In a nutshell, I take care of the systems that run the Southern California Seismic Network. Trinet, the seismic processing system runs on Solaris unix, and I take care of the development and real-time machines there. The web and mail servers and some other assorted machines run FreeBSD.
If you are really bored, you can read about all the details.
I also take care of the web servers for the USGS Pasadena office,
Trinet, and the USGS
National Earthquake Hazards Program.
As you might guess, they get hammered every time we have a
big earthquake.
Here are a couple of articles I wrote about work I've done relating to
our web servers.
I've made a side project of studying the traffic surges we get after earthquakes. I have a set of links to all of the reports I've written on the subject:
See some little slices of life here at the office:
Of course, being a nerd and all, my computer at home runs Unix. FreeBSD to be exact. I guess this shows that I like what I do, because at the end of the day, I go home and do it some more.
I've been here at the USGS Pasadena Field Office
since 1995, after nearly 13 years of programming, engineering, and
system administration jobs
with companies like McDonnell Douglas,
ISSCO, and Hughes Aircraft, none of which exist in that form any more.
They have all merged with or been bought out by other
companies.
The Department of Information Resources
of the State of Texas1
is my only former employer that still exists.
Perhaps one day Oklahoma will mount a takeover and remedy
this situation.
I got my degree in physics back in 1982.
I live in Pasadena with my wife Cathy, our daughter Lucinda, and our two dogs. Cathy is currently a full-time Mom. She is also a student at Cal Poly Pomona, studying Food Science, which is actually a much more complex subject than most people realize. She is on leave from school right now.
Southern California is an immensely amusing place to live. Until 1997, the Emmy Awards were held here in Pasadena, which brought us the spectacle of a traffic jam composed entirely of limousines. Also, we can travel to exotic places like Mars without driving farther than the annual JPL Open House. And what other city has a gift shop at the Coroner's Office?
You can read about some of our adventures around L.A., as well as see Lucinda's photo album at our home web page at: http://1134.org.