Or, a brief history of my professional life
In my professional career, I’ve worn a lot of hats. I wore the technical support hat at EarthLink, where I spent many grueling hours on the phone fixing (or trying to fix) the problems of end-users attempting to connect to the internet and do all that internet magic. I supported all versions of Microsoft Windows (up to Windows 2000 at the time), Mac OS (up to Mac OS 9), and I even supported a couple of people trying to connect with Linux and BeOS (remember BeOS?).
After my tech support days, I moved to a more advanced sort of support. Earthlink had a group under the tech support umbrella known as the Support Operations Center (SOC). The SOC was responsible for verifying customer reports of service and network problems and escalating verified reports to the proper party, whether it was to an internal group (usually to the Network Operations Center) or to an outside provider (OPN). The work in the SOC wasn’t especially technically challenging, but it provided an excellent opportunity to learn proper problem management. Most of my time in the SOC was as a temp. Temping in the SOC was a way for them to try you out without officially hiring you and for you to find out if working in the SOC was reallly what you wanted. While I was temping in the SOC, it was transitioned to being part of the NOC and I was effectively hired directly into the NOC.
EarthLink’s NOC was in turmoil, mainly due to problems surrounding the merger of the SOC and NOC, and was thrown into even more turmoil because of the larger EarthLink-MindSpring merger. During my tenure in the NOC, which was over 4 years, we went from a rag-tag crew with various skill sets to a finely tuned group of very qualified network engineers. I developed expertise in dial-access technologies and eventually became a Sr. Engineer for dial-access. I also became quite familiar with Cisco routers & switches, Cabletron switches, Foundry switches, and various other equipment. I also developed some pretty decent Unix skills. I worked on a few projects with the System Administration group, one of them developing a non-official gaming service. I wrote some detailed documentation on how EarthLink mail service worked for training purposes. I honed my skills at shell scripting and perl while writing scripts to gather SNMP data from our farm of Nortel (now Aastra) CVX-1800 that we used for dial access. I even began work on a Linux distribution, based on Fedora, specifically tailored to the needs of the NOC.
Then the end came. EarthLink decided to do some restructuring and the NOC (also known as the ‘EarthLink Operations Center’, since we supported more than just the network) in Pasadena, CA was shut down. Rather than uproot myself (and my wife), I decided not to take the relocation to Atlanta, GA that I was offered and stayed in Southern California. I spent a few months looking for work, doing some consulting, and working on my house. I eventually landed at W.P. Electric and Communications as a Voice & Data Technician. At W.P., I learned invaluable lessons in the proper ways to install and terminate copper and fiber based networks. I also further developed my voice skills. I got some strange looks from IT guys when I told them what I used to do, or when I told them how to resolve a rather vexing problem.
I left W.P. around Thanksgiving 2005. At Thanksgiving dinner I really had something to be thankful for. I began work at Molina Healthcare, Inc. on Nov. 21. It’s a great company and I work with some tremendously good people. I’ve got no complaints about work, so I doubt that it will play prominently on this blog.