My Resume

Objective

A responsible position in a forward thinking company in which I can focus my experience, skills and knowledge to enhance the company’s competitiveness, reduce costs, and help increase overall profits and customer satisfaction.

Certifications

ITIL v3 Expert Certified with certifications in: ITIL v3 Managing Across the Lifecycle, ITIL v3 Intermediate Service Strategy, ITIL v3 Intermediate Service Design, ITIL v3 Intermediate Service Transition, ITIL v3 Intermediate Service Operations, ITIL v3 Intermediate Continual Service Improvement, and ITIL v3 Foundations.

Work Experience

  • Director of Integration at CHRISTUS Health

January 2023 – Present

  • Manager Information Technology at CHRISTUS Health

August 2021 – January 2023

  • Integration Lead at CHRISTUS Health

May 2019 – August 2021

  • IT Director at MV Transportation

September 2016 – July 2018

Was responsible for all local IT service delivery for MV Transportation’s Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority MetroAccess division.

  • President at C&C Web Ventures

October 2015 – Present

C&C Web Ventures, LLC is a web properties development company that specializes in producing high quality web deployed and mobile applications.

  • Owner at Dallas IT Tech

September 2013 – Present

Dallas IT Tech specializes in solving technical problems for small businesses. Whether you work from a home office or employ hundreds, my team of associates and I have the knowledge and experience to address all your needs.

  • Systems Integrator, Enterprise Architecture Group at Dallas Area Rapid Transit

July 2015 – September 2015

The Enterprise Architecture Group was a “think tank” of IT professionals who were responsible for the development, implementation, and governance of DART’s Enterprise Architecture practice. As an ITIL certified v3 Expert, I also championed ITIL principles for DART IT.

  • ERP Systems Administrator Trapeze and Lawson at Dallas Area Rapid Transit

January 2013 – July 2015

This is a Senior Administration position. Am responsible for managing the deployment and support of DART’s Trapeze and Lawson ERP systems. My primary responsibility is Trapeze.

  • Enterprise Architect at Dallas Area Rapid Transit

May 2012 – January 2013

Responsible for the development, implementation, and governance of DART’s Enterprise Architecture practice. Champion of ITIL principles for DART IT.

  • Supervisor Systems Engineering at Dallas Area Rapid Transit

August 2009 – May 2012

In June of 2009 I competed with other members of the IT department for the newly created management position of Supervisor Systems Engineering. I was selected for promotion due to my demonstrated abilities and previous management and leadership experience. In addition to managing the day-to-day activities of the System Engineering team, I was the technical Project Manager for the project to deploy a Secondary Data Center for DART IT Delivery in Plano, TX. This is a major project and a primary component of the DART disaster recovery and continuity of operations plan. My team has usefully completed the SDC buildout, data migration, server migration, and fail-over testing of our test and production UNIX environments without disruption of DART services. This completed Phase I of this project. We continued with Phase II which implemented similar capabilities for our remaining platforms. With the completion of Phase II, we are on schedule to complete the final Phase III of the DART disaster recovery strategic plan by the end of 2012.

  • Technical Specialist at Dallas Area Rapid Transit

07/2006 – August 2009

In my duties as a technical specialist at DART, I am tasked with the responsibility of administering the primary DART database and application servers and associated SAN. The DART servers are DEC Alpha systems running HP Tru64 OS. They comprise a cluster of highly available systems running the HP TruCluster environment. This cluster along with the StorageWorks RAID disk sub-systems form a high availability system that meets 5 nines requirements for up time at 99.999% or better. In addition I have implemented a distributed console environment with ConsoleWorks that allows the DART system administrators to manage the DART systems from any point on the Internet by way of a secure web browser interface.

  • Partner at PC Guys

11/2004 – 7/2007

My partner and I formed this company to fill a need for affordable systems administration, support, and virus and ad-ware remediation services to the SOHO and home user market on Windows, Linux, and UNIX servers and desktop systems. We achieved positive net profitability in less than 12 months through a determined focus on 100% customer satisfaction. As a result nearly 50% of our business is by direct customer referral. I have relocated to the Dallas area. My former partner now owns and runs this active business.

  • Owner at Rapid Learning Systems

10/2002 – 11/2004

I have developed an educational software package called FactFlash – MathFacts. It teaches mathematics fundamentals to persons of all ages. I have been marketing this product to school districts and individuals through both direct sales and via the Internet. New products and updates are in development. It was developed and runs in the Windows environment.

  • Contractor/Consultant

8/2002 – 10/2002

As an independent contractor and consultant I have been performing various IT related projects in the Windows, Linux and Unix operating environments for several organizations. These include but are not limited to; disaster recovery planning, systems administration, software development, network and system installations and configuration, operations, documentation, and training. I make extensive use of my customer facing skills to maintain all relationships in positive status.

  • IT Operations Manager at Simdesk (IAT)

3/2001 – 8/2002

I started with Simdesk (then IAT) as a Hardware Systems Architect with the understanding that I would be asked to manage the operations team. My initial responsibility was to define an effective and supportable hardware environment for deploying IAT’s SimDesk product to the field. This involved evaluating the various hardware solutions available at that time. This work required an intimate knowledge of the interactions between hardware and software components that conspire to effect performance. In order to evaluate the alternatives, I created a standard testing procedure based on a performance testing specification that I authored. I developed a specification for a testing client that was required for conducting meaningful performance tests of the server. I oversaw the development of that testing software and ultimately lead the testing team in successfully testing the final deployment environment. The successful completion of those tests directly impacted the closure of a multi-million dollar deal and established IAT’s offerings as a truly viable alternative to Microsoft’s Office Suite. During this time, and while continuing with those responsibilities, I was promoted to IT Operations Manager as a result of the expected departure of the previous lead in that position. After assuming the Operations Manager responsibilities, I became aware of the fact that the operations team was seriously dysfunctional. Many of the most basic tasks that are required for an operations team to be successful where simply not being done. Proper attention to operational details was essential to maintain customer satisfaction. I set out methodically correcting each deficiency. This process included, among other things: the creation of a disaster recovery plan; the establishment of a formal work request system; empowerment of members of the team to accomplish routine tasks without prior authorization; creating an on-call schedule and routine for the staff; the creation of a ridged change control system; regular training and mentoring of the team members; regular team meetings; establishment of open communications channels with other teams within IAT; termination of some persons who could not work within the team; and hiring additional staff to properly support the teams efforts. In addition to these duties I was regularly called upon to assist in various company initiatives by acting as a communications facilitator. This required me to bring teams of differing opinions together and get them to cooperate toward a common goal. The operations team consisted of eight persons. The Data Center for which I was responsible housed the company’s production, development, and corporate environments which where Intel based systems ranging from SMP systems of 24 processors to small systems with 2 processors. We ran both Windows and UNIX operating systems.

  • Lead UNIX Systems Administrator at Novistar, Inc

8/1999 – 3/2001

I was hired to fill a Player/Coach roll in the Systems Administration group with an emphasis on meeting all service level agreements. The responsibilities for this position included setting direction and creating policies and procedures for Data Center operations as they pertained to Systems Administration and the performance of advanced UNIX systems administration tasks. This included establishing a program of “best practices” in all areas of systems administration, including but not limited to; backups, disaster recovery, preventive maintenance, diagnostics and troubleshooting, daily routines, on-call procedures and scheduling, etc. It also included the development of many shell scripts to automate various processes. These shell script programs ranged from normal “housekeeping” routines and event handlers to elaborate multi-threaded processes that directed complex operations. We conducted regular DRP testing that involved coordinated efforts in several cities. Our tests were always well planned and executed. My goal was to lead by example and train the System Administrators for excellence. I acted as a trainer, leader, and mentor for my team. In addition, I developed annual operational budgets for submission to the department head and assisted in overseeing the planning and construction of a new data center. Most systems in this data center were HPs running HP-UX with some Sun systems.

  • Senior UNIX Systems Administrator at Jenkens & Gilchrist

12/1997 – 8/1999

I had three primary areas of responsibility. First, along with my assistant, I handled the day to day administration of the company’s HP 9000 K580 and K460 systems. The K580 was a 6 CPU SMP system with two HP AutoRAID arrays and one additional disk subsystem. It ran HP-UX 10.20, Informix 7.23, Fulcrum, and the Elite Legal Billing System. The system processed over $16,000,000.00 in legal fees monthly. The K460 was our test platform and was a 4 CPU SMP system that was hardware and software compatible with our K580. Administration duties included, resolving user issues (we had over 600 users), maintenance, backups, process monitoring, database administration, application administration, etc. Since staffing availability was limited, I developed maintenance and administration scripts that automated most of the daily tasks. Second, I was responsible for system tuning and profiling in order to maximize the company’s investment in HP technology. This included designing and implementing a highly available architecture to provide maximum availability while simultaneously increasing OLTP performance in this extensive Client/Server environment as well as developing “best practices” standards for high performance business computing. Lastly, I developed and managed on-going projects to grow the companies SMP computing capability while leveraging it’s existing IT investment. In addition to these primary areas of responsibility I was tasked with the development of the company’s IT security policies and procedures. I was also responsible for training company staff in the proper use of software and hardware assets.

  • Senior Systems Administrator at Dallas Systems Corporation/EXE Technologies

9/1995 – 12/1997

I was hired as a member of the technical service team, and progressed through several specific areas of responsibility. I began by performing installations of SMP systems at customer account sites. This required extensive knowledge of all of the associated hardware; HP 9000 and IBM RS/6000 systems, external disk sub-systems including RAID arrays, network infrastructure, various terminals, printers, and PC platforms. This also required extensive knowledge of all of the associated software; HP-UX 10.x and AIX 4.x, NFS, DNS, the Dallas Systems application, Informix RDMS Releases 5.x and 7.x, TCP/IP, various hardware drivers, etc. From my experience in the field, I found the need for the development of several system administration tools, and was allowed to develop the following tools:A backup utility for HP-UX 10.x that creates bootable, self-extracting, self-installing, full backups to tape. This project required extensive core knowledge of HP-UX 10.x. A user interface to simplify the run-time configuration of the very complex DSC application environment. A menu driven system installation utility which allowed Junior System Administrators to handle the complex task of on-site installation. These projects where developed primarily in K shell for maximum portability and ease of future support. During this time, DSC changed its structure, and I was asked to take on the responsibility of creating benchmarks for HP and IBM systems. In addition to the normal duties of a Senior Systems Administrator, I developed the tools required to accurately benchmark and profile DSC target systems. This project again required me to use my K shell and C programming abilities. I was also responsible for training the junior technical staff.

  • Senior Systems Administrator / Technical Support at Pagenet Corp.

8/1994 – 9/1995

As part of the Technical Support staff, I was tasked with providing internal user and LAN support. Our employees used NCD X-terminals. We had over 2000 users spread across a WAN of over 120 UNIX systems. My primary responsibility was to provide all services required to keep this network and the associated applications on-line at all times. Our applications were based on Informix 4GL (Informix engine release 5.x). The network was TCP/IP and supported NFS, DNS, and NIS. Upon arriving, I found that there were over 200 outstanding trouble calls. I initiated a work routine for my team, which cleared this backlog while continuing to handle new trouble calls as they came in. Since we had only four people to handle the entire technical support effort, I began writing scripts to automate most of our processes. This allowed me to train our help desk to handle most routine calls, reducing our workload to a manageable level.

  • Systems Administrator at Healthsnq Corp.

6/1992 – 8/1994

I was solely responsible for all aspects of user and systems support and operations, including training users in best practices. Upon my arrival, there was over one man-year of IT issues that needed to be resolved. I was able to clear the backlog by working six months of long shifts. Following this, I designed and installed the company’s TCP/IP LAN, which provided all of the company’s connectivity needs. In addition, the use of NFS/PC-NFS allowed me to establish a file sharing capability for the development effort. I was responsible for handling all end user problems, as well as administrating the company’s four UNIX systems, and NT server. Since I was the only Systems Administrator, I wrote numerous shell scripts and C programs to automate most of the daily processes. I also wrote an automatic early warning system to alert me to potential problems via pager.

  • Customer Service Specialist at Motorola, Inc. Field Service Division

5/1987 – 6/1992

As part of the customer support team, I was responsible for the resolution of computer related technical problems experienced by customers and field service engineers. I handled software applications problems as well as hardware failure problems on both MS-DOS and UNIX based systems. I was tasked with maintaining my own training as well as developing support training guidelines for the members of my specialty teams. I was a member of 23 specific teams and was the team leader for eleven of these. My primary areas of specialty were PC hardware and software, UNIX/PC interconnectivity, and the System V print spooling sub-system. This required an in-depth knowledge of NFS/PC-NFS and System V UNIX.  Additional duties included the administration of three UNIX systems, one of which was the mail hub for Motorola, FSD. I also administered the Customer Support Center TCP/IP LAN. Throughout my stay at Motorola I was required by my duties to write many shell scripts to more efficiently complete my tasks.

  • Owner at Computer Tutor

12/1986 – 5/1987

As owner and operator, I was responsible for all operations. Consulted with customers to determine current and future computing needs, arranged purchase and installation of computer systems, and developed and administered structured individualized training for office personnel. Also performed contracted programming functions.

  • Programmer at Metroplex Data Systems Inc.

12/1985 – 12/1986

Responsible for porting UNIX based software to the PC platform. Traveled nationally to customer sites to evaluate and resolve technical problems.

  • Customer Support Specialist at Tandy Corp.

11/1984 – 12/1985

Provided technical support to customers for the resolution of systems related problems with XENIX and DOS based systems. Also responsible for training Sales Representatives in the use, capabilities, and operation of newly released systems.

  • Service Manager at Microfix Inc.

9/1983 – 11/1984

I began repairing PCs on the bench. I was moved to field service work and shortly thereafter was promoted to Service Manager. I was responsible for coordinating all PC service functions including, pickup and delivery, repair, field engineer training, and the resolution of customer satisfaction issues.

  • Fire Control Technician – Guns/Missiles at U.S. Navy

11/1978 – 9/1983

I was responsible for maintaining missile and gun fire control systems. My primary responsibility was maintenance of the fire control computer and radar director systems.

Education

  • Continuing Education

I’m constantly striving to stay on the leading edge of the state of the art in computer science. To this end I am an avid reader. I subscribe to several technical journals and have been an active member of Interex, the society of HP computing professionals. I also attend courses from time to time as the need arises. However, I find that I’m usually able to build proficiency more quickly through self-training than by any other means.

  • Advanced Electronics School, U.S. Navy

This consisted of an intense course of study comprised of seven main phases. The training encompassed analog and digital electronics as well as radar, computer system internals, power systems, and related topics. The course of study was two years in duration on a daily basis. Additional training during the remainder of my enlistment followed these initial two years of training.

  • Garland High School, Garland, TX

Areas of particular interest where mathematics and the sciences. I was also a band member and was a staff photographer for the school paper.

Skills List

HP-Tru64 UNIX, TruCluster, HP-UX Unix, AIX Unix, Sun OS/Solaris, LINUX, expert UNIX and Windows skills, Shell Scripting, FTP, TCP/IP, NFS, WI/FI, EMC, Hitachi, StorageWorks, FC, SCSI, RAID, LUN, LVM, SMP, Routers, Switches, Firewall, IDS, NAS, RFS, JetDirect, Performance Tuning (UNIX/Windows), Capacity Planning, Veritas, Legato, Openview, SAN, Silo, Network design, installation and configuration, MS Windows 3 through XP Pro and Server, MS Excell, MS Outlook, MS PowerPoint, MS Project, MS Word, Visio, MS DOS (all versions), OpenOffice, Mid-frame and PC Hardware (desktop and server) and peripherals, Visual Basic, VB Script, C, Electronics Technician/Engineer, excellent people skills, detail oriented with a big picture mentality, a leader, innovative thinker