Thomas W. Weeks
--- ------- --
San Antonio, TX -----
Phone: ---.---.----
Email: tweeks-jobs-at-theweeks.org
Bio: Tom's Bio

Updated May - 2008
Email me for my address/phone information
This document is on line at: http://theweeks.org/toms-stuff/resume/

For Static/Print Versions:

• PDF Version of this resume is here

• For MS Word, this page can be saved and loaded directly Word, Open Office, etc

• For raw TXT version, please contact Thomas directly

Professional Objective:

Seeking a Senior Technical or Technical Manager position that can take advantage of my skill set and experience while allowing me to continue to increase my professional expertise. Enjoy working in the areas of Internet/IT, Security, Server/Networking, Training/Education, Documentation/Authoring and Technical Management. Desire to relocate to the East coast.

Professional Overview:

Experienced Electrical Engineer and Linux/UN*X Administrator with 10+ years of experience in both realms. Accomplished author, lecturer, trainer and technical manager/executive liaison. I possess a love for the technology that I've mastered, a passion for showing others how to properly apply it, and the abilities to harness them all to solve real world problems in new and creative ways.

Published Papers, Lectures & Books:

• 2008/2007 - Lecture: "The State of the Linux Desktop", for SA Chapter IEEE Computer Society 
                             (the latest version given at the 2008 San Antonio OS-Fest)

• 2006 - Article: "Production MySQL Backups in the Enterprise", for SysAdmin Magazine. Part-I and Part-II

• 2006 - Lecture: "Managed Web Hosting with Open Source", for SA Chapter IEEE Computer Society

• 2005 - Book: "Linux Toys II", contributing author, Wiley Publishing (more info here).

• 2005 - Lecture: Presenter at the MySQL Users Convention on the topic Ensuring Effective MySQL Backups on Enterprise Production Systems" (more up to date HTML version is here).

• 2004 - Book: "Linux Troubleshooting Bible", co-author Wiley Publishing

• 2002 - Paper: Host Security Paper, "Host Hardening and Intrusion Detection - The Open Source Way", written privately for UNIX Review.

•  2002 - Paper: Web Server Paper, Web Server Migration Overview, written on behalf Rackspace for DatacenterHub.com.

•  2001 - Paper: Security Paper, "Internet Server Security: The Best Things in Life Are Free, But There's No Silver Bullet", written on behalf of Rackspace for www.datacenterhub.com.

Education:

            Texas A&M University

Graduated from Texas A&M w/Electrical Engineering Technology / Telecom BS degree. Telecom portion covers: u-Wave Links, LAN, WAN, TCP/IP, Bridging, Routing, Protocol Programming, Cellular/PCS/GSM Networks, Leased Lines, VSAT, SMDS, ATM, Frame Relay, ISDN, FDDI, Optics, T1, DS3, OC-n, etc.

            Thames Valley State Technical College

Graduated in class of 90 with an Associates Degree of EET.

            IT Industry Training & Certifications

• 2008 - Six Sigma IT business management training by Rackspace University (outsourced)

• 2008 - Project+ project management by Comptia & Momentum, working toward certification

• 2007 - Business Writing by Rackspace U & Rice University (cert-less class)

• 2007 - ITIL Certified after taking "ITIL IT Service Management Essentials" Class by Pink Elephant

• 2007 - RHCE Certified on RHEL-5, after assisting in training Rackspace for upcoming RHCE exam.

• 2006 - Took the new RH401/RHCA Class on RH Enterprise Deployment and Systems Management  

• 2005 - RHCE Certified on RHEL-4, after taking the Red Hat RH300 Rapid Track course for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. 

  • Used updated OS knowledge to prepare, train and update 60 Rackspace Linux Sys-Admins on relevant material. Rackspace scored the highest group pass rate ever recorded for the RHCE exam (>92%).

• 2003 - RHCE Certified on Red Hat 8.0. 

  • Used to train over 60 Sys-Admins at Rackspace in a one week crash course for relevant OS' materials on RH9 & RH-EL3.

• 2002 - Tripwire Certified Professional via the Tripwire Technical Training 200 

  • for Tripwire for Servers 2.4.2 and Tripwire Manager 2.4.2

• 2001 - RHCE for Red Hat 7.1 (cert available upon request) Certified Engineer (302) Exam

• Exhaustive IT/Training List Here

Experience:

            Rackspace:                                                  1999 to Present

    Rackspace Positions Held:

• Data Center Solutions Group Lead,                                      2006 - Present

  • Managed remote team of four DC-Analysts  (one DC-Engineer/Analyst in each DC)

  • Managed development of DC tools and automation systems such as:

    • mass hard drive wiping & logging system (zero fill & DoD3 wipe).

    • test & Integration of IP-KVM system for all data centers.

    • push-script for mass 500 server shutdown for DC power maintenance.

  • Created & trained a Root Cause Analysis & Problem Solving class for my people.

  • Managed my personnel's quarterly reviews, corp. travel, training, etc.

• Lead Systems Engineer on Systems Innovation Team,      2004 - 2006

  • Developed mass-automation tools for large scale data center and customer server  problems.  Examples include:

    • push-scripting for mass server maintenance.

    • mass port scanning scripting reports for vulnerable sendmail binaries.

    • SMART hard drive"health test" script (active r/w test) with mass logging & statistics.

  • Lead a team of two developers for creation of automation tools and reports:

    • scripted mass DNS/BIND daemon re-config and restarts.

    • server daemon scripts & system for mass batch automation system.

• Product Engineer for Rackspace Product team,                  2003 - 2004

  • Did initial research/feasibility recommendations for:

    • H.A. MS-Exchange clusters offering.

    • Low cost, PCI card based firewall (embedded Linux) product.

    • Created a server reset/power mux controller called "Rapid Reboot" (more further down).

• Corp. Technical Trainer (lone)                                                  2001 - 2003

  • Started the Rackspace Training Department.

  • Wrote & delivered Linux/Windows sys-admin training classes & exams for all of Support.

  • Created our own RHCE Training Boot Camp & mock 6hr exam.

  • Trained MTAs(email), DNS, FTP, Hardware/OS t-shooting.

  • Trained for tape backups, restores, and emergency data recovery techniques.

  • Maintained OS images for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD training loads.

• Sys-Admin for Rackspace Customer Support                              1999 - 2000

  • I was the third customer Support Sys-Admin at Rackspace (employee #11).

  • Built customer servers, loaded OS (Win/Lin), and did Sys-Admin/networking work.

  • Supported a DC environment with a 200:1 server to technician ratio.

  • Functioned as a de facto, in-house R&D / T&I (Test & Integration) engineer for various projects.

    Rackspace Inventions, Special Projects and Skills:

• Created automated hard drive "health check" PXE script             2004

  • SMART statistics are known to be inherently unreliable, so I...

  • Created an active-test SMART script using little known SMART r/w tests built into drives.

  • Tested and logged health of every drive going into the DC from 2004-2006.

  • Collected much data on drive death statistics (age, make, model, SCSI vs ATA, etc).

• Created "Rapid Reboot" hardware reset/power mux controller   2003

  • My reset/ATX-power mux controller can control the reset or power on thousands of servers.

  • I designed, constructed, and prototyped RR, and then outsourced for mass implementation.

  • RR allowed the creation of a fully automated, "in rack" data center for Server Beach

  • Additional custom back end system controls the VLAN, PXE, loads the OS, & reboots.

  • Currently cross licensed to Server Beach as heart of their automated system.

• Created automated disk-to-disk bare metal backup system         2000

  • Called "Bounce-Backup", it was composed of a special boot floppy and cron-automated system

  • Worked on both Windows and Linux servers sort of like a intelligent, intermittent, off-line, "RAID-1 backup system".

  • It was an off-line backup system, but backup drive could be booted from & run on

   Other skills attained while at Rackspace:

            Brooks-AFB IT Contractor:                          1996 - 1999
            (for CSC, GTE, & General Dynamics)

•     Brooks Air Force Base  IT Contractor Positions Held:

• Senior Software Engineer (GTE+GD Contract),                 1997-1999

  • Ran a lab team of two engineers in the base Testing and Integration Center lab (TIC/PIT) 

  • Responsible for SMS/WinNT/WINS/MS-Exchange Admin/R&D work

  • Responsible for steering base technology-centric decisions--through research and implementation strategies.

• Communications Engineer (GTE Contract),                        1996-1997

  • With degree, promoted to base Solaris/UN*X System Administrator for 27 Sun Solaris UN*X servers (NIS+, MS-DCs & DNS).

  • Functional admin for all base UN*X systems, RAID storage systems, backups (Legato), print queues, etc

  • Promoted seven months later to Systems Engineer into the TIC (above)

• Computer Tech (CSC Contract),                                     1996 (3mo)

  • Started off as on-site computer tech until I completed a freshman class to complete my EET/Telecom BS degree for promotion to target UN*X Sys-Admin position

  • Did traveling PC tech work around base for desktop and laptop systems (Win95 mostly)

  • PC repairs, data migrations, anti-virus/client configs, etc.

Key technological experience attained while in TIC position(Brooks-AFB):

^I=Implemented ^T=Tested ^R=Researched

Networking	Admin/Servers	Integration
Net-Media  10/100BxI, DS0/DS1/T1I, FDDIT, TTY/RS-232I	Operating Systemsall I Sun-OS, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, WinNT4	Migrationsall I UNIX/Win95->NT,  NT-Domain->NT-Domain, NFS->CIFS
LAN Based Protocols TCP/IPI, UDPI, RIPI, ATMI, DNSI, NIS+T, WINSI, NetBIOS/BEUII, IPX-BridgeT	Storageall I NAS Backup/Restores, Soft/Hard RAID 0,1,5	SMS Server->Winn9x Pushesall I Net-Centric NortonAV, MS-Office, Outlook98, Y2K Patches, IP Stack Patches
Security DOS AttkT, Port ScanningT, System FingerprintingT, CRACK/SATAN/SAINTT/R/R, Back-DooringT, Host HardeningI, Physical SecurityT, Securing HardwareI, TCP WrappersI, TripwireR	Server Appsall I Exchange, SMS/SQL, NortonAV Enterprise, Net/Web-XRay	Projectsall I Web-Email, DMS, 96 Line Modem Bank, MAN-Wide AV Solution, Software Auditing, User Tracking,...
Net/Info-Sec Protocols KerberosR, PGPR, SSLI, VPN/PPTPI, SSHI, SHA/MD5/DES/3DES/RSAI(ssl), etc.	File Systemsall I FAT16/32, NTFS, EXT2/Linux, misc-UN*X, Romeo/Joliet/ISO9660, FFS, TAR, etc.	Scriptingall I Shell Scripting (SH/csh/Korn, cron, batch, NT-Login), HTML, client batch utils
Perimeter FirewallsT, ProxyingT, Proto-BridgingI, Filter-ListsT, Intrusion Detection/ForensicsT	NAS/Net FS'all I NFS, SBM/CIFS, Net-App(vendor)	---

More Technical Experience from 1987-1996
(available from http://theweeks.org/toms-stuff/resume/resume_87-96.html)

These earlier years of my engineering experiences focus more on pre-Internet/server areas such as early computer tech work, discrete electronics repair work, lab research college jobs, etc.  Moved off my main resume for brevity's sake

Community Involvement:

• 1998-2006: Started the Gateway Church Mobile Soup Kitchen. Twice/month I cook food for 60-80 people, meet other volunteers at our local church, and coordinate our ministry under a downtown bridge to feed the homeless and minister to spiritual needs.

• 1997-Present: President of the local computer user group XCSSA (X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio). We explore OS' ranging from Linux and Solaris, to BeOS and AmigaOS. We meet once/month for a high-tech show-n-tell, have lectures on subjects ranging from Home LAN DNS and firewalling/routing to RAID and crypto-filesystems. Simply put, XCSSA is just a bunch of super-geeks who enjoy hanging out, sharing fun technical information, and eating pizza.

• 1997-Present: Associated with the San Antonio High Powered Rocketry and Hill Country Rocketeers groups. Now hold my Tripoli High Powered Rocket membership (#11056) and am currently working toward my L1 HPR certification.

  Email Thomas Weeks: tweeks-jobs@theweeks.org

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