Frank's Page

M.I.S. Guy with experience in Internet Systems / Call Center Management / Web & Desktop Publishing
442 Steele Lane
Santa Rosa, Ca 95403-3149

Profile

Founded bicycle store and mail order business while still in college that developed sales which reached $10.1 million in annual revenue, through
expertise in Marketing, Color Desktop Publishing, Digital Photography,
Internet Development & Marketing, Telephone/Call Processing Systems,
Mini & Micro Computer Systems.

Career Highlights

MIS Director Webicommerce, Santa Rosa, Ca.
[Internet Commerce Solution Provider]

I find myself brought in a technical problem solver frequently for clients that have complex computer and data storage/warehouse problems when they need specific information on older legacy systems presented in real time on the internet.


MIS Director/ Vice-President of System Operations T-Zone, Sunnyvale, Ca.
[A retail comptuter store based in Tokoyo, manufacturing and selling PC on four continents world-wide]

Founder / Operations Manager / Owner: Pedal Pusher / Bike-Pro, Santa Rosa, Ca.
[A retail and international mail order company selling bicycles and bicycle parts to cycling enthusiasts]

Specific Skills

PERL, Javascript and SQL Programmer
Write PERL, SQL and Javascript programs for data extraction and presentation in the UNIX environment. Write and modify Shopping cart programs to present and accept specific information and create a personaized shopping experience.

LAN/WAN manager
using TCP/IP, DECNET, DEC Pathworks, Appletalk/Localtalk, EtherTalk, T-1 and T-3 circuits,
I have also worked with Internet work hubs, routers and terminal servers

System administrator for a pile of different computers operating systems now and in the past, including
DEC VAX/OpenVMS 6.1~6.2 & 7.1~7.2, Silicon Graphics Irix 5.3, 6.2 & 6.5 UNIX, Hewllet Packard HP-UX, IBM AIX Microsoft Windows XP (soon Vista, but since the SP1 release was so lame I'm not sure if I want to support it), Microsoft Server environment, and Macintosh 9.x and OSX environments and provided advanced level of support to end users. Maintained the hardware and software of these systems.

Web Server Installation and System administration
have installed and maintained Apache server on HP-UX 10.20 and on SGI IRIX 6.5, Also Apache on Suse Linux 10 and Microsoft IIS on Windows Servers

Hosted multiple domains
on Silicon Graphics IRIX/UNIX and Hewlett Packard HP-UNIX based Internet servers. Wrote CGI/PERL and
JAVA scripts to enhance its appearance and usefulness.

email System administrator
using Sendmail on UNIX servers and Post.Office on Windows Servers

Ardent user of Adobe programs
..including Photoshop, Illustrator, Pagemaker and Dimensions used for both
Web and print media publishing. For web publishing I also have used GoLive, Cold Fusion

Program and administrate phone systems
from Toshiba, NEC, Panasonic, Seimens/Rolm and Harris. I have been the system administrator
for Octel VPC100/Aspen & Toshiba Strategy DK voicemail systems.

Designed bar code Point of Sale systems
using Zebra, Metrologic and Symbol Technology hardware which was interfaced
with the larger TOLAS system.

Maintain and can fix most computer hardware
down to board level parts replacments, including cpu's, dot matrix line printers,
laser printers, bar code printers, cash drawer terminals, bar code scanners,
and keyboards of all types.

Systems I am using at Webicommerce

I am the site manager for our computer systems.


I use Macintoshes extensively for the graphics work involved in our web site design, and print ads

We also use several Wintel based PC's Windows XP to view our web designs in the PC environment and as the front end (running terminal emulation software from Persoft) of our order fulfillment system.


I am using a Microsoft Servers for internet geographic mapping projects.

This iPod repair thing I do

Starting around 2003 friends of mine began handing me their broken iPods to fix. Among my friends I am considered the fellow that can fix anything except a rainy day. From childhood I have always studied how things work and it's lead me to be quite skillful at figuring out what is wrong with something and how to fix it.

At the end of 2006, in a single week six friends dropped off their iPods with different problems, in each case I was able to correct the problem and hand back to them their working iPod again with all of their music files intact. The last two were a doctor and lawyer friend of mine who commented that the Apple response to their problem was a $210 out-of-warranty repair or Apple wanted them to trade in iPod and buy a new one for $250 less a $25 trade-in. Both of these friends commented that "there seems to be an opportunity here".

So I did a soft launch of an iPod repair business to test the waters and it was well received.

While the 'contract technical problem solver' part of me is gratified by coming up with solutions to complex problems... almost all of that work is performed under a non-disclosure agreement and I never get to discuss the tools and methods I use even among collegues. So those projects not something I get accolades from.

On the other hand this iPod work fits well into my computer skills and people adore me for being able to get their iPod running again.

If you're someone that has dropped you iPod in... water, the toilet, a pot of soup, a hot tub half and hour, saltwater in the Sea of Cortez, water bottle exploding in your gym bag, sink full of water while drunk in a bar bathroom... I'm you're best salvation and I have people send me their iPods from as far away as Korea, Scotland, Brazil, France, England, all over Canada and all over the US to solve liquid immersion problems.

More on this work is here:
http://www.ipodsickbay.com/

An example of the type of tenacious detail I give this work is here:
http://www.ipodsickbay.com/recent_fixes13.shtml

And these are comments I get from people once they've got their iPods back working:
http://www.ipodsickbay.com/comments.shtml

Personal Details

I have many interests.

I am a well regarded hobbyist winemaker

I have been an ardent home wine maker since 2003. Lots of different varietals all red.

In 2007 I was awarded the highest honor an amateur wine maker can achieve in the US, when I given the Best of Show for Red Wine at the 2007 Orange County Wine Competition. This is usually a life time achievement, but actually came to me while I still had a full head of dark hair. I don't think this is repeatable, it's the equivalent achieving the Best Picture (wine finished) , Best Director (winemaker) and Best Actor (grapes) Oscars all in a year. I fell pretty confident if the judges knew what a maverick, renegade wine maker I am the award may not have happened *or* they would have been in deeper awe. I don't add sulfites at the time when we crush the grapes (kills stray veast bacteria) and I don't add sulfites at bottling (which then act as a preservative). In nearly all cases I neutral oak barrels for aging, I do not want the wood flavor imparted/infused into my wine. I'd like the grapes and ther flavor to be revealed in their own way.

As an amateur I can afford to let the grapes reveal themselves even if they/it develop a flavor from year to year from the same vineyard. Commercial wineries cannot, they need flavor consistency so a buyer of specific bottle can *expect* the same flavor from sucessive vintages from that winery. They a following based on flavor continuity.

Oak barrels were originally used to mask off flavors of wine that may be turning so a winery could still sell the product. To manipulate the flavor they used oak barrels for aging the wine which gives the questionable wine a heavy or burnt oak flavor (from the toasted barrel and barrel head). Somewhere along in time wineries have now convinced wine drinkers that "oak flavor" is a desirable characteristic and *feature* it.

What using new oak barrels does for wineries is make it far easier to have flavor consistency, call it "flavor continuity" season after season no matter what they use for grapes.

More on my winemaking at the moment is here

http://www.vipvr.com/frank_wines.shtml

I also have an interest in digital and traditional still photography and have several awards in photo competitions

I am going to scan and post some of my better images

This photo is of 2 flowers that are not mirrored. Depth of field leads you to believe there are 2 of them.

White Flowers - (JPEG 28k)

This next shot is of a dew laden pine branch tip. The definition is remarkable. There are 2 versions of this. One is 72 dpi, the other is 200 dpi so it will allow you to peer more deeply into the image.

Pine - (JPEG - 38k)

Movies and their dialog

I'm one of those nuts who can recite dialog from movies as though it were my own... at the right moment. When you think about it, the screenwriters are paid a great deal of money to craft each line perfectly. When I find the same circumstances, I think its clever to use something clever from a movie (and make it seem like it was my own)

Some of my favorite movies are

Meet Joe Black - great remake of the 1939 "Death takes a Holiday" - gives perspective on family and time

Go - amazing film about reckless youth with the story carrying 4 threads that move to a single Christmas Eve.

The Fabulous Baker Boys - I like to think I'm like Jack but am probably more like Frank Baker
The Long Good Friday - British gangsters, Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren at their best
Breaker Morant - Edward Woodward & Bryan Brown in a dramtic legal defense
Scarface (Oliver Stone is the screenwriter)
Godfather Part II - better than "the Godfather"
Masada (this is a very overlooked work of Peter O'Toole & Peter Strauss)
Becket (O'Toole & Burton's voice & dialog can only be rivaled by Patrick Stewart)
Bounty
Wall Street
To Live and Die in L.A.
Field of Dreams
2010
Heartbreakers (Nick Mancuso and Peter Coyote in a great study of 2 men, how their lives changed and mid-life)
Chariots of Fire
Aliens (much better than Alien, we agree Alien 3 should never have been made)
Tequila Sunrise
A Very British Coup