Data Center Manager at Answers.com
Greater New York City Area
- Current
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- Data Center Manager at Answers.com
- Board of Directors at League of Professional System Administrators
- Project Maintainer at rfc-ignorant.org
- Past
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- Manager of Systems Administration at Vassar College
- System Administrator at Decorative Product Source
- Sr. System Administrator at Byram Healthcare
- Education
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- Vassar College
- Marist College
- Columbia-Greene Community College
- Marist College
- Indiana Institute of Technology
- Recommended
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8 people have recommended Derek - Connections
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322
connections
- Industry
- Internet
- Websites
Derek Balling’s Summary
I have progressed on a career-path from helpdesk minion to perl programmer to systems administrator and on to managing one of the finest teams of system administrators I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Now I am the Data Center Manager for last year's fastest growing web site in the United States.
Derek Balling’s Specialties:
UNIX/Linux Systems Administration, Perl Programming, Management, Writing
Derek Balling’s Experience
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Data Center Manager
Answers.com
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; ANSW; Internet industry)
January 2008 — Present (1 year 11 months)
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Board of Directors
League of Professional System Administrators
(Non-Profit Organization Management industry)
2007 — Present (2 years )
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Project Maintainer
rfc-ignorant.org
(Internet industry)
May 2001 — Present (8 years 7 months)
I developed RFC-Ignorant.org to be a database, not dissimilar from the very popular at the time anti-spam databases, but cataloging sites which were breaking fundamental rules related to e-mail services. We started with simple things such as sites which refused delivery status notifications (DSNs), and have grown to include databases of sites which have malfunctioning abuse and postmaster addresses, as well as sites which have gross misconfigurations of their DNS records relating to mail.
This project has entailed coordinating multiple DNS slaves around the world, managing volunteers who assist in the cataloging process, as well as acting as a public relations face on a system which people often first encounter in an angry mood because their mail is being blocked by someone who consults our database. -
Manager of Systems Administration
Vassar College
(Educational Institution; 501-1000 employees; Higher Education industry)
July 2005 — January 2008 (2 years 7 months)
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System Administrator
Decorative Product Source
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Retail industry)
September 2004 — June 2005 (10 months)
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Sr. System Administrator
Byram Healthcare
(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Medical Devices industry)
January 2002 — August 2004 (2 years 8 months)
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Technical Yahoo
Yahoo!
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; YHOO; Internet industry)
October 1998 — December 2001 (3 years 3 months)
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Lead NOC Technician
SpeedChoice
(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Internet industry)
August 1997 — September 1998 (1 year 2 months)
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Director of Technical Operations
TEK Interactive Group
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
March 1996 — August 1997 (1 year 6 months)
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Business Sales Representative
GTE
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; GTE; Telecommunications industry)
1995 — 1996 (1 year )
Derek Balling’s Education
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Vassar College
2006 — 2007
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Marist College
Political Science July 2004 — May 2005
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Columbia-Greene Community College
Computer Science 1991 — 1993
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Marist College
Computer Science September 1990 — December 1990
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Indiana Institute of Technology
Computer Science September 1989 — May 1990
Additional Information
Derek Balling’s Websites:
Derek Balling’s Groups:
Association for Computing Machinery, USENIX, SAGE, LOPSA
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The League of Professional System Administrators -
Yahoo Alums -
CPAN Developers -
USENIX Association -
SAGE: The USENIX SIG for Sysadmins -
Yahoo Employees and Alumni Group -
Zorch -
GTE Alumni Group
Derek Balling’s Honors:
Co-Author, "High Performance MySQL", O'Reilly and Associates (2004)
Program Committee, Large Installation System Administration (LISA) Conference (2008)
Derek Balling’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- new ventures
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
