There are three things which are real; God, Human Folly and Laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension so we must do what we can with the third. John F. Kennedy
About Seann
I enjoy spending time with my family skiing, hiking and traveling, or just watching movies. My interests include investing, computers and how the universe works. I started using computers in 1981, and love using them to create things and share ideas over the Internet. I'm your basic 'blue jeans and T-shirt' kind of guy, and have a collection of Hard Rock Cafe shirts from around the world. I appreciate the simple things in life and have a knack for finding humor in everyday situations.
I grew up in Houston, Texas and like to visit from time to time. I attended Texas A&M University where I majored in Computer Science and moved to Dallas where I started my first job at Texas Instruments.
I met Kate in 2001 and we got married in 2003. In 2006, we moved to Colorado Springs and started a family. We love the weather in Colorado. With low humidity, it doesn't really get too hot or too cold most of the year.
We enjoy traveling and winter sports. We had a fantastic vacation to Europe in 2018 and went to see friends in Madrid, Spain, and also visited Barcelona, Italy, London and Paris. Here's a video with highlights of our trip:
I spent the majority of my IT career as a system administrator specializing in UNIX architecture, clustering and disaster recovery. I was a technical product manager for a few years where I was able to hone my presentation skills. I like to take complex topics and make them easy for anyone to understand. I am interested in investing and became an investment advisor and broker for a short period, passing my series 7 and 66 exams. I am now a software developer.
I enjoy programming and was able to combine my passion for computers and investing to create Portfolio Toolbox. It is a web site dedicated to sharing my investing journey and some tools and ideas that I use to help me invest.
I have also written a Javascript slide show program called JSviewer, though it is a little bit dated using today's standards. I even built a Javascript lottery number generator below to help you pick your numbers. For those of you that are good at math, you'll discover that winning the lottery is much harder than it sounds.
The most extreme thing that I have done is skydiving. There's nothing quite like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to give you a new perspective on life. Seeing the curvature of the Earth from 12,000 feet is an awesome sight. My first jump was an Accelerated Free Fall (AFF). It is fairly intense for a first jump and I now recommend that new people go tandem on their first jump.
I like hiking, skiing, bicycling and Frisbee™. I starting playing Frisbee with my brother as a kid and now play Frisbee with my own kids. I also like doing things indoors like bowling, billiards and watching movies. Here's a video of me skiing one of my favorite runs at Breckenridge:
Photography is another hobby of mine. I have so many pictures and I need to take some time to make them available online.
Nuclear War™ is one of my favorite card games that I like to play with my friends. I started playing Nuke War while I lived in the dorms in college. It was originally designed by Doug Malewicki during the Cold War in 1965. The object of the game is to try to be the last country standing with at least 1 million people. It has been updated a few times and is a pretty fun to play. It is available from Flying Buffalo, Inc. More often than not, there is no winner because everyone dies in a nuclear war.
My favorite foods are Italian and Chinese, along with steaks, shrimp, crab & burgers and I like cooking from time to time.
I have been an avid music fan since I was a kid. While at Texas A&M, I was a DJ for the cable radio station KANM. My show was called Spam-o-Rama and I played classic rock music. My favorite types of music are 80's retro, classic rock and alternative music. Some of my favorite artists and movies are:
- Artists: AC/DC, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Bon Jovi, Carrie Underwood, The Cult, Billy Idol, Garth Brooks, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Michael Jackson, OneRepublic, Pat Benetar, Prince, Pink Floyd, The Police, The Rolling Stones, Sting, Taylor Swift, Trace Adkins, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, U2
- Movies: Addams Family, Arthur, Beauty and the Beast (Disney), The Fugitive, Heavy Metal, Highlander, The Incredibles, Lord of the Rings, Marvel Movies, The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, Robin Hood, Star Wars, Titanic, Waterworld
Résumé
Highly skilled technologist with more than 20 years experience in Information Technology. Specializes in automation and Disaster Recovery solutions using Veritas software. Excellent interpersonal and troubleshooting skills. Provides strong leadership, works well in a team environment and communicates effectively with customers, vendors and management.
- Master of Science, Computer Science
- Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering minor
Full Stack Engineer
Linux Server Hacks by Rob Flickenger January 2003 Hack #47, "iptables Tips & Tricks"Hack #62, "Disk Age Analysis" |
January 2002 "Redundant Internet Connections Using Linux" |
VCS/SAN Specialist
2015 - 2020
- Designed and built High Availability / Disaster Recovery IT solutions for Federal Reserve Bank utilizing Veritas / Hitachi products.
- Protected applications include database, middleware and custom banking applications.
- Maintained software currency by performing multiple software and OS upgrades with minimal downtime.
- Migrated Veritas storage to all flash storage array with zero downtime.
- Prioritized software requirements, engineering resources and critical customer escalations for Veritas InfoScale Enterprise storage product.
- Collaborated with multiple customers on Disaster Recovery projects and customer-centric product testing.
- Developed competitive collateral for Disaster Recovery, High Availability and replication to enable field sales engineers.
- Built a virtual demo environment using VMware vCloud Director for a 5-site Disaster Recovery solution based on VVR replication.
- Developed innovative product requirements based on customer feedback and market analysis.
- Storage Team Lead for Federal Reserve Bank private cloud environment responsible for VCS clustering, Disaster Recovery, Hitachi and EMC SAN storage for three data centers.
- Reduced RPO from 30+ minutes to ~30 seconds by migrating from EMC SRDF/AR to Hitachi Universal Replicator.
- Developed generic failover script to reduce RTO from 1-2 hours to ~20 minutes using VCS Global Cluster Option (GCO) to automate failover of multiple application components on multiple clusters to DR site.
- Successfully performed production Disaster Recovery failover in two hours for multiple business applications.
- Developed custom VCS agents for application components.
- Developed scripts for maintaining configuration standards across 28 different VCS clusters consisting of 124 servers total.
- Performed root cause analysis for multiple technical incidents / performance problems.
- Primarily responsible for the care and feeding of VCS and Cluster File System clusters in financial production and test environments.
- Clustered the following applications for High Availability: Oracle, WebLogic, WebSphere, Siebel, Shareplex, DB2 and MQ Series.
- Performed troubleshooting and root cause analysis of cluster issues with vendor, including one case which resulted in upgrading Storage Foundation Cluster File System software on all cluster systems.
- Upgraded Veritas Storage Foundation software from 3.5 to 4.1 to 5.0 on over 270 servers.
- Implemented strong security practices on Solaris servers to protect financial applications.
- Developed custom Jumpstart framework used to rebuild over 300 systems in a secure fashion.
- Worked as liason between operations and project management team on multiple projects to integrate and deploy new servers.
- Performed host-based data migration with zero downtime using Veritas Foundation Suite. (EMC Symmetrix to DMX)
- Developed custom scripts for SRDF / Storage Foundation integration for Disaster Recovery of financial applications.
Senior Systems Engineer
d-tech corporation
2002 - 2004
- Supported pre / post sales of storage / application availability solutions for multiple clients.
- Designed and implementated VCS clusters for multiple clients to support SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle environments.
- Designed ShadowImage implementations for zero downtime Oracle backups and environment refreshes.
- Participated in development of Linux appliance for High Availability, Disaster Recovery and backups for SMB market.
- Replaced company infrastructure with a custom Linux HA solution, including firewall, VPN, e-mail (anti-spam), DNS, web services, and Cisco / Foundry router configuration.
- Configured SunFire E15K, HDS 9980V and Veritas DMP for maximum performance of Oracle database. Achieved 19 Gb/s sustained throughput.
- Installed Veritas NetBackup in Shared Storage configuration on a Sun L180 tape library.
- Installed multiple VCS clusters to support SAP, Oracle and other third party party applications.
- Upgraded production Veritas FirstWatch cluster to VCS 2.0 with minimal downtime.
- Configured multiple Solaris and Windows VCS clusters for two site GCM environment to provide site-to-site Disaster Recovery.
- Integrated multiple Oracle instances into VCS environment.
- Worked with Veritas to debug GCM notifier defect that was sending thousands of e-mails per hour.
- Developed technique for performing Oracle hot backups using Hitachi's ShadowImage with zero downtime on AIX for Verizon Directories.
- Developed technique for performing Oracle database refreshes of production databases using ShadowImage on AIX for Verizon Directories.
- Provided technical support for NetBackup installation for Verizon Long Distance.
- Installed multiple VCS clusters for SuperPages.com to support PeopleSoft / Oracle environment.
- Architected, deployed, managed and documented infrastructure solutions for muliple clients.
- Mentored client system administrators.
- Interviewed and mentored new Collective candidates.
- Contributed to Collective Intellect internal knowledge database.
Texas Instruments Education & Productivity Solutions
- Technical lead for team of Collective consultants working with client to design and build development / test / production environments for Navigator project.
- Gathered requirements from client teams to design 3-tier data center for Navigator project.
- Designed and deployed highly automated Jumpstart server for installing Solaris and application software.
- Automated installation of Oracle 8i / 9i, Veritas Foundation Suite, Veritas Cluster Server, Solstice Disk Suite and Veritas Netbackup.
- Rearchitected previous incarnation of project to be highly available.
- Designed redundant Linux iptables firewalls.
- Documented Navigator project configuration, including system architecture, configuration and maintenance tasks.
- Worked with vendors to purchase Sun hardware and Veritas software.
- Provided system administration support for Oracle, BEA WebLogic and Interwoven Teamsite.
- Recommended and installed Unix console terminal server, Lightwave 3200.
- Worked with client to push new code / content to test and production servers.
- Installed / configured SAN connections on Solaris systems.
- Interviewed various hosting providers to select a site for production environment.
- Developed a generic service level agreement (SLA) for projects.
- Developed automated scripts for creating Oracle database instances.
- Augmented and mentored client system administration staff.
- Performed CPU / memory upgrades in a Solaris production environment at co-location facility with no application downtime.
- Installed and configured four Sun racks, connecting to an APC Symmetra Power Array (UPS).
- Setup NIS, NFS, automounter, DNS, sendmail, and Jumpstart to establish a Unix domain, and documented the configuration.
- Supported administrators to resolve networking issues with Sabre when hotwire.com was launched.
- Resolved various user problems related to cron jobs, shell scripts, and Oracle.
Disney Internet Group / infoseek.com
- Upgraded existing sendmail architecture to 8.11, supporting 12,000 e-mail addresses corporate-wide.
- Fixed various sendmail message header re-write rules.
- Implemented dual, redundant e-mail servers to accept incoming Internet e-mail and to relay it to various internal MS-Exchange and Unix servers.
- Installed Remedy ARWeb server.
- Assisted with designing, building and documenting the EMX Shared Network data center as a joint venture between Alcatel and Motorola.
- Installed and configured Sun and Network Appliance systems.
- Automated Solaris installations using Jumpstart.
- Designed and implemented a redundant NIS domain and a directory structure layout (automount).
- Designed custom Web pages for the Help Desk for account administration.
- Designed a single Unix/Windows NT log-on for a Windows NT terminal server cluster.
- Designed and implemented redundant, round robin DNS and FLEXlm license servers.
- Designed a custom sendmail configuration for the Shared Network.
- Installed multiple third-party Unix applications.
- Installed and configured an Apache web server and LSF. (Load Sharing Facility)
- Setup redundant Windows NT DHCP server.
- Setup redundant NCD X terminal BOOTP servers using NCDware.
- Diagnosed Gigabit / OC-3 networking issues with the Alcatel networking group.
- Diagnosed Xylan Gigabit switch problem with Sun, NetApp and Xylan.
- Supported firewall groups, establishing secure high-speed communications between companies.
- Coordinated external resources, as needed, to accomplish project goals.
- Assisted client system administration staff in day-to-day activities.
- Performed a hardware and software inventory of all Wall Street Journal Interactive servers.
- Automated the implementation of Explorer and SunScan scripts to check for Year 2000 compliance.
- Resolved Sun hardware problems, and replaced hardware when necessary.
- Installed Solaris on multiple servers.
- Wrote shell scripts (ksh, awk, sed, Perl) to aid local system administrators.
- Automated FTP data transfers through a firewall from an external client over the Internet.
- Monitored Legato backup tape drive status.
- Wrote scripts to monitor financial feeds for inactivity.
Associates First Capital Corporation
- Customized Remedy's ARWeb user interface, using JavaScript for the corporate Help Desk application.
- Developed a Perl CGI script, using ARSperl to perform Remedy reporting, and DBI and DBD libraries to perform Oracle reporting.
- Deployed a web-based alphanumeric paging utility, corporate-wide, to support 1400 pagers.
- Team leader for a 7-9 person team of system administrators responsible for providing computer support for a large defense contractor in a diverse multi-vendor environment using client-server technology.
- Architected a single NFS automounter environment across SunOS, Solaris, IRIX and NetApp.
- Handled performance tuning, NIS / DNS configuration and OS upgrades.
Defense Systems & Electronics Group, IT Computer Services
- Developed automated scripts to facilitate administration of 150+ Unix workstations. (resource monitoring and routine maintenance)
- Collapsed multiple NIS domains into single NIS domain to reduce administration overhead and facilitate resource sharing.
- Deployed Unix Load Sharing Facility (LSF) to 100+ Unix workstations.
- Mentored site-wide group of Unix system administrators to facilitate knowledge sharing and establish common site-wide practices.
- Performed hardware upgrades as necessary.
- Consolidated distributed storage environment to centralized NetApp file server.
- Webmaster for site-wide Unix web server running Netscape Enterprise Server. Created CGI scripts and JavaScript code for forms, as well as setup web areas for other groups.
- Created end-user web interface for submitting problem tickets to the mainframe problem tracking system.
- Created web based alpha-numeric paging utility.
- Converted fleet of Unix systems from bridged to routed network. Performed several network upgrades (FDDI and Fast Ethernet).
- Setup redundant X-terminal bootp servers.
- Setup redundant FLEXlm license managers and developed web interface to FLEXlm / FLEXadmin. Automated FLEXlm license metrics collection.
- Setup network printers for multiple OS (Unix, OpenVMS, NT) access.
- Developed LSF standards guide, X-terminal standards document and user guide with a team of systems analysts.
- Deployed Unix and X-terminal standards to multi-site organization.
- Responsible for assigning, grading and helping students on semester project to simulate an operating system, holding office hours and assisting professor by holding lectures.
- Managed four Data General Aviion Unix workstations and sixty PCs running Portable NetWare.
- Provided technical support for over forty employees.
- Planned fiscal computer budgets, maintained several laser printers, installed hardware and software upgrades for PCs, and managed software packages using an Informix SQL database.
- Managed an LAVC VAXcluster and a Sun workstation.
- Installed/upgraded operating system software (including third party).
- Managed user accounts, and developed new system management software.
Systems Analyst
Confidential Communications International
Summer 1988,1989
- Managed a VAX-11/730, including system backups, and maintaining accounting software.
- Developed new dBASE III applications and worked with groups of engineers during design, implementation and maintenance of software projects.
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