Technology Background

Telecommunications:

While at AT&T in 1985/86, I completed the weeklong "Theory and Marketing of Digital Networks" course, including the following modules:

• Digital Transport
• Dataphone Digital Service
• Accunet Switched 56 Service
• Accunet T 1.5 Service
• Accunet Reserved 1.5 Service
• Skynet 1.5 Service
• Packet Switching
• Software Defined Networks
• Integrated Services Digital networks (ISDN)

When I joined AT&T, the company has just introduced it's first entry into the fledgling PC market, the PC 6300 which boasted a 8086 processor...faster than IBM's PC, the dominant manufacturer in the market. Using my employee discount, I ordered one...not realizing I was in on the ground floor of the technology that would change the world.

PC/Network Technology:

For the past 19 years, I have worked with, in, and around computers. Between my office, studio, video production, laptops, and family, I currently own twelve, all of which I built myself from generic components (except, of course, the laptops). While at CMC, I installed and maintained the company's network, which shared data across departments for marketing, accounting, order entry, and graphics.

My current PC is based on the ASUS K8V SE Deluxe motherboard running an AMD Athlon 64 3000 CPU with 1 GB of RAM, 2 hard drives with a combined 240 GB and two Sony DVD burners. I run either Windows 2000 or XP on all my PC's at this time. 

LabelPrint Plus Software Package Development

At CMC, we needed to provide users with a program to accomplish two goals:

1) Provide a way to print our unique labels. These had been printed internally using Ventura publisher, as word processing programs of the time did not allow for the adjustments required to match our labels exactly.

2) Database management of names, lists, and any other information required for labeling our products.

Initially, I checked all the available program to see if any would meet our needs. Discovering none would, I purchased Visual FoxPro, and started working with a local programmer to develop a product. Besides working with the programmer to determine the functionality needed for the program, I also designed most of the screens to be used, including layout, graphics, and required menus. The program was called LabelPrint Plus and is still used by the company today, six years after I first developed it. 

Software Expertise   

Over the years, I have used a variety of software programs, many of which have come and gone. However, today in my consulting work and business, I am an expert user of the following programs:

• Microsoft FrontPage 2003
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
• Microsoft Office XP - Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Word
• Autoplay Menu Studio 3.0 (CD authoring)
• Ventura Publisher 7.2
• CorelDRAW!12 Graphics Suite
• Microsoft Windows2000/XP
• Adobe Premiere 6.5 Video Editing
• Adobe Acrobat 6.0
• Visual FoxPro
• Sony/Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 7.0/Acid 4.0/Vegas 4.0
• Finale 2002
• Sibelius 3.0
• Norton Systemworks 2003
• Sonar 3.2 Producers Edition
• Adobe Photoshop CS (8.0)
• Many others

Digital Audio/Video

Finally, because of my work with audio, video, graphics and text, I am extremely knowledgeable about the following concepts:

• Digital audio (bit rates, frequency, file formats - wav, mp3, etc.)
• Digital video (resolution, video capture, streaming video, DVD authoring, file formats - avi,mov,mpg2, etc.)
• Digital photography (pixels, color depth, inkjet technology, file formats - jpg, tiff, gif, tga, etc.)
• File conversion between formats.
• File encoding for various distribution methods (Internet vs. CDROM vs. DVD, etc).