I have spent my life taking on challenges. Whatever obstacle has been put in front of me I took as an opportunity to learn something new and at times I would develop improved processes and procedures.
In my personal life I continuously work to fix and improve things around my house. I project managed a house I had built, helped frame, install drywall, tape and mud, installed vacuum systems, ran cable, installed windows, doors, tiles, textured, trimmed, sanded and painted, installed light fixtures and switches.
What I am looking for in my next position would be a position that allows me to utilize my experience working with customers and developers to improve processes, manage systems, and create solutions.
New Life Jan 2008 - Current
On January 30, 2009 I lost my job due to workforce reduction. I was unemployed for just over a year. After countless hours of job hunting and almost losing my home I was hired by McKesson. On February 1, 2010 I started my new career with McKesson as Horizon Clinicals After Hours Technical Support Engineer working Sat-Mon 6:00 AM – 6:00 PM. I really enjoy the opportunities to learn so many new products that support the medical services. It is using all my past experiences from customer support, Unix and Oracle to support customer and resolve issues.
In my personal life I continuously work to fix and improve things around my house. I project managed a house I had built, helped frame, install drywall, tape and mud, installed vacuum systems, ran cable, installed windows, doors, tiles, textured, trimmed, sanded and painted, installed light fixtures and switches.
I tried running my own home repair business and a Mortgage Broker but since my job at McKesson was 3 - 12 hours shifts Sat - Mon I didn't have much time to run that businesses, so I had to shut down both. Still find time to help friends with their home repairs. Still looking for part time work to help with my financial future.
High School 64-67
As a teenager from an Air Force family stationed at Clark AFB Philippines during the (Republic of Vietnam) RVN war. I attended Wagner High School which I have many great memories. I also did volunteer work at the base hospital. We brought in wounded soldiers off the buses and MedEvac trucks to get X-rayed, gathered paperwork, and helped them after surgery. Doesn't seem like much for a 15-16 year old kid but I felt great about being able to help others.
Military 67-76
I enlisted in the Air Force November 1967 where I was introduced to computers. Although I spent most of my time sorting cards, fixing punch card programs and data, I always enjoyed fixing and improving something - both software and hardware. Back in those days I had to wire boards to get machines to process data according to detailed accounting instructions. Later I would re-write documentation to make processes clearer and reduce errors. I learned to fix equipment problems after watching equipment engineers and asking lots questions. I soon became shift supervisor and developed processes to reduce time, improve quality and reduce errors. I received two Air Force Commendation medals for the quality of work I did during my tour of service. I held high level security clearances. The most enjoyable times were working the 15th Air Force Operations doing some interesting computer work where I had the opportunity to not only prepare data for processing but also to learn basic programming. It wasn't the programming that I enjoyed as much as the applications and solutions that were the outcome of all this work.
My final tour of duty for the Air Force was spent at Sunnyvale Air Force Station at the Satellite Control Facility (aka Blue Cube). It was a very exciting time tracking DOD satellites, receiving and processing telemetry transmitted by them, and sending commands to them.
Civilian Life 1976-2010
After I completed my tour of Air Force service, I started work at Teledyne Inc as a Data Processing Supervisor. When we encountered hardware problems I took on the responsibility to get customer service representatives on-site quickly or to get them to instruct me to make adjustments. When they were on-site I would then watch the hardware engineers, ask questions to learn how to fix the equipment and assist the engineers when possible. I soon found myself working for StorageTek hardware company fixing the equipment for other customers. In a short time I advanced to territory supervisor, technical support and then world wide technical support. The quality of my work and success at taking on new challenges, and the ability to develop strong customer relations are what helped me advance in this career. I worked hard to develop strong customer satisfaction and demonstrate quality service, which made my job very enjoyable.
The reason I explained the above is to show I enjoy tracking down problems, finding solutions and making things work. Although I have done considerable programming, I found knowing what and how programmers and developers did made it easier to communicate with them. When I was doing my work I would spend part of my time learning what others were doing so I could improve my quality of work and in turn help others.
I mostly enjoyed being a Technical lead to develop applications and solutions. I worked with customers to understand their current process and then document them for the developer. From this documentation I worked with the developers to create automated, simpler, and secure methods of doing the work thus reducing errors which freed people from cumbersome and repetitive tasks. We would then develop monitoring solutions to make sure the application was up and running, and notify support of an outage to reduce downtime.
In one of my positions I was assigned (dropped into the position) as webmaster for a major industrial computer hardware company for about four years, where I learned about UNIX systems, edit with "vi", writing html, hacking Perl scripts, installed, configured and managed web servers and other supporting applications. I found that web was a great way to make corporate information and solutions available to the world. Again I took on challenges to learn new things and find solutions.
In April 2002 I was outsourced to EDS, where I was developing automated install processes for Computer Associates (aka Netegrity) SiteMinder Policy Servers and Web Agents, and SunOne Directory Server (LDAP) and iPlanet Directory Servers. After the company was bought up by another larger company HP I was let go due to workforce reduction. Prior to being laid off from my last employer I was developing automated install processes for Computer Associates (aka Netegrity) SiteMinder Policy Servers and Web Agents, and SunOne Directory Server (LDAP) and iPlanet Directory Servers. After the company was bought up by another larger company I was let go due to workforce reduction. At this time I am busy job hunting and career searching.
Currently I am working for McKesson as Horizon Clinicals After Hours Technical Support Engineer. I really enjoy the opportunities to learn so many new products that support the medical services. It is using all my past experiences from customer support, Unix and Oracle to support customer and resolve issues.
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