I’m back, and still surviving
The Orbitz Years
When I started in the NOC at Orbitz, I really only expected to stay a year or two cutting my teeth before finishing school and moving on to something new. Well, that year turned into six, and that finishing school thing never really happened. I was, however, lucky enough to get to know some truly awesome people, and work in three rather different positions within the company.
In the NOC, I recall meeting Ryan on one of my first days at the company and chatting about the Enlightenment window manager while the rest of the team moved the NOC down a floor. We got on pretty well, both being from down-state Illinois, and spent a fair bit of time trolling around Chicago as we learned our way around. Shenanigans included a few visits to Defcon, many rounds of drunken chess, and being asked if we were FBI agents while Wardriving.., er Warsitting?.
After the NOC, I was able to move into a position as a Systems Engineer attached to the development team. I learned about managing a large number of workstations, and dealing with the requests from a large number of developers. LDAP for authentication, RPM + apt, and a local Jabber server really really helped me from going insane. This is about the time I saw the light for properly packaging software for local use. Mmmmm RPMDEBFINKPKG-stuff.
Moving on, I landed in the Information Security department with Justin, Ed, and Laz. We had great fun, and I was able to really spend some time with Ruby, visit Mauritius errr.. audit a vendor in Mauritius, and meet real live Sarbanes-Oxley auditors (shudder).
There were, really, too many great folks to talk about my experiences with each, but it was a wonderful experience all around. I will however note that Laz is still procrastinating in starting his blog. Laz I know you worked at SGI during the Jurassic period, but seriously, stop contemplating, start writing.
Viewpoints
In May of 2007, I left Orbitz to start a new adventure at Viewpoints. It’s been a great experience so far. We’re a small team (an awesome one), we’re a Ruby on Rails site, and I’ve been able to learn a lot. Awesome!
So 10 years in tech?
I’m very happy with where I’ve landed at Viewpoints, and I don’t see myself freaking out and changing careers any time soon. But, it has been interesting to look back over the last 10 years and contemplate where I’ll be 10 years from now. It seems quite likely as I get a bit older that my next real adventures won’t have anything to do with my career or career aspirations, but that’s a thought for another day.
