Experience

Performance Ally, LLC

• Chief Product Strategist

  • Mar 2022 - Present

• Chief Product Officer

  • Apr 2021 - Mar 2022

• Behavior Software Architect

  • Jul 2019 - Apr 2021



Retired

• Machinery Manufacturing
• 700 & Above Employee

• Coding Gypsy

  • Feb 2002 - Jul 2019

  As of Friday, 1 February, 2002 I retired. We moved from Falls Church, VA, to Brookings, OR, in May 2002. In a very leisurely fashion I explored a large number of software tools and read a lot of books. I played with Java, Struts, PHP, MySQL, AppleScript, etc. That is, I enjoyed all the toys that I never got to play with while in the corporate world. From March 2004 through October 2007 Kay (my wife) and I lived and traveled full time in an RV. I generally found that the RV travel planning tools available at the time did not meet my needs. I had collected spreadsheets of information on our travels including scheduling. I created a PHP/MySQL application and copied our scheduling information to it, and started building a database of RV parks that we had visited or considered visiting. This RV travel planner was only available on the LAN within our RV, but after discovering Ruby on Rails (RoR), it became ContinuousTraveler.com. It was initially just a web site, but evolved to include an iPhone application. After settling in Brookings, OR, and selling our RV, I turned my attention to combining my two professional passions: behavior analysis and software development. Developed an iPhone app for an OBM behavior analysis practice. Based on Aubrey Daniels' R+ concepts. Also: work on selectionist neural networks. See BASimulation.org Show less



AOL

• Broadcast Media Production and Distribution

• System Architect, Search Divlet

  • Sep 2001 - Jan 2002

  At my request, returned to the technical career path; by nature I'm a geek, not a manager. In October, 2001, decided on a more radical life-change, and informed AOL of my intent to leave at the end of January, 2002.Largely because I was the last senior CPL developer left from Personal Library Software (PLS), I spent October through January documenting and and doing presentations to supplement existing documentation. Major focus was on the internationalization (I18N) and localization (L10N) facilities of the CPL full text search engine. Show less

• Manager Core Search Technology, Search Divlet

  • Jan 2001 - Sep 2001

  Managed the group responsible for development and maintenance of the lower-level facilities for full text search at AOL, within the Host Development Division. Core Search was reorganized to remove higher level application groups, and my manager asked me to take on managerial responsibility for the more tightly focused Core Search Technology group.Continued acting as Search Divlet's consultant on search internationalization and localization. Worked with groups within the Search Divlet, as well as with other groups within AOL involved in search applications and services. Presented overview of internationalization functionality to AOL's international partners at the Search Divlet's "Search Summit."As manager, I made noticeable progress "bringing out" developers who had been reluctant to take the lead in all aspects of their projects or their segments of projects. One developer in particular began writing, and presenting for review, complete and comprehensible requirements and design documents, after years of declining to do so. Another very excellent developer volunteered that he was ready to take on more task leader responsibilities after years of declining to do so. He was subsequently promoted a level and was progressing very well as leader of a two to three person team.Made some progress in getting developers to more fully take part in development practices intended to reduce requirements changes, redesigns, bugs, and schedule slippage. The phrase "like herding cats" comes to mind. Developers were finding and correcting problems in requirements and in design, which ultimately would have saved significant time and other resources down the road.I got very positive feedback and reviews on my performance, but I found this role to be very stressful as a full time occupation, and was beginning to have difficulty maintaining my composure. I requested to be allowed to move back to the technical track. Show less

• System Architect, Search Divlet

  • Sep 1999 - Jan 2001

  Continued work on the Personal Library (PLS) Callable Personal Librarian (CPL) based version of AOLSearch. Tech lead for the Infrastructure team within the Core Search Technology group. Infrastructure team was responsible for basic client/server search and indexing framework for fulltext-style databases. Involved in internationalization, componentization, integration of search and update architectures, evaluation of new technologies.Was the Search Divlet's consultant on search internationalization and localization. Worked with groups within the Search Divlet, as well as with other groups within AOL involved in search applications and services.Along with a system architect from another part of the Search Divlet, and with feedback from most senior members of the Search Divlet, defined an idealized client/server search architecture. This architecture attempted apply lessons learned during development of a previous more general purpose commercial product (OTTR) as well as a specialized application oriented internal product. The result was an architecture with most of the simplicity of the specialized internal product, but most of the flexibility of the OTTR product.Lead the Core Infrastructure Team in design and beginning of implementation of a new internal search product based on the idealized architecture. Gave up major "hands on" involvement when I became manager of the Core Search Technology Group, of which the Infrastructure Team was a subgroup. Show less

• Principal Software Engineer, PLS Development Division

  • Jan 1998 - Sep 1999

  Continued work on a the Object-oriented Toolkit for Text Retrieval (OTTR) started at PLS. Technical leader in the development of a PLS/CPL based full text search to replace the Excite based search on AOL.com at the time. Work on OTTR was never fully resumed, as it was deemed too general purpose and complex for the AOL client/server-only search environment.



Personal Library Software (PLS)

• Lead Software Developer

  • Feb 1993 - Jan 1999

  Member of the Core Technology group which was responsible for the PLS full text retrieval engine product, Callable Personal Librarian (CPL). CPL was a cross-platform API, interoperable across all supported platforms (various Unix, Macintosh, VAX/VMS, Windows, etc.). CPL was the search engine at the heart of all other PLS products, as well as products such as Grolier's and Compton's CD-ROM products, various America Online search facilities, WebCrawler, the Dow Jones News service, Congressional Quarterly's Washington Alert, the McKinley Internet Directory, the short-lived AppleSearch, and more (see the 1996 "Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing, Vol 10, no 8"). Technical lead for the development of a new product, Object-oriented Toolkit for Text Retrieval (OTTR). OTTR was a C++ interface to the PLS search technology. OTTR provided features features such as: multithreading, client/server database operations, distributed database operations, extensibility, and more. It was intended to be general purpose enough, and scalable enough, for small CD-ROM based applications, traditional connection-oriented online systems, stateless Web style databases, etc. Development of the development method for the Core Technology Group. Senior Software Developer. Work included analysis, design, and implementation of a new Language Support System (LSS) to permit internationalization of CPL (first available in CPL v5.0). Implemented a Macintosh-specific language system to support indexing and searching Japanese text using Macintosh Worldscript functionality. LSS was a "framework" into which support components are "plugged." Supported components include tokenizers, canonizers, collators, word stemmers, stopword filtering, and character set specific string operations. Implemented an initial suite of highly customizable components to support a variety of languages across a variety of character sets, including Latin-1, various other versions of extended ASCII, and Unicode. Show less



The Registry

• Human Resources Services

• Senior Programmer/Analyst

  • Apr 1992 - Feb 1993

  Contract work at a large benefits record-keeping company, placed through The Registry. Part of a four person team developing the server portion of a "defined contributions" application. The application was driven by a MS Windows client, which communicated with the server via Netwise RPC. All major processing done by a server running on a Sun SPARC with Solaris 2.3. The server encoded business logic in C++ and Sybase stored procedures. Contract work at a large benefits record-keeping company, placed through The Registry. Part of a four person team developing the server portion of a "defined contributions" application. The application was driven by a MS Windows client, which communicated with the server via Netwise RPC. All major processing done by a server running on a Sun SPARC with Solaris 2.3. The server encoded business logic in C++ and Sybase stored procedures.



Retrieval Systems Corporation

• IT Services and IT Consulting
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Programmer/Analyst

  • Aug 1990 - Feb 1992

  Led a team of five programmers in developing a legal services application in C++ using the XVT portable GUI library, under MS Windows 3.0 and 3.1. Responsible for code-design, documentation, implementation, technical supervision of other programmers, and code management. This was the last project on which I developed software for MS Windows platform. My experiences with MS Windows on this project convinced me that I would rather be unemployed than develop software for MS Windows ever again. I have been working on Unix systems ever since. Show less



Congressional Quarterly, Inc.

• Manager of Client Systems

  • Oct 1987 - Aug 1990

  Research, development, and maintenance for CQ's customer oriented systems. Managed the Client Systems software team. Scheduled, supervised, and evaluated work of software team. Hired staff; did performance and pay reviews of staff. Designed and implemented the code for Congressional Quarterly's Washington Alert Service II (WAS-II) on-line full text retrieval system, based on editorial-staff interface and user level functionality specifications. System was written in C on DEC VAX under VMS, and used the Personal Library Software CPL text retrieval engine. The WAS-II application was the first one in which PLS' CPL text retrieval product was ever used commercially, and was under development as we built an application on top of it. Interesting times. Show less



XICTMD (Xerox Center for Training and Management Development)

• Consultant

  • May 1986 - Oct 1987

  InterLisp-D programming, instructional design, documentation. Billing Adjustment Simulation project: programming of job process simulation for training of customer support staff. Work was done on Xerox D-Machines (1186), which could also be booted up as Xerox Viewpoint (successor to Star) document workstations. InterLisp-D programming, instructional design, documentation. Billing Adjustment Simulation project: programming of job process simulation for training of customer support staff. Work was done on Xerox D-Machines (1186), which could also be booted up as Xerox Viewpoint (successor to Star) document workstations.



Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO)

• United States
• Research Services
• 100 - 200 Employee

• Lead Programmer Analyst

  • Aug 1985 - Mar 1986

  Designed and coded interactive event-driven videodisc-based medical simulation programs for a computer based training (CBT) system in Basic on DEC Pro-350 Ivis systems. This is the job that brought me to the Metro-DC area just months before the project folded. It was later revived (without the original team). The PC version appeared in a Microsoft PC version on the final episode of the "St. Elsewhere" television series. Designed and coded interactive event-driven videodisc-based medical simulation programs for a computer based training (CBT) system in Basic on DEC Pro-350 Ivis systems. This is the job that brought me to the Metro-DC area just months before the project folded. It was later revived (without the original team). The PC version appeared in a Microsoft PC version on the final episode of the "St. Elsewhere" television series.



New Century Software Writers

• Lead Programmer Analyst

  • Aug 1983 - Aug 1985

  Grant from New Century Education Corporation. Developed a computer assisted instruction (CAI) presentation system; supervised part time programmers. Programming was in Pascal under CP/M-86 on IBM PC's and compatibles. While working for Julie Vargas on this job I finally got around to defending my masters thesis (with vigorous encouragement from Julie). This project took many twists and turns. Some exploratory work was done using an Apple II, and a BBC Acorn computer. Both systems were based on the 6502 processor. I got to do a bit of 6502 assembler work, such as: multiplication and division routines (the 6502 did not have built in multiplication and division); random number generation; and qsort. Show less



Valley Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center

• Lead Programmer/Analyst

  • Jun 1982 - Aug 1983

  Designed and coded upgrade of MIS in COBOL-74 under Burroughs MCP-II, which included a built-in CODASYL database. Supervised part time programmers. This job started out as a Behavioral Systems practicum placement to fulfill degree requirements for my masters in psychology. Designed and coded upgrade of MIS in COBOL-74 under Burroughs MCP-II, which included a built-in CODASYL database. Supervised part time programmers. This job started out as a Behavioral Systems practicum placement to fulfill degree requirements for my masters in psychology.



US Navy

• United States
• Armed Forces
• 700 & Above Employee

• Engineman Second Class (EN2)

  • Jan 1969 - Dec 1972

  Operate, maintain, repair, propulsion equipment and miscellaneous other equipment on a littoral combat ship, the USS Green Bay (PG-101). Equipment included Cummins VT-12-875-M propulsion diesels; Cummins NH-220-M diesel generator sets; GE 7LM-1500-PE102 propulsion gas turbine; Air Research starter turbine. Operate, maintain, repair, propulsion equipment and miscellaneous other equipment on a littoral combat ship, the USS Green Bay (PG-101). Equipment included Cummins VT-12-875-M propulsion diesels; Cummins NH-220-M diesel generator sets; GE 7LM-1500-PE102 propulsion gas turbine; Air Research starter turbine.