calculators in 1975. Next was a Wang 2200A, with 4KiB (yes, 4!) of RAM, no disk, built-in BASIC only, and a cassette drive for storage. Among other things, it was used to manage which students had 'waiter' duty in the dining hall on a weekly basis. Next was NOS on a CDC 6600, then a PDP-10, then finally a VAX from Digital Equipment Corporation. I picked up FORTRAN, APL, Pascal, COMPASS, BLISS, SNOBOL, DCL, C, and MACRO-32 in these environments. I kept using VMS through 1998, but started using Unixish systems starting around 1994, and Linux specifically in 1995.Since starting to work with Unixish systems, I picked up shell scripting (mostly BASH), PHP, Perl, Ruby, some aspects of Ruby on Rails, Emacs and Emacs Lisp, Puppet, and I'm currently working on learning Go and Python. I've written my own blog software in PHP, complete with inline XSL (such as to embed APL code); an IRC bot in Ruby; a security incident analysis tool in FORTRAN; tests and test databases in Ruby an BASH; a BASH function to read .ini files; and I don't know what all else. Right now my personal projects include a genetic algorithm library, a Fibonacci processor, and a too to share shell commands between my accounts on various systems -- all in Ruby.I'm always learning new stuff, and I'm pretty good at it.

Developing eco-friendly autonomous deep-sea mining robots.

Worked in IT Engineering to provide application support for customer-facing services, including load-balancing/sharding database requests for customer entitlement information. Subsequently accepted role in IT Platform Operations to pay off technical debt.Key Accomplishments: • Developed middleware load-balancing software for back-end database of customer service entitlements. • Redesigned several common tasks requested of IT from being ticket-driven to self-service (example: creation of per-organization git repositories). • Redesigned and rationalized Puppet infrastructure supporting nearly 6,000 hosts across four release-phase environments. • Responsible for development Foreman environment and ownership of IT Puppet service.

Working on Ruby, Rails, subscriptions, Apache, entitlements, and generally cool stuff.

Author of various gem packages dealing with data types and manipulation. Examples include fto, bitstring, and fibonaccia. Projects have moved to github.

On OSI board of directors, vice president, and chair of membership project. My goals include broadening OSI's scope to something greater than just licensing, and to formalise its operations and procedures so that it is more accountable and information is more easily found.

Provided application and solution design and implementation of the Apache Web Server and multiple related projects. Analyzed potential impact across all IBM’s Software Groups. Provided software programming and consultation to numerous technology areas within IBM, regarding interfacing with external open source projects. Trained engineers to communicate with open source developers as peers.Key Accomplishments: • Developed test suite to check Apache Web server code, both as available from the ASF and with IBM’s modifications applied. This involved C, Perl, and shell scripting. • Developed object-oriented error reporting/handling system in PHP for a project targeted for world-wide use. • Participated in the team development of IBM’s added-value enhancements to the Apache Web server. • Coordinated and was instrumental in the release of IBM's Cloudscape database package to The Apache Software Foundation as what became Apache Derby.

I joined DECUS around the time of my first Symposium attendance, in St Louis in 1983. Security SIG chair for a little while, member of more SIGs than I can count (particularly VMS), semi-regular attendee and presenter. I 'left' around the time DECUS became Encompass and started wanting money to remain a member. The politics at the time were pretty hairy, IIRC.

[Littleton, Boxborough, and Maynard (LKO, BXB, PKO), Massachusetts, USA.Served in multiple roles during tenure. Led 5-person team of direct reports in system administration, supporting hundreds of users. Served in secondary role as security consultant, providing security qualification of the OpenVMS operating system to meet U.S. government certification requirements. Served as primary system administrator for several Digital UNIX systems, 12+ OpenVMS clusters with 500+ user base. In addition, managed web site servers, DNS/BIND servers with 32+ networks, InfoServers and site firewall systems. Developed automation tools for access scheduling, system accounting, paging staff for incident detection and problem resolution.Key Accomplishments: • Troubleshot and restructured OpenVMS cluster to improve uptime from 30% to nearly 95%. • Instituted productivity gains through dynamically allocating tasks across 7 different systems. • Wrote and implemented tools assisting with sysadmin tasks that are still in use world-wide today. • Developed a scriptable process for USAF, streamlining operations and increasing efficiency.

[St Louis, Missouri, USA] Did sysadmin work for Edward D Jones; worked on GDSS project for Air Force MAC.

Profiled and developed office automation applications. Participated as a member of system administration team; developed performance and scaling recommendations for nationally distributed application network.