My motto is, "Happy to help, any time."

NOTE: I am happily employed and love my job.

My skills are problem-solving, solution development, and technical support, and my focus is founded in delivering excellent customer service.

I live in Waterloo, Ontario, and I will consider the right opportunities that help me deliver excellent technical results through skilled technical support, process automation, and effective problem determination. My support roles have given me the experience to understand how to ensure there is a minimum impact on staff productivity when handling an issue or project, such as a roll-out of new software or operating system. I continually look for improvements to the processes or handling of systems to ensure longevity without incurring risking downtime or reliability.

Overall, I take pride in meeting technical challenges through determination, innovation, resourcefulness, commitment, and adaptability. I work very hard at doing things right, avoiding a temporary fix where possible and thinking of the big picture.

I have recently (August 2022) moved on from this role:

Until August 2022, I worked within the Cloud Production Support group at Open Text on a team we refer to as Proactive Support - Architecture and Design, though it could be Architecture and Delivery. Our team develops the processes, tools, and automation that keep the lights on and collect data, including reporting and a plethora of scheduled systems that ensure we are very aware of the health and activities on our systems. While I have been exposed and have worked in a limited fashion with New Relic and Zabbix, my primary focus has been developing and supporting tools that help our teams maintain, verify, repair, and recover our VM-based (Windows) server systems, though my expertise with our numerous Linux-based systems and some maintenance and assistance to the teams with our Kubernetes environments (Linux), though this something I need more time with, as it's very powerful and interesting to me, simply not my primary focus.

My focus was on building tools that provide automated functions to the front-line support teams. In this sense, we have a tool that offers them quick access to information-gathering tools, collects logs, and executes health checks. Behind the scenes we distribute this tool globally using GitLab, including in restricted economic zones to ensure a consistent solution. We collect the appropriate data to maintain all of our VM-based systems and perform specialized functions such as shutting down all services in data centres or accommodating collection of vulnerable Log4Shell impacted systems (Christmas 2021), and the process of remediation of several thousand servers by creating and integrating developed components (by the team, some parts written in Java, not by myself) to ensure a successful and reliable process that has allowed teammates, globally, to perform the remediation with little to no assistance. My initial effort in Log4Shell was a Powershell script that leveraged my pre-existing and collected data to sweep for impacted java Log4Shell libraries. The team built the solution from this data.

What I do is solve technical problems through data collection and translation into a usable form so that we can do our jobs better as a team, as a group, and as a company. Of course, it goes beyond the scope of my prescribed role to help people work with confidence through guidance, assistance, or tools. I'm a people person that can work with people at all levels, which is a strength developed through my history in support.

When it comes time to move on, it'll be because the next role allows me to help others get their job done and accomplish great things.

What am I doing now?

I have joined Shinydocs in a support role: https://shinydocs.com/
More on this soon, but it's a wonderful company that pride's itself on the health and welfare of its employees.

Building and Supporting Technical Solutions:

My technical support skills have been honed over my career. Helping ordinary people get along with technology through advice, training, or problem determination and pursuing a solution was the foundation of my career, and I have never ceased enjoying this rewarding aspect of my skill set. I live for ensuring people are able to do their job because I make life better for them. I do this by talking with a customer/user, at their level, and with an earnest interest in finding a solution.

I have been called on to move to a supporting through solution development. This means that while I remain supporting customers more often that support is indirect by facilitating or enabling the support teams to work better and smarter while reducing the demands on them. I do this through automation using scripting and data consolidation techniques to help them do their job better. Sometimes this is simplifying a process to save time, leveraging new technologies to make their efforts more impactful, or refining a process into automation for the sake of reliability and to reduce errors.

I have been a creative developer of automation tools and web-based solutions using Powershell, VBScript, PHP, ASP, and either Microsoft SQL or MySQL, I can break down a process or requirement into a scope, define features and functions and build a solid solution on time and on budget. My ability to take the idea through to a finished design using innovation and a focus on efficiency is proven and I look forward to helping your company take advantage of these skills. I now have experience with OpenText's Content Server, OTDS, and Enterprise Connect, and a depth of knowledge on related systems like LDAP, AD, and SQL, along with reasonable exposure to VMWare and VirtualBox as tools of the trade.

Career Profile:

You can view it online here.

My Blog:

Cam's Tech Tricks - A place where I try to give back with ideas, inspiration, and technical tricks of various sorts.

Telework/Remote work roles preferred.