About
I’m Justin, and I’m currently enrolled at University of Houston – Victoria. I live in Katy, TX with my wife and daughter. I’m employed as a Linux Systems Engineer, developing infrastructure solutions for a local sporting goods company.
I’m up to quite a bit these days – like everyone else, work takes up the majority of my time. Fortunately for me, I love what I do – systems engineering with Linux. Beyond work, I love spending time with my family and collecting hobbies.
What I’m most interested in right now is information security, but the following areas are close seconds: woodworking, electronics, do-it-yourself anything, home improvement, radio controlled cars, robotics, audio, home-built CNC, and car audio to name a few.
As for my background in computers…it is long and varied, but I’ll try to give a short history.
As a child, my family had a computer when I was 8 or 9 years old. I’m pretty sure it was a TI-99 but don’t hold me too it. I later received a cast-off 386 or 486 computer when I was 11 or 12. It was functioning when I got it, but my curiosity got the better of me and I disassembled it because I was fascinated with what was inside that made it work. Sadly, it was never seen or heard from again…
From then until I was 15 (1994), my only access to computers was through school facilities. Fortunately, I had access after school to a standard computer lab as well as a computer graphics lab full of Apple machines. If I remember correctly, they were the first or second generation of Power Mac computers. During this time I was mostly focused on using Photoshop and Illustrator to learn about commercial arts.
After 10th grade, my family moved to Indiana and I began attending school at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities. During this time, I had the revelation that computers were going to be a large part of my life forever more. Early into my stay at the academy, I met someone who changed my life forever.
I first met my frend Chris when I noticed at the computer lab that he was doing something very different than the rest of the students (I had no idea at the time, but he was shell’d in to some server) – he was using a command line interface and typing fast enough to sound like a chainsaw. I couldn’t help but look over and watch (at the time, I had no idea how rude this was) what he was doing. He said to me: “You know – some people don’t like it when other look over their shoulder”. I apologized, but I was enthralled.
Over the next year, Chris and I became pretty close. He introduced me to the Minix operating system (sort of a precursor to Linux, but that’s a long story). The lab manager – Eric Stassen – allowed me to keep 3 or 4 computers in my dorm for most of my stay – these were old, old machines that nobody really cared about anymore, but they served my purpose. With Chris’ help, I was able to get Minix installed and running and on the network.
During the following months, I went from “what is a shell?” to being able to hold an intelligent conversation with Chris, who I had come to know as a classic hacker (note – there are plenty of places to figure out what I mean by this – Chris was a programmer, not a script kiddie – please let google be your friend here). Although much of what he said was still beyond me, it got me on the path I’m still on today.
I left the academy early due to some personal and academic issues, and returned to my normal high school to finish 11th and 12th grade. Free from the intense workload at the academy, it was during this time that I was able to spend a much larger piece of my day on learning about computers. I eventually graduated from Minix to Linux around 1997 and haven’t looked back since.
For the next 4-5 years, I was never without a computer. I acquired these machines through various sources – the local pawn shop (where I later performed consulting services – $25/hr – not bad for a 16 year old), the library, where I donated tech support time in exchange for old hardware, and the local computer shop where I made friends with the owner.
After high school, I began working for the local Internet service provider, performing phone-based tech support. It was there that I learned what a router was, what TCP/IP meant and how the Internet really functioned. It was also my first exposure to BSD, using FreeBSD.
I also worked on the side as a consultant, providing services to the pawn shop I mentioned earlier, as well as several local businesses and schools.
The longest stint of my career was the 7 years I was with Wal-Mart, where I began as a computer operator (working on s/390 and zSeries mainframes) and finished as a systems operations manager and regional systems support manager. During my career there, I developed a huge network of friends and co-workers that provided tremendous support and varied opportunities for me to learn.
Over the last 15 years, I have probably built 200-300 computers for myself, friends, family, employers, business people, and students. I have taught high-schools students how to physically build machines in hands-on labs, where student teams built the computers that later became the computer lab. I have also traveled many states providing training on software packages and provided remote support for many different kinds of end-users. I have also spent a great deal of time developing in Perl, Visual Basic, and various other scripting languages.