It was Thursday, June 20, 2002 when Tom Lancaster took the soap box, saying:
: Hello all,
:
: we're looking for a Web Engineer to fill out the team working on redhat.com.
: Please read the formal description below. The emphasis will be on Perl and mod_perl.
: Familiarity with templating systems, especially Apache:ASP, is important, as is
:knowledge of
: DBI with Oracle. If you know Java that's a big plus.
:
: This position is in the San Francisco Bay Area.
When I see this I'm hoping to myself that it doesn't mean I have to be
in the San Fransisco Bay Area. Are you opposed to a telecommute
wizard who has done telecommute full time successfully?
Just in case you are interested, my resume is below.
: Please send me your resume in ASCII text.
Casey West
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
724.567.1438
Employment History
Aaronsen Group Ltd - Aug. 2001 to Present - Senior Software Engineer
Job Description: Maintain, upgrade and create software for high
scale web applications using Open Source technologies and proper
hardware and network equipment.
Stuff I did: In a group of two coders, we maintain a series of
web applications for a school system of over 18000 active
users. Maintaining these applications includes taking care of
software, hardware and network equipment. These apps are built
upon Open Source technologies, they are clustered (distributed)
and very fast.
Agnew Moyer Smith Inc - Feb. 2000 to Aug. 2001 - Software Engineer
Job Description: Aid in the process of design projects by
providing software automation and processing. The toolkit of
choice includes Perl, Linux, Apache, mod_perl and
MySQL/Postresql at it's core.
Stuff I did: Created a batch processing system for converting 900
page books, marked up with SGML, into a static web site using
Perl and Grove techniques. Created many database driven,
dynamic web sites. Took the Software Engineering(SE) team away
from just creating CGI scripts, to using mod_perl on a large
scale. Helped the SE team decide on a (pretty much) standard
template system, the Template Toolkit. Built very complex
web based reporting tools for resource and cost management. I
created specifications for hardware and software. Built a site
architecture that was described as "the easiest [system] to use
that AMS has ever built [for NT]", I had to use ASP. What do
you expect from a long time Template Toolkit user? :-)
HighVision Inc - Dec. 1997 to Present - Director of Programming
Job Description: Senior Hacker Extraordinare. Write (almost) all
the code used for web sites (mod_perl and CGI mostly), user
management (Perl programs, radius/portmaster monitors) and many
other tasks (ECommerce, etc). Second in command in case of
hardware and software emergencies.
Stuff I did: I was able to convince the other programmers that
CVS is a Good Thing. I was also able to convert them to using
the Template Toolkit for web sites. I have built at least 15
web sites with these guys ranging from: mod_perl, Database
driven, Template Toolkit powered, Online administered to
ECommerce integration to HTML with JavaScript goodies. I have
built lots of user management tools, helping non-Unix support
technicians administrate users on Unix boxes with ease, this was
mostly automating the "Add a user" mess. I have even done a bit
of web site design with these folks.
KiskiNet (now HV Internet Access) - Sep. 1998 to Jan. 2000 - Support
Job Description: Support dial-up Internet service on a team of 5
for 5000 customers. Write documentation to help the rest of the
team with obscure and/or mundane fixes to problems.
Stuff I did: I must have taken thousands of calls during my time
here and I only heard about one complaint. I also actively
educated my team about problems with new software or new
viruses. I contributed to the tech documentation mostly in the
ares of Unix, to help them uncover problems with mailboxes and
user accounts much faster.
Contract History
Agnew Moyer Smith Inc - Nov. 2001 to Present - Software Engineer
Job Description: Maintain programs as requested.
Stuff I did: I have diagnosed problems, fixed bugs and added
features to an internal resource report.
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. - May 28, 2001 - Writer
Stuff I did: I wrote a non-technical article entitled ``Turining
the Tides on Perl's Attitude Toward Beginners.'' Read it here:
http://perl.com/pub/a/2001/05/29/tides.html
Training History
Perl Whirl 2002
Stuff I did: Wrote and presented a 1 hour talk entitled "Creating
Dynamic Sites with Template Toolkit". Also brainstormed,
planned and carried out a donation event for the Perl Foundation
where DynDNS dontated 20,000 USD to the Development Fund.
Formal Education History
Computer Tech - Graduated Feb. 2000 - 3.97 GPA, Highest Honors
Note worthy stuff: I was scheduled to finish school on Feb. 24th
but was released to work at Agnew Moyer Smith on Feb. 4th based on
academic excellence. During my HTML class, instead of doing to
simple examples I finished a Perl/CGI based chat server in the
first two weeks, the teacher gave me an A right out. The Unix
Admin teacher boasted that her SCO server was not hackable and
asked us to try, the reward was an unconditional A, I had root
within 45 minutes of the challenge (my first and last time with
that).
Personal Education History
How I learned all this: I have been self taught. Years ago, my
mentor put me in front of a terminal and handed me _Learning Perl,
1st Addition_ and said, "do the examples at the end of the
chapters." Well, that's just what I did. Then I expanded into
HTML and JavaScript programming. I decided soon that programming
needed to be about the fun, not just the job at hand. In light of
that attitude, I have been working hard to be the best programmer
I can be.
Programming Languages: I range from beginner to expert with the
following programming and mark up languages: Perl, HTML, SGML,
XML, JavaScript, Java, Ada, COBOL, assembly, Visual Basic,
VBScript, SQL, C, C++, PHP, Python, shell, script-fu, POVRay, etc.
Applications: I range from intermediate to expert with these
notable apps: Apache, mod_perl, Postgresql, MySQL, Ht://Dig, IIS,
etc.
Operating Systems: I range from user to admin with these OSes:
Linux (RedHat), FreeBSD, Tru64, Solaris, SCO, Windows
(NT,2000,Me,98,95), Dos (MS), Mac OS Classic, BeOS, tmsbtrt, etc.
Community Involvement History
Perl 5 Porter: I have patched the Perl core, the standard
distribution and standard documentation. I completed the docs on
tie()ing arrays in perltie. I added the OO interface to
Shell.pm. I added multiple constant declarations to constant.pm.
Allowed quite a few more perl functions to be override-able. Added
compile time class declarations to Class::Struct. Ran the Perl 5
Porters impressions night at The Perl Conference in 2001.
Beginners Project: I kicked off a very large project within the Perl
community, a call to be nicer to beginners. I created a web site
(beginners.perl.org) as well as several mailing lists. These
three mailing lists have well over 10,000 subscribers now. I work
with a group of 7 or so other folks who help quite a bit, I lead
the overall direction of these things.
CPAN Author: I have a couple of modules on the CPAN now, some of
them I hate, some I like. Tie::SortHash is defunct as
Pseudo-hashed are die()ing. ex::constant::vars and ex::override
are both pretty cool though only the latter truly useful. The
former was more of a proof-of-concept.
Template::Plugin::TextToHtml is a Template Toolkit Plugin to
convert plain text to formatted HTML. You will see more from me
in the next months.
--
Casey West
