"Better Vulpines through Technology."

Vulpine's Personal Page

Updated: 01/10/2006

Well, if you've gotten this far, you must want to know about me. Either that or you just wanted to make sure I didn't hide a link to my porn and Mp3's on this page. Well, let me describe myself.

Ok, that's the short form. The long form is well, long. I'm a computer geek, a pagan, a fox-fanatic, an occasional filker, a closet historian, worshipper of all things Lovecraftian and alot more things. Nah, I'm not multifaceted at all. What can I say, singlemindness is dull, a variety of intrests keeps you from being bored and dull. And I hate being bored. To quote Robert Heinlein, 'Specialization is for insects.'
Vulpine: The early Days
I was born and spent most of my childhood in a town called Valley Stream, New York. Which is about 20 min from NYC. I like to say that alot of my personality comes from being raised in the general vicinity of the Big Apple. When I was 14 years old, me and my parents decided to pull up stakes and move to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Now that was a switch. NYC to Dallas, took me years to recover.

Vulpine: the College Student
As a college student, I studied history. Now I love history, always have always will. I find it to be more fascinating that just about anything else. (Redheads notwithstanding.) Problem with history though, it's hard to making a living out of it. Unless you like to teach (which I don't) or plan on being a lawyer. So I gave up on history when I left college, and moved on to....

Vulpine: Internet Junkie
I found the internet back during college. Oh the good old days, IRC and MUD's and email. None of this World Wide Web junk, or e-business. Just college students trying to pick up people who've they've never met. And I've been hooked ever since. I'm still hooked, but now I make a living off of the net, or I did at least. I still spend too many hours a day 'surfing the web' or whatever euphemism is the popular one of the day. And because of the 'net, I've also become one hell of a geek (IMHO). A little programing, a little computer building, alot of fun stuff. I still think a nice ISP job would still be a good fit for me.

Vulpine: Geekus Employus
I've had a lot of truely scary jobs in my life. Some good, some bad, all weird. Some of the more amusing ones are...

7-11
Like most everyone in the world, I've worked for 7-11. Graveyard shift, when the fun people come out for soda and donuts. I never got robbed, never got shot. Just call me lucky I guess.

America Online: "I was young and neded the money"
My first computer job, dear gods was I desperate. Customer service for the Internet Provider of the Dumb. Most of the time I just told people that they had to pay the bill, no matter how big it was. And that downloading naked pics was against our Terms of Service. I got out of that job quick though.

Microsoft: "Flirting with disaster"
Yeah, I worked for MS. I needed the money. I did 1st level support for the Windows 95 release. In fact, my first day on the phones was Release day. My gods, did the calls rings. I started wanting to answer the phones, 'Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Chris...we're sorry.' Actually working for MS wasn't that bad at the time, good pay, fair benefits. Well, until they cancelled my contract due to lack of call volume. Oh well, I came out of there with a MS tshirt. I want to add to it, "I worked the phones when Win95 was released, and all I got was this lousy tshirt".

Onramp Technologies: "Where our fox learns that cool job is better than mucho dinero."
This company still is my favorite job. I started at Onramp as a salesperson, taking incoming calls and selling them dialups, webhosting, ISDN, stuff like that. No Corporate sales, usually just individuals. And I was good at it. $10,000+ a month in sales every month good. When Verio purchased an intrest in Onramp, and we were measured against the rest of the Verio Sales Force, I was the top inside sales person, and #4 over all in sales. After about a year and some of sales, I got bored...and pestered my way into the support end of the company, as support webmaster for the whole Texas region. And I was good at that too. I got to learn Linux, Apache, Sun systems, NT (bleah), along with DNS/BIND, Sendmail, and other fun things. This was a good job, not too stressful, and I learned ALOT. In fact I learned more in the year I was webmaster about computers then I've learned before or after. Eventually, I took a transfer to the National Support Group...

Verio (aka, the ISP that Shall Not Be Named): "The New World Order of Business"
Verio was alot different than Onramp. It was a big business, with more rules, more people, more headaches. I was suppost to manage a websupport group, but right after I moved over, upper managment decided to move that somewhere else. So I ended up as part of a Escalations Team. Escalations translates into problem customers and weird stuff. Since I'd been with Verio since my Onramp hire date, and my boss knew I knew my stuff, I ended up being the Assistant Manager of Escalations. So I got the customers my team pissed off, who were already pissed off. Oooh fun. This was a job that taught me how to deal with customers, how to convince them I was on their side, and how to learn to hate Pointy Haired Bosses. I ended up being very burnt out, and resigning right after I got my latest vesting of stock options. Then I took a long vacation. Verio ended up being bought out by Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, which makes me wonder if I left at a good time or not. Oh well.

Clearwire: "Cushyness goes to a whole new level"
This was my first real job after my sabbatical. Sysadmin for a pair of Linux boxes, doing logging of wireless Internet users. Now this was a company sans clues. Everything seemed to be done at the last minute, and as a crisis. But I learned alot, while rebuilding those servers. After I got everything done, my contract was ended...since I was now no longer needed. Within 3 weeks, the servers had crashed from inept handling...silly buggers.

Currently: "Jack of All Trades"
I'm currently working for a webhosting company as a "Professional Services Engineer." In reality, this means I do all the goofy jobs that otherwise fall between the cracks within the normal support structure. Abuse, backups, 3rd party installs, criseses...I do it all. About the only thing I don't do is billing, thank Cthulhu. And while it's good to be the go-to guy who can fix anything, it also means I work my tail off all the time, and rarely do I feel as appreciated as I should. Oh well, it pays the bill.

For those who are curious as to what I look like, take a look at my little Gallery of Vanity. *laugh* I usually hate pics of myself, but these turned out ok. These were from a friend's wedding, and I actually looked human.

For the more curious, and the geeky inclined...my Geekcode. With translations :)