My Career

Growing Up

I was born October 31, 1948 at Hamliton AFB, California. My father retired United States Air Force (USAF) Colonel (Alan E. Goldsmith for those who know him). The family traveled to different locations every few years, which provided me with constant changing environments. Until about the age of 6 he lived in San Francisco, but like most military families it was time to move on. We moved from on military base to another providing the opportunity to discover new life styles. Some locations were in New York, Alabama, California, New Mexico, Georgia, and the Philippines. I spent my high school years at Clark AFB, Philippines an experience that only military brats would understand and appreciate.

Like most kids my age I spent time playing with friends, but managed to do other things like get involved with photography, taking pictures for the year books, and working on the school paper. My first real job was working at the base commissary stocking dairy products and produce, as well as weighing and pricing produce. Not what I call exciting, but this was my introduction to working with people and doing quality work. I also did voluntary work at the base hospital moving Vietnam air evacuation patients from the medical buses to Xray and hospital beds. I also spent time talking to them and sometimes feeded and care for them. This is something than no child or teenage should ever have to see, but a chapter in my life that will never be forgotten. I grew to love and respect these men of honor while getting to know them and their misfutures that put them in the hospital.

Military Service

On November 15, 1967 I enlisted into the United States Air Force. My career in the USAF took me to basic training at Amirillo, Texas then off to Lackland AFB for Technical Training. After completing my training it was off to Okinawa where he was assigned to 824 Supply Squadron.

Now, I are not going to go into detail about any of the assignments, although they were very interesting and very important to hmy growth. Besides it wasn't so much the jobs, but the people and places that made it interesting and challenging.

After about 18 months on Okinawa I was transfered to March AFB, California, just outside of Riverside working at 15th Air Force. This was one the best assignments and learning experiences. After a couple of years it was off to beautiful Del Rio, Texas. Let's just say if you ever wanted to collect blackwidows, tarantulas, or scorpions that would have been a perfect place. It was my really first introduction to data processing and a wonderfullearning experience. After re-enlisting I got a transfer back to March AFB, California where I spent a few wonderful years enjoying SAC. I got in a moto-cross accident that prevented me from going to Germany. After getting out of the hospital I got an assignment to Clark AFB, Philippines, yes the place where I when to high school. In August 1975 I got assigned to Sunnyvale AFS, California where I did satellite tracking until I was Honorably Discharged in 1976, because I wanted to try civilian life. Kind of wish I had stayed in the space programs and I always wondered what challenges I could have taken on.

I am thankful for all the experiences and friends I had the honor of working with in the military. During my time in the service for my country, I received may certificates of training from Administrative to Computer Training and awards that included the Air Force Commendation with First Oak Leaf Cluster. The best part was the great people I worked with that taught me how to be a team player. We learned together and supported each other. My experiences will never be forgotten.

Civilian Career Growth

After my discharge I applied for and got hired on as a Computer Operator at Teledyne Corporation in Sunnyvale. After only a few months got promoted to Shift Supervisor. It wasn't long before I got interested in the hardware side of things that helped me find a new direction. It wasn't only fixing the problems, but working with the customers. I knew first hand what the customer had to deal with.

I got hired by Documations Corporation who trained me in hardware support. After a few years Documation Corporation got bought out by Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek) and I expanded my hardware and systems knowledge. I managed to work my way from Parts Clerk, Field Engineer, and Senior Field Engineer in the San Jose - San Francisco Bay Area, to Territory Supervisor in the Monterey Bay Area. I spent almost 10 years in the Monterey / San Francisco Bay Area, before transferring to headquarter in Louisville, Colorado.

At the headquarters location I worked in the Remote Diagnostics Center for a few years before moving into World Wide Technical Support. Again I knew what the engineers were dealing with and was still working to support the customer. I had the pleasure of working with a group of people to develop the first Marketing Sales Support Desk. This brought a new understanding of the issues marketing had to deal with. Then one day along came the internet and with a few people built the first web site for Storage Technology Corporation. Someone handed me a Unix box and told me I was now the Webmaster. Again a new challenge, after much self education and help for others I learned to manage and support the websites. I spent six (6) plus years supporting it. You can view my resume for a detailed summary of my career.

For a few years after that were spent as a Business Anaylst and Technical Lead. My team worked on projects that would automate and/or simplify processes like Employee New Hire, Conference Room Scheduling, Customer Visitors Center, and others. I was assigned a project to learn EDI / XML and work on a project which allows customers to order product more efficiently while reducing time to process the transactions.

After I was outsourced to EDS from StorageTek I found an opportunity to get involved with Web Hosting Security group working with Computer Associates (aka - Netegrity) Siteminder Policy Server / Web Agent and SunONE/iPlanet (LDAP) Directory Servers support customers remotely. This position gave me the opportunity to work with customers, learn new application, work with other teams to develop solutions to support several customers.

As of this writing I still working for EDS, but now off into a new area call Global Engineering. New challenges, new team, more growth... let's see what I can contribute and what I can learn from others.