UNIX Systems Engineer at Kineticom
Greater Seattle Area
- Current
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- UNIX Systems Engineer at Kineticom
- Past
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- Sr. UNIX Systems & Network Administrator at X10 Wireless Technology
- Senior System & Administrator / Network Administrator at Independent Contractor
- Sr. UNIX & Network System Administrator at LTASI
- UNIX System Administrator at U.S. TelePacific
- UNIX System Administrator at Zappos.com
- UNIX System Administrator at Cardinal Health
- Test Bed Architect (sys admin) at Inktomi
- Owner Operator at Olive Tree Image Engineers
- Education
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- North Valley High School
- Shasta College
- Shasta College
- Anderson Union High School
- Recommended
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24 people have recommended Richard - Connections
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439
connections
- Industry
- Information Technology and Services
- Websites
Richard Blalock’s Summary
I am an 12 year veteran of UNIX and Networking hardware and software. Just relocated to the greater Seattle, WA area ( Everett) in June. Job Hunting in Everett, Bellevue, Bothell, Seattle, etc.
• Linux: RHEL, CentOS, Fedora Core, legacy RedHat, SuSE, Debian, LynxOS, BlueCat, Ubuntu, Slackware, Gentoo, Cygwin
• UNIX (*NIX): HP-UX, FreeBSD, Mach, Solaris (SunOS), openSolaris, True64 (OSF), IRIX
• Hardware: Intel & AMD x86 & x64 (IBM, Dell, HP / Comaq, HP), Sparc, RISC, MIPS, NetApp,
• Hardware Appliances: F5, Caching Vendors, Citrix Netscaler, Fortigate 400 Firewall, Baracuda Email/Spam Firewall
• Networking Hardware: Cisco, HP, Intel, F5, Foundry (iron series), Fortigate, VLANs, POE, VoIP
• Networking Software: NTOP, MRTG, SNMP, Wireshark (Etheral), Nessus, load balcing (hardware & software )
• Server Software: Apache, SSL, SSH, LDAP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, Sendmail, Postfix, MySQL, Oracle, Netbackup, legacy IIS
• Code: Bourne Shell Scripts (11 years of command line), Perl (novice), HTML, XML (mods), Expect (mods)
• Microsoft: Vista, Win2003, WinXP, legacy Win2K, NT, Win98, Win95, Win3.11, Dos
Richard Blalock’s Specialties:
RHEL, CentOS, Fedora Core, legacy RedHat, Solaris (SunOS), SuSE, HP-UX, FreeBSD, Debian, LynxOS, BlueCat, Ubuntu, Slackware, Gentoo, Cygwin, Mach, , openSolaris, True64 (OSF), IRIX
Richard Blalock’s Experience
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UNIX Systems Engineer
Kineticom
(Privately Held; Staffing and Recruiting industry)
February 2010 — Present (2 months)
Beginning 3 to 6 month contract at Clearwire, Inc.
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Sr. UNIX Systems & Network Administrator
X10 Wireless Technology
(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)
October 2009 — January 2010 (4 months)
Responsible for unix and network infrastructure at x10 Wireless Technology.
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Senior System & Administrator / Network Administrator
Independent Contractor
(Information Technology and Services industry)
October 2008 — October 2009 (1 year 1 month)
Provided "as needed" contract support for multiple companies. Functioned in the capacity as a contract UNIX / Windows System Administrator and Network Administrator. During this roll, utilized and implemented a wide variety of UNIX, Windows, and network administration concepts. Prepared dozens of servers for liquidation for defunct aerospace company (LTASI). This involved reinstallation of various operating systems as well as Identifying and installing drivers, patches, service packs, and additional software. Provided hardware installation and reallocation to achieve specific goals. Configured and provided troubleshooting for complex multi-headed XOrg deployment. Assistance was provided to Gaming Company during national gaming convention. Web Hosting company required on-site support at co-location site. Conducted Linux OS installation, support, and troubleshooting. Tracing and troubleshooting 5 of the 7 layers of the OSI model in order to address unforeseen physical and network anomalies.
OS: Ubuntu (Debian Linux), RHEL, CentOS, SuSE, Fedora Core, Legacy RedHat, Windows Vista, XP
Protocols: SSL, SNMP, SSH, SQL, LDAP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, SNMP, SMTP, MRTG, NNTP, MRTG, SNMP, NMAP -
Sr. UNIX & Network System Administrator
LTASI
(Information Technology and Services industry)
November 2007 — April 2008 (6 months)
Acted in the capacity as a Senior UNIX System and Network Administrator. Responsible for administration of UNIX servers and desktops. In charge of developing and maintaining unified x86 UNIX OS and development environment for a team of Aerospace sector software developers. Goal was to implement a single customized desktop environment containing necessary tools to maximize development. Deployed a variety of both open source and commercial software applications. Responsible for receiving and providing feedback and status updates during small group meetings. Implemented various requirements for kernel tuning and ensured compliance with database layout requirements. Responsible for providing install and support services for web servers, Oracle databases, and other software. Created documentation for various procedures and environments.
Pioneered initiative to upgrade aerospace computing platform. Responsible for research, vendor contact, and providing bill of materials (bids) to management responsible for purchasing. Goal was to improve computing power and memory without impacting spacial footprint of "rugged" aerospace computing components. Goal was achieved without impacting per unit price. Storage and processing power increased dramatically without impacting any of the other strict specifications. Computing components had to be compliant with requirements defined by vendor of real time aerospace operating system (Linux based). “Real Time” & “Hardening” were imperative to success and disaster prevention.
OS: LynxOS, BlueCat, Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, SuSE, Fedora Core, Legacy RedHat, others
Protocols: SSL, SNMP, SSH, SQL, LDAP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, SNMP, SMTP, MRTG, NNTP, MRTG, SNMP, NMAP -
UNIX System Administrator
U.S. TelePacific
(Information Technology and Services industry)
November 2006 — November 2007 (1 year 1 month)
Was the sole UNIX administrator for employer's Las Vegas telecom footprint. Heavily instrumental in technical integration of acquired Bakersfield ISP. The medium sized ISP was using Dell Servers with Gentoo Linux and Network Appliance storage. Was instrumental during meetings to provide “due diligence” data and metrics during the sale of Chicago assets to McLeod USA during Q4 2007. Used extensive scripting skills and previous experience with MySQL to harvest data. This consisted of enormous time spent researching in-house proprietary design and architecture of complex MySQL customer database and provisioning system. Wrote a series of bourne shell, SQL queries, and a few perl basic perl scripts. Was only team member able to provide accurate customer data and metrics. Collaborated with DBA and SME (Subject Matter Expert) to provide key data during the closure of 16 million dollar sale.
Maintained roughly 60 Dell servers, F5 load balancers, and three Network Appliance storage arrays in LV co-location facility. Assisted southern CA admin staff by maintaining large pool of HP / Compaq servers production servers. This included a variety of Legacy Red Hat, Fedora Core, FreeBSD, and CentOS servers. Performed DNS and email service maintenance for CA sites. Maintained legacy customer interfaces as well as customer facing web pools for apache, postfix, and DNS. Assisted staff in upgrading spam assassin. Requited to followed strict Telcordia wiring standards in the unified telephone switch with embedded data collocation facility. Telcordia rules require strict standards for data cable layout and design. Attended numerous meetings and provided feedback on best practices and emerging technologies.
OS: Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, SuSE, Fedora Core, Legacy RedHat 7.3, Windows
Protocols: SSL, SNMP, SSH, SQL, LDAP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, SNMP, SMTP, MRTG, NNTP, MRTG, SNMP, NMAP -
UNIX System Administrator
Zappos.com
(Privately Held; Retail industry)
March 2005 — November 2006 (1 year 9 months)
Served on a team of UNIX system administrators while drawing on background administering networking equipment. Selected and implemented data backup solution using Veritas NetBackup. Performed numerous system installs of Linux systems including SuSE, SLES, and RedHat, as well as Solaris, FreeBSD, and Win2K machines. Maintained all aspects of UNIX system on SuSE, SLES, Slackware, RedHat, Solaris, FreeBSD, Slackware, and Win2K. Deployed and maintained development, pre-production (QA), and production environments.
Configured and deployed enterprise class switching equipment (Cisco, HP, Intel, Netgear). Configure and deploy 802.11 G wireless infrastructure (Symbol Technologies) for large warehouse; this included advanced access control lists. Assist and train junior IT staff on various UNIX tasks. Maintain intranet DNS servers. Implement various kernel tuning parameters. Setup and configure VLANs for VoIP network. Setup, configure, and maintain various Apache, DHCP, DNS, FTP, TFTP, and VMware servers. Perform internal UNIX based security audits. System and network monitoring using various UNIX based tools and 3rd party tools like NTOP, MRTG. Worked on various Bourne shell scripting tools. Attend meetings and gave input on best practices for various technologies. Researched and submitted bids for hardware and software purchases. Deployed and maintained development, pre-production(QA), and production environments. Provided documentation for various systems. Provided feedback on best practices and emerging technologies.
OS: CentOS, SuSE, SLES, Fedora Core, Legacy RedHat 7.3, Slackware, Windows
Protocols: SSL, SNMP, SSH, SQL, LDAP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, SNMP, SMTP, MRTG, NNTP, MRTG, SNMP, NMAP -
UNIX System Administrator
Cardinal Health
(Public Company; CAH; Hospital & Health Care industry)
June 2003 — February 2005 (1 year 9 months)
Was the sole UNIX System Administrator located onsite in their Las Vegas Data Center. Provided 24 x 7 support for every UNIX host in their west coast data center. I was primarily responsible for Sun Solaris, HP-UX, and Red Hat Linux. I was responsible for monitoring and maintaining the servers. Ensuring full time availability of clustered nodes. Responsible for maintaining SNMP & MRTG based monitoring utilities (Big Brother, Nagios). This includes regular operating system and firmware patching; hardware and software install, change control, disaster recovery, offsite data backup practices. Implement various kernel tuning parameters. Researched and submitted bids for hardware and software purchases. Deployed and maintained development, pre-production(QA), and production environments. Maintained SAN and configured new file systems. Provided documentation for various systems.
OS: HP-UX, Solaris (SunOS) Fedora Core, Legacy RedHat, Windows
Protocols: SSL, SNMP, SSH, SQL, LDAP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, SNMP, SMTP, MRTG, NNTP, MRTG, SNMP, NMAP -
Test Bed Architect (sys admin)
Inktomi
(Public Company; Computer Software industry)
1999 — 2002 (3 years )
Transitioned from my position as “Software QA Engineer” into “Test Bed Architect” (System Administrator / Network Administrator) role for the Content Networking Solutions Group. Was one of two system administrators (plus hands on technical manager) that maintained in excess of 800 UNIX and Windows machines. These spanned seven laboratories in two buildings via Fast Ethernet and Fiber Optic connectivity. Was heavily involved in designing, installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting the networks. Built and deployed pre-production, QA, and production servers in dynamic and highly demanding heterogeneous laboratory environments. Designed and maintained multiple DNS servers for several tertiary domains spanning thousands of IP addresses. Designed and maintain web servers that hosted multiple intranet sites. Implement various kernel tuning parameters. Researched and submitted bids for hardware and software purchases. Deployed and maintained development, pre-production(QA), and production environments. Provided documentation for various systems.
During that project, also upgraded department's name server (DNS) to the more secure Bind 8.X. Maintained SAN and configured new file systems.
Software QA Engineer. My initial consultation services led to a position as Software QA Engineer. My duties included: intense daily QA testing of network cache software with an emphasis on streaming media, participation in core team meetings affecting product releases, building x86 load generation machines from component level, UNIX system administration, XFree86 XWindows, and Microsoft Windows machines, shell scripting, maintain department intranet site and DNS server, research and purchase of company hardware, candidate interviews, training.
OS: RedHat Linux, FreeBSD, Mandrake, Solaris (SunOS), Digital Unix (OSF), IRIX, HP-UX, Windows
Protocols: SSL, SNMP, SSH, SQL, LDAP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, SNMP, SMTP, MRTG, NNTP, MRTG, SNMP, NMAP -
Owner Operator
Olive Tree Image Engineers
(Information Technology and Services industry)
February 1997 — November 1999 (2 years 10 months)
I was the sole proprietor of Olive Tree Image Engineers until
its acquisition by the publicly traded company during October of 1999. Olive Tree Image Engineers was a Sacramento based ISP. As proprietor, I was hosting and in control of twenty domain names. In addition to Internet services, I also provided design and print brokerage services.
Technical Data: I assembled and managed a Local Area Network (LAN) which consists of two Windows 95 machines, Windows NT 4.0 server, two FreeBSD UNIX servers, a Computone and Livingston communications servers. The UNIX machines were running both the Apache and Apache SSL (secure) webserver packages. They provided primary and secondary DNS for the domain names that I maintained. I operated and controlled a 128 subnet of a class C network of IP addresses. The facility was equipped with a dedicated fractional T-1 connection to the Internet.
Richard Blalock’s Education
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North Valley High School
Diploma , General education , 1967 — 2012 (expected)
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Shasta College
AA , Anthropology , 1900 — 2012 (expected)
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Shasta College
A.A. , General Education ( minor in Anthropology ) , 1988 — 1992
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Anderson Union High School
see North Valley , G.E. , 1984 — 1987
- Activities and Societies:
- trying not to get caught
Additional Information
Richard Blalock’s Websites:
Richard Blalock’s Groups:
The UNIX Forums Users, BSD UNIX, Inktomi, Genealogy, System Administrators, SUSE Linux, Zappos, Anderson Union High School, Shasta College
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Unix Sysadmins -
The UNIX and Linux Forums Users -
Cardinal Health Alumni -
Cardinal Health -
UNIX United Professionals -
SCSA (Solaris Certified System Administrators) -
BSD UNIX -
Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) -
Inktomi Alumni -
Genealogical & Historical Research -
System Administrators -
Linux Minds -
SUSE Linux Users Group -
Zappos.com -
Anderson Union High School -
Shasta College Students, Faculty, and Alumni -
North Valley High School
Richard Blalock’s Honors:
SCSA Sun Certified System Administrator – Solaris 8.0 ( experienced with 5 through 9 )
SCNA Sun Certified Network Administrator – Solaris 8.0
CCNA Cisco Certified Network Associate (Expired in 2005)
Richard Blalock’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
