About Me
I love coffee. Not just any coffee. I prefer a very strong French Roast from Peet’s or Starbucks. I can drink an espresso and then go to bed. Coffee seems to not affect me. If you like my articles, Buy me a coffee.
I am a software engineer and enterprise architect with over three decades of experience. Almost all the products I helped develop became industry successes. Unix, SCSI, Disk Arrays, Paragon, Norton Ghost, and Storage Manager. Except for Unix, I was the software architect and a major software contributor.
Today I design cloud systems focusing heavily on security and networking and write enterprise-class backend software. Authentication and Identity Systems are also favorites. I am a three-time MVP – currently MVP Cloud Networking and Cloud Security. I am an Alibaba Cloud MVP, and AWS Expert. I am a former Microsoft MVP and Google Cloud Platform GDE.
In September 2022, I was awarded the Google Cloud Champion Innovator for Data Analytics. In January 2023, I was awarded the Anaconda Pegasus award for my work on PyScript (pdf). I was the only recipient of this award for 2022.
I support Alibaba, AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Oracle clouds. I have fifteen cloud certifications across multiple vendors and over 14 years of experience with AWS, about 12 with Azure, and about 10 with Google.
I have extensive experience in security, file system forensics, authentication, and identity.
Occasionally I do public presentations and speeches. You can listen to me talk about the various clouds here and here. I have lectured at NASA Ames Research Center, Oxford, AT&T, Honeywell, Microsoft, IBM, and many times for Novell.
My favorite cloud service is Google Cloud Run, which is a fantastic product. However, I do most of my work deploying to traditional virtual machines, load balancers, databases (MySQL and MongoDB), and cloud storage.
Programming languages: C/C++, Python, Go, PHP, Swift, Java/Scala, JavaScript/Node.js, and C#/.NET. Frameworks: Python Flask, PHP Laravel, and Swift Vapor. My “thinking” language is C but now I am heavily involved with Swift. I worked on and ported Unix and the Unix C compiler/assembler/linker to many platforms including the IBM and Fujitsu mainframes and the Cray supercomputer. My favorite development language is Swift. My favorite prototyping language is Python.
I take part in Stackoverflow almost every day for a few minutes. You can see my profile here. I am a big fan of Qwiklabs. You can see my profile here. Microsoft Learn is another favorite for Microsoft and Azure. You can see my profile here.
For hobbies, I ride horses with my dogs when the weather permits. I am a private pilot – both single and multi-engine. I play golf from late spring thru early fall. I no longer ski (ankle accident) but I spend time at the lodge enjoying dinner and the view. Playing billiards (snooker) is another favorite.