What I do

I am currently employed as an Information Systems Coordinator for the College of Veterinary Medicine, specifically working for the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory. I am part of a 3 man team to manage a group of RedHat Linux servers that host the core IS applications used by the Veterinary Teaching Hospital and WADDL. Additionally, we are developing a web-based front end to WADDL Information that is available to our referring veterinarians.

I have been working for WADDL for since 2002, first as a timeslip employee while finishing my degree, and then full time a few months after I graduated. This is the most mentally demanding job I have taken on in my professional life, but the most rewarding as well.

Previously, I was an Information Systems Coordinator at The College of Pharmacy. I was part of a two man team that essentially ran all computer services for the College. During my tenure, I implemented a problem tracking system, Automated employment listings, an online phone listing, a web-based DHCP/DNS IP allocation mechanism, and several other web-based projects used by the College.

Additionally, I administered 6 FreeBSD based servers, which handled almost all external and some internal computer functions of the college (web server, mail, etc). I also managed the 1 SCO OpenServer UNIX computer that hosted a specialized pharmacy application provided by Safeway. The college also has 3 Windows based servers that I did not manage. On the workstation, the college runs a heterogenous network, consisting of 130 Windows clients (NT or 2000), and approximately 30 Macintosh clients (OS 8 to X). This was a busy job, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I am saddened to have left the College, but I have enjoyed the opportunities and challeneges of my new job.

Before pharmacy, I spent a few years working for Student Computing Services (a student run sub-organization of WSU-ITS), starting as a lab monitor (that guy that watches the lab and helps people when they have trouble with the computer), eventually progressing to the UNIX Systems Administrator (which didn’t run any actual UNIX systems, though Linux is nice in it’s own right). As the administrator, I was able to move the primary general purpose computer from a really cheap Pentium 133 system to a (less) cheap Dual Pentium Pro 200 (without a budget). Mind you, this was in a year where the PII/400 was about to be replaced. Since I left, the systems group became much stronger, and began to demand actual server class hardware for all servers, so SCS is much better off now.

While working at SCS, I went back to my childhood home for summer break and fell into a job at the County Government. At the time, they were still running a win9x network, with a few (very few) NT workstations amongst them. With 1 dedicated employee, and one person that could spend about half his time doing support work, they were swamped. I was able to come in, and help them reduce the backlog of problems over a 3 month period. They were happy enough with my work that they asked my back for my Christmas break to do the same thing. Occasionally, news still filters back to me that they continue to ask when I will be back.

Before getting the county job, I spent a week washing dishes at a local Restaraunt. That was one of the most difficult (demanding) jobs of my life, and while I enjoyed some parts of it, I hope to never have to do it again.

Finally, my first job was working for my Vet, Dr. Charles Stillion, DVM. I mostly was there to take care of inpatients and boarded dogs, but was able to do quite a bit else too. This was by far the most diverse job I have ever had. Weekdays, I would come to work after school, walk and feed the dogs, clean the surgury room, and other grunt jobs that High School students are good for (like washing trucks and mowing the lawn).

Weekends, I would clean the kennels in the morning, while occasionally cleaning myself up to help in the common surguries (spays), and often helped the Dr. in some of the more ugly situations (de-horning a older goat kid was one I remember well). I would work both Saturday and Sunday, but it was the Sundays I most fondly recall, where it would often be just the Dr. and me.

It was that first job that gave me the drive to work, and made me feel unwhole when not employed. This job gave me purpose, and for that I will always appreciate Dr. Stillion and Karen, far more than they may ever realize.