about me
In the early days, I started playing around with DOS - creating batch files, custom menus, and small utilities written in BASIC. Shortly thereafter, I started my own computer consulting business. Residents and businesses in the area would call on me for PC troubleshooting, training, and general knowledge. I gained experience troubleshooting various Windows 95, 98 and NT issues. As the Internet became more popular, I expanded my knowledge to creating simple web sites.

One of the first customers of my web consulting business was Walden Hobbies, an online mail-order hobby store. The owner had a basic non-shopping cart web site designed by someone else. He realized that more and more people were moving to online solutions and asked me to design a shopping cart system for his business. I found a great shopping cart system for free, PerlShop. I was able to customize the shopping cart system to fit the needs of the business and expand my knowledge of PERL at the same time.

I have been a very active IRC (Internet Relay Chat) user since my first days of using the Internet. From the start, I found DALnet and stuck with it. I started learning more and more about IRC, how it is setup, advanced commands, and with some friends, eventually started a small chat network of our own. I maintained the IRC servers and wrote a custom user services (NickServ/ChanServ/MemoServ) application, similar to DALnet's. Both the ircd server daemon and the user services were written in C and this was one of my first major exposures to the language, outside of small projects I had worked on. The network only lasted a few months, but the experience I gained from it helped me on DALnet. I soon became an IRC Operator, one of a small group of users who help run and maintain the network. Over the years, I gained more experience using DALnet and IRC and eventually became a Services Root Administrator. I was responsible for the maintenance of our online registration system (NickServ/ChanServ/MemoServ) written in C++, which interfaces with an SQL database and contains an email authorization system. Shortly after that, I was asked to join the Executive Board, who moderate disputes and set high level policies for the network.

It is through DALnet that I met David Kopstain, a fellow programmer. In addition to his work with DALnet, Dave co-founded the Money.net web site. Shortly after its launch, Dave asked me to work as a consultant for the company. At the time, the web site used CGI scripts written in C++, so I was able to jump right in. I eventually joined the company as a part-time employee while in college. This helped me obtain great hands-on experience while I was earning my Bachelor's Degree. After graduating, I joined the company full-time and was employed there for over four years. Two of my major accomplishments there were converting the site to use a PHP backend and the design of an automated credit card billing system.

After Money.net, I moved on to work at Schematic, where I manage the IT needs of the New York, Boston, and Atlanta offices.