## BIO
**Freelance Consulting (2 BYTE CONSULTING - Jan 2003 to Present)**
* * *
**Multi-site VPN and wireless system for medical delivery - Sep 2006 - Ongoing...**
Working for a local medical dispensary & pharmacy, Chris maintains a growing hub and spoke VPN and associated wireless infrastructure that links retirement homes, nursing homes, and other institutions to a centralized prescription management and reporting system. Major tasks include the specification of wireless networking equipment for new construction or retrofit installations, the development of new features for a custom embedded VPN platform, and maintenance of the set of servers that provide the core business processes such as the main web application, databases to feed a pill packaging machine, remote backups, a fax management system, and company email server. Responsibilities also include on-site visits to homes and new construction sites to plan, install, and troubleshoot the customer premise equipment.
**ISP Server Management System - Mar 2004 to Ongoing...**
Design and implementation of an automated account management system for an ISP based on server agents, a MySQL backend, and a PHP based front-end. Chris was responsible for the database design and interoperability with the existing applications in the customer's environment. This project brought together capabilities from diverse server OS components and software into a single web based front-end and MySQL based backend management system. 2 Byte Consulting continues to provide updates and support for the platform as the customer's infrastructure has evolved over the years.
**Management of Internet Services company - Oct 2007 - Apr 2009**
Managed the development and operation of a multi-faceted internet services company including a search engine, email services, web hosting and domain name services. Chris was responsible for architectural design, outsourcing of development and support, and day to day operations of all aspects of the business, building the entire enterprise from scratch. During the period of the contract Chris lead the implementation of an 80,000 user public email system, the implementation of an enterprise grade billing and customer management system, the establishment and operation of a 24x7 customer support desk, and the development of search engine, hosting, and domain name management tools. The business was sold in Feb 2009.
**Ad-hoc Development and System support - Jun 2008 - Nov 2007**
Designed and developed several projects for the industry's leading Free Skiing website including a brandable video contest system, a stock exchange style game, and a "karma" system for the website users. Chris also consulted on backend database design and provided emergency coverage for systems support.
**Customer management and invoicing system - Aug 2003 - Oct 2007**
Periodic maintenance and upgrades to an intranet-based web application that served the core business processes of a local lawn and garden company. Chris maintained the core software including custom software changes, server life cycle, and support systems such as on-site and off-site backups.
**Manage the development of custom HR survey deployment software - Feb 2006 - Oct 2007**
Managed the ongoing development of a Java based survey management system. Responsibilities include co-ordination of tasks for a team of two programmers, a DBA, and a small group of testers. Chris is also responsible for managing the project plan and feature evolution through the life cycle of the software.
**Production systems support - Jun 2004 - Oct 2007**
Provided ongoing support for development and production Linux servers in an uptime critical environment for a local HR Consulting company. Chris was responsible for the ongoing life cycle of Linux servers including vendor upgrades, weekly spot checks, and on-call support.
**Web based product tracking and site internationalization - Feb 2007**
Implementation of a product tracking and sales system for a global supply chain and logistics firm. Chris was brought in to clean up a web development project that was falling behind and showing feature deficiencies. The product management system was re-written to include some missing features and the entire site was re-worked to allow for multi-lingual internationalization.
**Production systems support (Retail Bookstore) - Jan 2003 - Sep 2006**
Deployment and support of servers, backup systems, and VPN devices for a growing chain of bookstores. Originally brought on to migrate the bookstore management system from Windows NT to Linux, Chris retained a key support role in all of the server and access systems in use by the bookstore as they opened new locations across Canada.
**High Performance Cluster - Apr 2006 - Jul 2006**
Provide OS level implementation and on-going support to of a 48 node high performance cluster. Chris joined the team of a local university research group to take their cluster from a rack full of bare bones hardware to a scalable and manageable computing resource. Based on Linux and modern cluster management software, this cluster is used for computational chemistry in materials research.
**Manage the development of legacy software updates - Feb 2006 - Jul 2006**
Managed the development of custom additions to legacy software for a local language interpreters company. Chris served as the project manager from the discovery phase, though requirements definition, and finally implementation and acceptance of the modifications to the customer's existing legacy software.
**Linux "Wargames" LiveCD - Jul 2005 to Jul 2006**
Based on some of the work from the UNIX "Wargames" project, Chris has consulted on the vision and implementation of a Live CD version to allow laboratory use of security related tools and training environments. This project includes elements of security training, Linux LiveCD development, machine virtualization, software packaging and integration.
**High Availability Cluster - Jan 2006 - Mar 2006**
Designed an implemented a linux based high availability cluster including heartbeat monitoring, shared disks and high availability network resource. Chris designed the server environment and managed the migration from the existing production systems to the new high availability environment.
**Network Monitoring Appliance - Mar 2004 to Dec 2005**
Served as the project lead for the development of a hardened Linux based appliance for the delivery of an off-the-shelf network monitoring product. The appliance architecture uses IPSec VPN technology to enable secure internet communication to a central management console, as well as customised hardening of the Linux kernel, implementation of a file integrity monitoring system, and mandatory role based access control tuned to the specifi
## Area of Expertise
| Operating systems | Networking |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| * Linux
* FreeBSD
* Solaris
* Windows
* QNX
* Embedded platforms (HC11, 8051, etc) | * Routers
* Ethernet
* TCP/IP
* Wlan 802.11 a/b/g
* Infiniband |
| Language | Applications | Security |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| * C/C++
* Perl
* PHP
* Java
* VB
* Ruby/Rails
* HTML
* Shell Scripting
* SQL
* ASM
* VHDL | * Apache
* Tomcat
* MySQL
* PostgreSQL
* Plesk
* NFS
* Samba
* Nagios
* Snort/ACID
* Exim
* Sendmail
* qmail
* postfix
* OsCommerce | * Firewalls
* VPN
* IDS
* Wlan WEP/WPA
* Encrypted Storage
* Policy development
* Spam filtering
* Antivirus |
