OK, with niceties completed, hey there! This blog is mainly intended for my random thoughts along with things that I can reference back to in later times. I am not intending this blog to be much more than a reference library for people that want a quick answer to a solution they’ve come across.
About Me:
Honestly, I think my dad summed things up pretty well about me in one of my favorite recommendations on my LinkedIn page:
“In 1990, Thomas got his first computer, an IBM PC. He was six at the time. He used it for a few days, then I walked past his room and found the computer in pieces on his bed. I asked him why and he replied it was too slow. I just nodded (For those of you that recall the original IBM PC, it was too slow). I decided to wait until the next day, when I would come back and volunteer to help him put it back together. By that afternoon, however, he had it back together and bench marking better than before. I have no idea what he changed.
In case, some of you think he just Googled a solution, the founders of Google had not yet met and the World Wide Web, as it was called then was less than a year old. I don’t recall even having a modem in the house to connect to the NSFNET and he certainly had not learned anything about computers in school. In fact, when he was in middle school, years later, he lead the student team wiring up the school for their first computers. He then gave lectures to the teachers at the unified school district offices on how to use them.
Thomas worked all though high school as a computer technician, while trying to start his first business building over clocked water cooled computers. He then went on to Wentworth Institute of Technology just across the river from MIT and got a very solid education. Wentworth was picked because of their symbiotic relationship with business. It was a five year school with one trimester a year working as an intern for different firms. At commencement, he was well ahead of the MIT grads with not only his two degrees but experience as well. That was a great help during that downturn in the economy. He immediately went to work, doing contract jobs and it was not long before one of his clients, CBS, recognized his talent and put him on full time, first in tech support, later management and finally architecture where he got involved with NetApp, and transitioned to CDW as a NetApp engineer, on the road 12 months a year.
Now wanting to put down some roots, he has recently taken a position at iVision in disaster recovery, home base Atlanta. I wonder if iVision knows this 30 year old has 24 years of experience?” ~Thomas E. Lasswell (My Dad)
My personal bio, well, I’ve been into computers ever since I was a small child and my career has blossomed as I graduated college and went to work for CBS. Since joining CBS in 2005 I’ve advanced from consultant, to Image Creation / Desktop Standards, to Technical Engineer, to Sr. Technical Engineer, to Manager of Infrastructure Engineering. I have had some exciting projects such as the corporate implementation of SMS (Microsoft Systems Management Server) and get to play with some cool hardware (NetApp, Brocade, 3PAR, Cisco, FlexPods, etc). I recently moved on from CBS at the end of 2011 to CDW as a Systems Engineer working with NetApp implementations. Now doing everything from customer OnTap upgrades, FAS controller upgrades, Brocade/Cisco configurations, and training on everything NetApp. After a term with CDW ending July, 2013 I moved to another company, iVision, and am now working in an ongoing support role with several clients supporting VMware, NetApp, and FlexPod systems.