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Anybody else in High-Tech?

ac_

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Quick bio:

I started my careers as a mechanic back in the day. I started working independent shops then some transmission shops then to the Toyota dealer. Once at Toyota I was a general line tech, and worked my way up to electrical/drive-ability tech. I actually ran a team for a while, but eventually my interest moved on to something else. I put myself into the University of Washington for some computer administration training and eventually moved over to High-Tech,

I am now (18 years later) a Sr Linux Engineer for a Global company.

I was curious, since this site seems to be global, if anybody else was wanting to admit that they were in High-Tech in some fashion.

Disclaimer: Not looking to intrude on privacy. Don't need company names if you don't want to admit it hehe. Just was wondering who else is in High-Tech is all.
 
Ya, did Tech for awhile. Start-ups, end user support, Systems Engineering. Interface design. Business / Systems Analysis and Engineering. Good money, bad hours, high stress. Did a lot of contracting. That was really good money. Bagged it after awhile and now handle material in a manufacturing warehouse. The most technical thing I do now is post on this forum.
 
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I'm not sure if it counts, but I run my own web design business, so that's what I do for a living (link in signature).
 
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I'm not sure if it counts, but I run my own web design business, so that's what I do for a living (link in signature).
Of course that counts. It was a general question. To me if you work at Best Buy selling computers - that is technically High Tech in my book. If you work at the T-mobile Kiosk in the mall that is High-Tech to me.

Owning your business is pretty awesome!
Curious, do you do just design, or do you host, and support existing sites? Also do you do cross-platform?
 
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Curious, do you do just design, or do you host, and support existing sites? Also do you do cross-platform?

I do design, and I host as well. I have my own dedicated server for that, which I also manage myself, so I'm kind of a Linux systems admin to some degree or another (though no expert).

With websites, I've found that my main area of expertise is all things WordPres. 10 years ago it didn't used to be that way, but since WordPress has really taken over as the go to CMS for most small to medium sized websites, it's become a real area of expertise for me.

I will work with just about anything, but the majority of people coming to me are after WordPress sites. I end up building my own WordPress themes, and sometimes plugins as well.
 
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I do design, and I host as well. I have my own dedicated server for that, which I also manage myself, so I'm kind of a Linux systems admin to some degree or another (though no expert).

With websites, I've found that my main area of expertise is all things WordPres. 10 years ago it didn't used to be that way, but since WordPress has really taken over as the go to CMS for most small to medium sized websites, it's become a real area of expertise for me.

I will work with just about anything, but the majority of people coming to me are after WordPress sites. I end up building my own WordPress themes, and sometimes plugins as well.

That is impressive, really it is. One thing I know about me is, I am not a good business man. As much as I would love to own my own business, I am not good at it. Luckily there is a small amount of people that do what I do, but a huge demand, so I really am in the right place at the right time.
 
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Ya, did Tech for awhile. Start-ups, end user support, Systems Engineering. Interface design. Business / Systems Analysis and Engineering. Good money, bad hours, high stress. Did a lot of contracting. That was really good money. Bagged it after awhile and now handle material in a manufacturing warehouse. The most technical thing I do now is post on this forum.

That is a major change it sounds like.
 
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That is impressive, really it is. One thing I know about me is, I am not a good business man. As much as I would love to own my own business, I am not good at it. Luckily there is a small amount of people that do what I do, but a huge demand, so I really am in the right place at the right time.

I'm not the managing type by any means, which is why my business is just me and my step-dad, who does the print side of things. I've thought about bringing on other people to work for me, but I don't want to become a manager in all honesty.
 
I started out way back when in the electronics repair field. TVs, VCRs, Camcorders, Building Computers , etc... From there I went in to Visual Basic development. Back in 99 landed a job in Office Depot Corporate HQ and my role was Systems Administrator, DBA and Developer for the IT Help Desk call management system. Got selected to be part of the PeopleSoft implementation project and based on my development background I was assigned to PeopleSoft Financials System development team but as the project completed I transition to PeopleSoft System Administrator for Office Depot till about 2010. Today I am still a PeopleSoft Systems Administrator/DB2 DBA at the School District. In all these years I have gained experience from MS Windows Servers and MS SQL Server to Sun Solaris and AIX Unix systems and all kinds of Linux flavors as well as DB2 DBA. I have played a bit with Oracle Database mainly because We use Oracle Enterprise Manager and that runs on Oracle DB lol

I have done web development both in house and as a side gig. I am no expert but I can do just about anything in the Information Technology arena.

Luckily I am not old enough to have Mainframe experience even though I did work with it in Office Depot but I hated it LOL
 
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I'm not the managing type by any means, which is why my business is just me and my step-dad, who does the print side of things. I've thought about bringing on other people to work for me, but I don't want to become a manager in all honesty.
Same here I have never wanted to be a manager. Back in the electronic repair days I owned the business and did have people working for me and I leaned that it was not for me.
 
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Same here I have never wanted to be a manager. Back in the electronic repair days I owned the business and did have people working for me and I leaned that it was not for me.

Yep, being a manager takes a lot of the fun out of it IMHO.
 
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I started out way back when in the electronics repair field. TVs, VCRs, Camcorders, Building Computers , etc... From there I went in to Visual Basic development. Back in 99 landed a job in Office Depot Corporate HQ and my role was Systems Administrator, DBA and Developer for the IT Help Desk call management system. Got selected to be part of the PeopleSoft implementation project and based on my development background I was assigned to PeopleSoft Financials System development team but as the project completed I transition to PeopleSoft System Administrator for Office Depot till about 2010. Today I am still a PeopleSoft Systems Administrator/DB2 DBA at the School District. In all these years I have gained experience from MS Windows Servers and MS SQL Server to Sun Solaris and AIX Unix systems and all kinds of Linux flavors as well as DB2 DBA. I have played a bit with Oracle Database mainly because We use Oracle Enterprise Manager and that runs on Oracle DB lol

I have done web development both in house and as a side gig. I am no expert but I can do just about anything in the Information Technology arena.

Luckily I am not old enough to have Mainframe experience even though I did work with it in Office Depot but I hated it LOL

Nice, I like that story, and I do know all about your Oracle. I worked at a school for a while that ran the Oracle hypervisor and everything had to have a Oracle back end to the point of ridiculousness. We also ran PeopleSoft there, but I wasn't a part of that.
 
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I'm not sure this counts, but I was an electrical engineer for all Navy and Marine Corp laser guided, infrared and GPS weapons systems. When I finally retired last November after 36 years I was the senior engineer. My team of 63 developed standards for new systems and worked design with contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. We tested and evaluated all systems and recommended improvements to the Pentagon. Our yearly budget, although it fluctuated, averaged around a billion dollars a year. We also trained all pilots on system use as well as the military guys on troubleshooting and repairing failures.

It was a great profession. I've been in over 80 countries and have worked with many foreign governments who purchased our systems. I trained their pilots and tech crews and helped them work through their problems. Sometimes the language barrier was an issue, but that actually made it fun.
 
Nice, I like that story, and I do know all about your Oracle. I worked at a school for a while that ran the Oracle hypervisor and everything had to have a Oracle back end to the point of ridiculousness. We also ran PeopleSoft there, but I wasn't a part of that.

Oracle has not yet done that to PeopleSoft even though they have owned it since 2000 lol. In Office Depot we use DB2 Mainframe as the back end DB for PeopleSoft here in the school district we use DB2 AIX as the back end. OEM does come in handy for maintenance jobs since we have 11 servers running our production PeopleSoft systems (HR, FIN, Learning Manager and Interaction Hub).
 
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I'm not sure this counts, but I was an electrical engineer for all Navy and Marine Corp laser guided, infrared and GPS weapons systems. When I finally retired last November after 36 years I was the senior engineer. My team of 63 developed standards for new systems and worked design with contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. We tested and evaluated all systems and recommended improvements to the Pentagon. Our yearly budget, although it fluctuated, averaged around a billion dollars a year. We also trained all pilots on system use as well as the military guys on troubleshooting and repairing failures.

It was a great profession. I've been in over 80 countries and have worked with many foreign governments who purchased our systems. I trained their pilots and tech crews and helped them work through their problems. Sometimes the language barrier was an issue, but that actually made it fun.
It counts in my book!
 
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Well rounded!
Lol, that's one way to put it. Lockheed wanted to send me to South Korea when they shut the yard down in Portland. I was tempted, but the spouse said "oh HELL NO!" Same with Louisiana and California. Pretty much ended that career.
 
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36 years and counting in software design and development. Started on mainframes, moved to IBM midrange in the mid 80's. I have contracted with many companies across the country, currently on a contract in Austin, TX. There is still a need for us dinosaurs that speak COBOL and RPG.
 
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Novak Conversions Jeep Wrangler TJ radiator