Who am I?
I'm a hacker who loves technology. I've often been asked what I would do if I was not going to work in tech anymore, and I honestly can't come up with an answer. I love both hardware and software, and if I'm doing one for my job, I'm usually doing the other for my hobby. I'm sick that way... ;) In displaying some of the ADD that is endemic to the hacker community, I always have far too many projects open, and too many technologies are always calling to be hacked upon. I'm basically an inventor at heart.
If you see skills you like here, I'm always open to talking about opportunities. I do contract work as well as permanent placement, and I'm the type of guy who likes to work himself out of a job, because I know that by doing so I'll always have work, and so far it's strategy that has worked. I can be reached at bitreaper [at] n357 {dot} com.
Resume
Career Objective
To play with cool projects and technologies. Seriously? To obtain a software engineering position, doing either programming or test automation.
Major skills and technologies
- C, C++, Perl, Python, Bash scripting, some Java, Jython, Emacs Lisp, TCL, Expect, assembly, VisualBasic
- HTML/CSS
- Object Oriented Development experience
- Databases: MySQL, SQLite, Postgres, MS SQL Server
- Django web application framework, including Django forms
- Complex Linux experience, administration through to customization of the installer
- Software QA experience
- Unix administration
- Unix/Linux Development
- Selenium web automation
- Complex web application testing
- VMWare server, ESX server
- Windows environment experience, W2k, XP, W2k3, Vista, installing, configuring, breaking, fixing.
- Setup of simple Windows domains and DNS.
- Complex networking experience, knowledge of multiple network equipment manufacturers products (Cisco, Nortel, Foundry)
- Routing
- Network Access Control (NAC)
- Firewalls
- VLANs, trunking and 802.1x
- Apache, mod_suphp
- Build and release management experience
- Configuration management system administration experience (Subversion, ClearCase, CVS, Perforce, VSS)
- Firmware testing
- Writing basic firmware
Major Achievements
- Built a test tube installer for RPM based Linux distributions, similar to debootstrap's functionality for Debian based systems. See my writeup in the code section. This system reduced cycle time from 3hrs to 30 minutes, and reduced the number of commands from 50 to 4.
- Complex networking experience. Worked for a Network Access Control (NAC) company, whose product required complex network setups in order to test it. Did routing, bridging, firewalls, VPNs, 802.1x and 802.1q.
- Worked with Selenium for web application testing automation.
- Worked with VMWare server and ESX server for building complex environments to test NAC software.
- Built a live packet demonstration for an SDK for a network processor. This system used Linux with libpcap+ to read and write raw ethernet frames on two separate networks, and funnel those frames up to a box running WindowsNT and our packet processor simulator (hosted in the SDK). With this virtual version of our chip, we were able to funnel real traffic through real code in a simulation. Packets were processed real time, and although the simulator was horribly slow compared to the real chip, we were able to process packets at approximately modem speed (28.8k). This demo system was built specifically for fall N+I trade show in 1999.
Professional Experience
| ProtoTest at Dot Hill Systems | |
| 11/08 - 2/09 | Senior Test Automation Engineer |
| StillSecure | |
| 4/07 - 10/08 | Senior Software QA Engineer |
| Aircom at Ericsson | |
| 10/06 - 3/07 | Software Engineer |
| ATP Personnel at HP Open Source and Linux Organization | |
| 9/05 - 10/06 | ATCA QA Captain, aka "the QuAC" |
| ProtoTest at HP FSTL server lab | |
| 11/02 - 9/05 | Firmware Test Engineer |
| Voyant Technologies | |
| 10/01 - 9/02 | Software QA Engineer |
| SiTera (acq. by Vitesse) | |
| 9/00 - 5/01 | Digital Design Verification Engineer |
| 4/00 - 9/00 | Software Engineer, CAD tools |
| 12/98 - 4/00 | Build and Release Engineer, System Software Team |