Lawn Mowing
Summer 1994
Doesn't everybody need a job like this once in their lives? I made some money, learned that physical labor sucks, and got myself a whole bunch of books with the proceeds. It wasn't fun, but it was work.
Parallax Software - Playtester
Summer 1995
When I saw the signs around DCL advertising for play-testers, I never figured that the company would actually do well, or that I'd actually work for them. When I eventually started, though, I realized that their game was good; now, I can look out at the world and say that my name is in the credits of Descent, one of the pioneer first-person games (not quite at Wolf3D/Doom/Quake level, but close). And it was fun. Yay. (Look, proof!!)
Sponsornet - Web Surfer
Summer 1995
For the summer of 1995, my real job was sitting in front of a computer and doing web browsing. A couple of friends of mine had come up with the concept of web advertising, you see, slightly before there was a chance of it actually working; unfortunately, it didn't work. But that's okay, I still got some money, and realized that there were non- manual-labor jobs I disliked more than anything else. Advertising is evil. But I was there, at the dawn of the new age of the web...
UIUC Math Department - Computer Consultant
Oct 1995 - May 1999
When I was applying for this, my first real job, I got the impression that their standards were ridiculously high for what looked to be a basic lab-sitter job. After I got the job, I began to figure out why - the Math Department's labs depended on us, because they didn't have enough staff to take care of everything. I spent the next few years here, writing web pages and doing stuff on my own while making sure the lab didn't fall apart; eventually I stopped, and, as far as I can tell, their final decline is in progress as I type this. Aah, well.
United States Army - Construction Engineering Research Labs (USA-CERL) -
Research Computing
Summer 1996
When I signed up to work for CERL, I thought that I was going to be a programmer. Unfortunately, my interview hadn't put my programming skills at the forefront; instead, I was a research assistant/ lackey that just followed my boss (Paul Schomer) around and tried to fix things. This forced me to travel to Fallon, NV, where I spent the summer recording and analyzing explosion noises. It wasn't that bad, but it was enough to keep me from sticking around during the next year, and gave me a healthy distrust for Corporate America.
Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing - News Administrator
Feb 1999 - Mar 2000
While still working for the Math Department, one of my friends (Tom) walked up to me one day and said "want to actually be a news admin?" I gladly said yes, and thereby got the best job of my life... I was actually more of a general system administrator, maintaining a few hundred machines of various platforms with my neurotic but friendly boss and co-workers; still, I got the title, and I learned a lot more about how news works. It was a nice little base of operations, and most certainly the best job that a college student that wanted to be an admin (read: me) could have. Plus, it led directly to my next one...
Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group
Mar 2000 - Nov 2001: Systems Administrator
Nov 2001 - Nov 2008: Senior Systems Administrator
I really enjoyed this, my first real job. My official role was 'sysadmin' - the guy in charge of taking care of all of the 250 machines, and the people (50-100, depending on your count) that need to use them. My unofficial role was 'living memory'; I knew as much about what's going on in this group as anybody, and I'm pretty good at using that kind of information to keep things running in the background. I had a couple of assistants at any given time, and could call upon the help of the staff and 5-10 grad students for additional help. The place ran about as smoothly, computer-wise, as any place I've ever seen; and I integrated myself into it as tightly as anybody could hope.
Center for Women in Transition - Volunteer Computer Guy
Feb 2004 - Aug 2004
My brother's friend John started asking a few months ago whether I would like to make a few extra bucks doing some basic computer support for the CWT, a local women's shelter. I didn't want the money, but I did want to just do some volunteer work, so I worked on it for a while. Sadly, my time started to drop off and I just wasn't able to get much done, so I gave up after a few months; but it was nice while it lasted, and gave me a better impression of what working with a Windows environment is like...
Stanford IT Services - Systems Software Developer
Dec 2007 - present
I'll write this up later.