Margate Software Foundation 08/01/2008 to present
Webmaster/developer
MSF isn't actually incorporated; just an idea I've had. I've had websites in the past, but my employment at C&C Global Marketing on 08/01/2008 marks the date where I started earning money from my web work; please see my entry for C&C Global for more details about my Internet related activities at C&C during that period. To see the code (Java, using the JavaMail API) for the email campaign referenced in my C&C entry click here. The timeshare website is still viewable on my homepage; click here to see it. The timeshare website was originally hosted on http://holm.ru and used a MySQL database that was updated and viewed via PHP scripts. When I quit C&C Global I modified the timeshare website to use MS Access databases that were updated and viewed with Perl scripts. I had already been using Perl for the last couple of years on my personal website (Dave's Home Page) so it was a natural change. Please view this web page to see why I've changed from MS Access 2010 to MS Excel 2000 for my guest book and have gone from using DBI to Win32::OLE modules in my Perl scripts; just went back to MS Access (32 bit)! My homepage has links to websites I've created for other people. Besides websites, I've also performed technical support at client sites; e.g., I was able to get software running at client sites, that had quit (software decay).

Highlands School District, 02/10/2016 to 03/24/2016
04/08/2016 to 04/27/2016
Substitute Teacher
My start date was 02/10/2016, but I was unable to sub until 02/29/2016 because I still had a job in Broward County - and was still living in Broward County; I was in the middle of a move to Highlands County. During my second week on the job I was asked to continue subbing for the rest of the semester at Lake Country Elementary.

Health Management Advisors, 01/27/2016 to 02/25/2016
Outbound Phone Sales Fronter
Predictive dialer outbound calls to prospects who requested information from HMA about PPO medical insurance. If the prospects were interested in buying insurance, I'd transfer them to an insurance sales person.

Alorica, 08/10/2015 to 12/22/2015
Customer Service Representative
Accept calls from Toyota owners, and answer their questions about recalls.

Holiday Cruise Line, 03/30/2015 to 05/05/2015
Telemarketer
Accept calls from prospects who want to participate in promotions; e.g., a free cruise. Explain conditions for a free cruise and probe prospects for interest in our other cruises and vacation packages.

UPS Preloader, 10/28/2014 to 01/15/2015
Unloaded trucks. Sorted boxes in preparation to be loaded onto trucks.

Teleperformance ASD, 09/20/2010 to 11/03/2014
Sprint Technical Support (call center is owned and supported by Teleperformance ASD).
I've worked in several technical support call centers for Teleperformance. Before June of 2012, I worked for technical support in the Microsoft Online Services division (Exchange Online) of Teleperformance; BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services). I was hired as a “Tier 1” SE (Support Engineer), but was promoted to a Tier 2 SE after just two weeks on the floor. After 1 month of being a Tier 2 SE, I was promoted again to work in the Direct Connect department, handling cases for big money clients who called me directly on the phone or submitted their requests to me by e-mail. After nearly 1 year on the job I was promoted to the Escalation Team (kind of like Tier 2.5). Next I went on to support Blackberry users (AT&T customers). Since March of 2014 I've been supporting Android, Blackberry, iPhone and Windows users (Sprint customers).

Timeshare Marketing - C&C Global Enterprises, 06/09/2008 to 09/01/2010
Telemarketer and Lead Generator
Outbound calls (fronting) to timeshare owners who have expressed an interest to sell their timeshares.  Created and managed a website used to gather information from timeshare owners. I also created and managed an e-mail campaign for driving timeshare owners to my web site and getting direct inquiries from them. The website uses Perl scripts for accessing MS Access databases through an ODBC connection. The mail programs are written in Java, and use the JavaMailAPI. 

Sprint Inbound Sales (PRC Call Center), 11/19/2007 to 03/28/2008
Telemarketer
Mostly inbound sales but a lot of customer service, too (including some technical support). Sprint declared March 2008 the last month for our call center. Most of the employees of this call center had already quit by the time it closed due to PRC having declared bankruptcy and the rumor that Sprint was going to offshore the operation anyway.

American Home Lenders, 06/25/2007 to 11/16/2007
Telemarketer
Hired to do telemarketing for the mortgage industry. Besides telemarketing, I have also worked with the company network, setting up shares, permissions, workgroups, etc. I've also performed in house, technical support; i.e.; changed graphics cards, setup outlook for mail, printer setups, etc.

BankCredit Mortgage, 11/01/2006 to 04/19/2007
Everything IT
Hired to perform telemarketing, but the company owner put me to work doing all the IT work after he read my resume. Debugged and fixed errors in a company web site that was non-functional (some PHP, but mostly HTML); got it working. Maintain the aforementioned web site and other sites as well; besides code changes, includes re-directs, re-hosting, etc. Write utilities for maintaining packages at work, mostly in C/C++. Install and maintain software packages. General IT support (technical support); setup PCs, create e-mail accounts, help end users, etc. During all this IT activity I've also been able to take applications for home loans, using Calyx Point software. I've also functioned as a loan officer and a loan processor.

First Pyramid Financial, 08/01/2006 to 10/31/2006
Telemarketer for mortgage company
Called homeowners to see if they wanted to refinance. Got SSN and loan amount; everything else was already on the call list.

Barry University, 05/08/2006 to 07/19/2006
Programmer/Analyst
Modified two web pages used by students: a registration verification page and a class schedule page. The modification was the addition of a link to those pages that when clicked on brings up a page (that I wrote, front and back end) that contains a shopping cart, pre-loaded with the books the student needs for the courses he/she is registered for. I also assisted the other programmers with technical problems they were having with their PCs (technical support).

Citrix, 11/30/2005 to 02/24/2006
Software Consultant, Contracted through Insight Global
VC++ maintenance programming (level 3 technical support). Searched for bugs using PREfast and fixed them up using Visual studio 2003.

Broward County School Board, 05/31/2005 to 09/26/2008
Substitute Teacher
Taught pre-school through 12th grade.

Tyco, 05/19/2005 through 05/26/05
Image Scanner Operator, Contracted through Albion Employment Services
Scanned documents into tiff images to be used for financial auditing.

Centale, 04/25/2005 through 05/06/05
MS Excel Developer, Contracted through Pinnacle Employment Services
Developed Excel spreadsheets for recording sales information and statistical reports. letter of reference

American Express, 03/07/2005 through 04/01/2005
MS Access Developer, Contracted through Insight Global
Wrote reports composed of queries and MS Access tables I wrote at American Express. Data entry into MS Access and verification of the created tables with queries and VBA programs I wrote.

GTECH, 12/06/2004 through 03/06/2005
Technical Support, Contracted through CareersUSA
Supported end users of lottery machines. E.g. walked end users through software load procedures, paper loading procedures, reboot communications devices, etc.

BlueGreen, 07/12/2004 11/19/2004
Data Entry, Contracted Through Personnel One
Used a proprietary data entry program for a real estate company. Also worked with MS Excel spreadsheets.

Supervisor of Elections, 11/04/2003 to 07/09/2004
Technical Support, Contracted through Pinncale Employment Services
Create and maintain Crystal Reports ,mostly for Oracle tables. Create reports for MS Access tables. Perform tests for in house software. Maintain street index database. Assist systems manager in verification of data validity on reports and in databases. Assist system manager's assistant in creating reports and performing computer operations. Assist end users; e.g., modified a VB program for one of the users to enable her to perform work that had been previously performed by the assistant to the systems manager.letter of reference

Americall, 09/17/2003 to 11/03/2003
Telemarketer
Sold phone service to residents of California for SBC.

Contract File Clerk, 09/05/2003 to 09/26/2003
Contracted through Personnel One
Worked in Student Administrative Services at Lynn University, filing papers. Performed data entry and produced labels at Sun Sentinel (MS Access), etc.

Muscular Dystrophy Association, 08/27/2003 to 09/01/2003
Telemarketer, Contracted through Apple One
Contacted people by phone and requested them to donate time to an MDA fund raising event.

Telemundo, 07/01/2003 to 07/25/2003, 08/21/2003 to 08/25/2003
Software Consultant, Contracted through Yoh Managed Staffing
Part two of my contract with Telemundo in 2002. NBC, the "new" owners of Telemundo, decided to have me migrate the remaining data on Telemundo's AS/400 to MS Access. letter of reference

Dr Notes, 04/28 to 05/29/2003
Telemarketer for Software Sales
Dr Notes is a medical clearinghouse that produces clinical management software. I made cold calls to doctor's offices all day to set up interactive demos of our software, and also performed demos for those doctors.

GCRSI, 04/02/2003 to 05/07/2003
Telemarketer for Magazine Sales
GCR is a renewal service where telemarketers call up current subscribers for the purpose of getting them to renew. I sold 1 subscription/hour; car magazines.

Contract IT Work, 12/23/2002 to 03/07/2003
Contracted Through Atrium
Performed annual inventory for TIS department of Broward County Transit, involving the maintenance and development of MS Access databases. Technical support for end users of a Windows network.

Miracle Software, 11/04/2002 to 11/07/2002
Contractor for IBM Project
IBM was going to port one of it's AIX products for Websphere Data Integration to their AS/400 platform. In charge of writing AS/400 interfaces (*CLP, *CMD and *PNLGRP objects) and associated documentation. After 3 days of code analysis, it was decided this was a 6-month project, and therefore scraped since it had been promised to the client company (Wal-Mart) in two months.

Telemundo, 06/26/2002 to 08/07/2002
Software Consultant, Contracted Through the Berean Group
Telemundo used a client/server setup for accessing its TV programming information; AS/400 servers and Windows 2000 clients. Telemundo was purchased by NBC which uses SQL Server for it's data warehousing and processing. Extracted data from DB2/400 tables and reformatted them into import files for SQL Server. Used the DB2 Query Manager for extracting tables to print files and optimized them with CHGPRTF. Structured queries to modify fields that differed between DB2/400 and SQL Server. Wrote VC++ programs to modify import files where needed. Used SQL Server import wizard for final data transformation of data and importing into a SQL Server database. letter of reference

JP Morgan Chase Bank of Texas, 03/20/2002 to 06/08/2002
Software Consultant, Contracted Through Modis
Extracted Oracle database tables from a VAX 4000 (Pro*C, DCL, embedded SQL, system services) and DB2/400 tables on an AS/400 (QUERY/400, ILE RPG, CL, utilities and API set), and wrote a VAX C program to do a union join on those files to create an import file for a SQL Server database on a Windows NT system. Performed maintenance programming for the VAX (also Alpha) and AS/400 systems; e.g., modified the fields of an AS/400 COBOL program to search for different accounts in their DB2 tables. Wrote script files for a Kleindienst optical scanner and report programs (VC++) for those scanner runs. letter of reference

Mercator Software, Software Engineer, 01/02/2001 to 01/04/2002
In charge of AS/400 development at Mercator, and part of a team that developed version 5.1 of the Mercator program. Migrated VC++ modules into new program; 5.0 had been written entirely in C and CL, and used assorted data structures to be used like container classes (the container classes already exist in C++ so these routines were changed) that held data to be transformed as well as EDI definitions and other "scripts" like XML code - i.e., adapters. This was the native C++ compiler. Wrote ILE RPG test routines for 5.1. Developed a working version of 5.1 in March 2001. The AS/400 platform was dropped after this date, along with OpenVMS, and VOS Stratus development. In charge of maintenance programming of the dropped platforms (level 3 technical support); also part of Unix maintenance programming (C and shell scripts on AIX, Solaris and Tru 64; multi-threaded code). Systems administrator for these systems; e.g., created accounts with WRKUSRPRF and CRTUSRPRF, modified files with CHGPF, changed system values with WRKSYSVAL, etc. Created and maintained all accounts on OpenVMS and AS/400 systems, optimized system parameters for running Mercator jobs, etc. Worked closely with the Java team too help them port my code to a Java version of the Mercator program. Wrote the SP5 (Service Pack 5) for the AS/400 Mercator program; installed as part of regular production on January 3rd, 2002. Wrote a new auto build procedure in Unix shell script (Korn Shell).

SMA, Software Developer, August 2nd 1999 to 12/30/2000
Maintained a cross platform scheduler; initially working on the OpenVMS components, and later to work on the AS/400 components. Fixed the "new" version of the program that had already been written to run on an OpenVMS platform (Alpha), and make enhancements to the memory management routines (level 3 technical support). Wrote a VAX/VMS version to be run on VMS 5.5 and up. Wrote the installation package for the VMS scheduler; Dollar General, a client, said that it was the easiest package to install they had ever used on a VMS system. Installation feature created executables dynamically; determined what IP package was being used (Ultrix, TCPIP or 3rd party package), located all needed resources, etc. Made enhancements to AS/400 program; added some new controls to a display file and the underlying CL code; used SDA to modify the display file and SEU to modify the CL code (more level 3 technical support). Created and ran benchmark tests in Java to determine if Java was feasible for AS/400 product, using Qshell as the runtime environment. Performed technical support; OpenVMS and AS/400. Systems administrator for OpenVMS and AS/400. Upgraded Alpha to OpenVMS 7.2, installed new hardware on the VAX 3100 m38, and setup the VAX 4000 for use at SMA. letter of reference

Lockheed Martin (Contracted through Cue Data Systems)
Software Consultant, May 1st 1999 to Aug. 1st 1999
Re-wrote the associated DECForms (this was an OpenVMS project) and the C programs associated with those; maintenance programming (level 3 technical support). The database used was Oracle Rdb 7.0, with records and fields being copied into the forms from CDD. Got columns of data to display that failed after a Y2K re-write, and wrote the end of the day database update programs to ensure synchronization between the different Rdb files.

AT&T Wireless (Contracted through the Maxim Group)
Software Consultant, February 1999 to April 30th 1999
Modified DEC C programs and their SQL modules to not select certain records from a corrupted Rdb database and not too update in some cases; maintenance programming (3^rd level technical support). Wrote new groups of DCL procedures to further ensure the prevention of db updates causing a crash.

Florida DOT (Contracted through Databridge Corporation)
Software Consultant, November 1998 to February 1999
Wrote the Batch Ticket Management System for the Florida Department of Transportation, on OpenVMS 7.1 using DEC C and DECForms to link into an RDB database. The BTMS is a menu driven RDB application, too keep track of toll road coupons used on the Florida Turnpike. Coupons can be entered manually into the BTMS, and/or they can be read in from an RDB database. The BTMS is then used for assigning coupons to toll road lanes, and recording what toll road employees are responsible for them. The status of the coupons is also recorded in the BTMS (sold, lost, returned without sale, etc.) and can generate reports on coupon status.

BMC Software, Inc.
Software support, May 1998 to November 1998
Performed technical support for the Patrol program running on OpenVMS and Unix systems. Wrote several DCL procedures requested by client companies and some of our own field consultants.

MCI Mass Markets (contracted through Princeton Information)
Software Consultant on OpenVMS 6.2, December 1997 to May 1998
Performed maintenance programming on a database application; scripting for MCI telemarketers. Performed data analysis, using Datatrieve. Got several fields to re-appear on some scripting screens that had been "lost" (3^rd level technical support for FMS graphics). Debugged a database application that failed on its first day of production (more technical support!); something the program authors were unable to do.

Touchtone Software, International
Software Engineer, February 1996 to December 1997
First six months were spent re-writing Questview (a DB2 application written in MI) to make it C2 security friendly. Removed all occurrences of system pointers being used to extract data from files with calls to the API set; heavy use of QUSLFLD, QUSLRCD, and QDBLDBR. A side effect of this re-write was an enormous gain in performance. Re-engineered Wintouch (CRM program using client/server architecture; iSeries/Windows) from using ICF files to use tcp/ip sockets. Wrote server in C, that when contacted by a client (running on some flavor of Windows) started a child server, handed off it's socket, and the child then communicated with the client; a concurrent server setup. Designed program architecture; child received commands from the client and put them in a data queue that an RPG program had asynchronous DEQ lock on. The RPG program would then read the command, parse it, and then send it off to the appropriate RPG program for processing. That RPG program would then take the results of its calculations and put them in another data queue used for sending messages back to the child server. Another program, which had a synchronous DEQ lock on that data queue, would send the message to the child (which sent to the client). Wrote Windows client in Smalltalk. Worked with technical support department too resolve customer issues (I was 3^rd level technical support). letter of reference

Shareware Author, 1993 to 1996
Wrote games in MS QuickBASIC 4.5, and A86 assembler. Published by software vendors PSL and JSC software.

ScaleWare (Direct Contract)
Software Consultant (MS PDS BASIC 7.1), August 1992 to January 1993
Wrote a program for automating an electronic scale at an oil company; MS PDS BASIC 7.1, and dBase III+. Interfaced with in house devices that used Z-80 assembler and C. Read info from an electronic scanner, input from scale and electronic devices, etc.; output signals to scale, devices for controlling signal lights, updated dBase files on a server, etc.

Houston Lighting & Power (Contracted through Systemps)
Contract DCL Programmer/ Operator, February 1992 to August 1992
Automated the running of a backup database program for a VAX cluster with DCL procedures; TapeSys, by Software Partners 32.

Texustel Long Distance Service
Data Processing Manager, August 1991 to February 1992
Responsible for all phases of data processing. The software already in use was interpreted BASIC (MBASIC) for the Xenix operating system; Tandy 6000. Re-wrote all software in MS QuickBASIC 4.5 so it could run on an MD/DOS (and Windows) PC using an Intel 80386 processor. Wrote new applications; reports, database applications, accounting software, etc. letter of reference

Celltech
DCL Programmer/Operator, February 1991 to August 1991 Wrote DCL files on a VAX 8650 for controlling a billing system written in VAX COBOL.

British Petroleum (Contracted through Computemp)
Contract Computer Operator/Programmer, July 1989 - January 1991
Installed TAPESYS, backup package; maintained and administered software. Maintained file integrity on system using VAX utilities (e.g., Datatrieve) and with programs I wrote in DCL and VAX BASIC. Wrote routines to ensure system security, and batch file integrity. Worked as a systems administrator, creating new accounts, modifying systems parameters; Authorize, Sysgen, Syman, etc. Worked as part of technical support, fielding questions from users, and implementing solutions to their problems. Installed hardware (LAT, DECNet, terminals, etc.).

Flour Daniel (Direct Contract)
Contract Computer Room Shift Leader, February 1989 to July 1989
Oversaw operations on the second shift of a CAD oriented computer room. VAX 11/750, and IBM PCs on a Novell network.

Horizon Exploration Ltd.,
Sr. Computer Operator, August 1987 to February 1989
Ran a VAX 11/780 and 11/750 for seismic data processing production. Also wrote several DCL procedures the operations department requested while at H.E.X.

Contract Computer Operations (mostly through Systemps), 1984 thru 1987
Performed contracts for several oil companies; e.g., Roy M. Huffington Oil Co., Damson Oil Co., Horizon Exploration, etc. Worked with printers, bursters, tape drives, etc.

ChemShare
Assistant System Admin., Aug. 1983 to Sept. 1984
Assisted the Systems Manager/System Administrator, in maintaining system accounts, creating systems accounts, changing systems parameters, installing software, etc. This was on a PR1ME 750, running PRIMOS 19.0, but we had several client companies that used a variety of systems; I worked on VAX/VMS and IBM MVS systems.