I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin’ on the porch with my family, singin’ and dancin’ down in Mississippi… Ok, that wasn’t me. What’s really about me is that after some false starts in the food services and retail, I started working as a temp answering phones at a local company, a fulfillment house for literature for mutual fund companies. I moved up the chain into the business side, working with a couple of larger clients, and ended up picking up a book “Access 97 For Dummies” and building a subscription mailing list application and database. With that, and some work with the IT department on building a new call center order entry application, my VP said “Go to IT, you’re wasted here”, so I did.
Once in IT I had the good fortune to be able to try on a bunch of different hats, learning what I was good at and what I wasn’t. I started learning VB5, T-SQL in MSSQL 6.5, and Access 2.0, tried out being a Program Manager (definitely not good at that) and Business/Systems Analyst, then more into development in Informix 4GL and Informix SQL, and was involved with production support. After a little while the existing DBA left and I was tapped to fill the role. Shortly thereafter I realized I loved it, I had found my niche, and haven’t regretted it since.
Fast forward something like 16 years, and I’ve worked in large companies (like Monster) and small companies, and am working now in a company which is medium-sized, but is rather invested in technology, so I get to play with newer technologies. I do a lot of infrastructure architecture and helping developers with designing code and processes. This blog site is my place to share some of the oddities I’ve experienced (and hoo-boy, there have been many!) as well as showcasing some of the more interesting solutions I/we have come up with to solve common or unusual problems. [Ed: And he’s so very humble, too!]