[OT] Missing St. Louis ... Traveling Consultant's Blues ...

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

I've seen a few job postings flying around on the various St. Louis
lists as of late, so I wanted to rehash an old e-mail from 2004 Oct 28
(reposted below).

I did go back to Orlando at the end of October.  After a short-term
consulting assignment with Disney (I've been out there several times,
but it's typically not worth the drive/money), I'm currently out here in
Las Vegas for yet another, short-term contract (I've already got them
flying in 3 weeks, so it's likely to be 6 weeks total instead of their
projected 6 months for this project).  And it's looking very, very, very
likely that my next opportunity will put me with a major household name
company at a major financial company in New York, as well as other NE
clients.  All continuing my tradition of lots of travel, lots of time
away from my wife, etc... since 2001.

As much as I enjoy the challenges of implementing new financial systems
and capabilities, bringing the local support staff up-to-speed on the
systems and then moving on to the next job, I'd much rather settle
down.  Although my resume makes me look like a consultant-type, I'm
really a 10+ year employee at heart.  I'm trying to find that type of
company.  When I came up to St. Louis before, the company I was going to
work at was worried I'd leave after they saw my resume.  After proving
otherwise, the opposite happened (as discussed in my prior post), which
didn't even give me the opportunity to settle down.  I'm a mid-western
boy (grew up in northern Illinois) and I want to come back and raise a
family in the best place of the country for American families. 

With my wife being a teacher, I have to plan around the school year if I
want to move her with me.  Trying to start a family on the road has been
impossible, and I'm not getting any younger, so I hope each year things
will open up.  As such, if your company is considering adding a new,
permanent (or contract-to-hire -- I'm fine with "proving myself" first)
position in the next 6 months (aiming for summer) for a Solaris, Linux,
NetApp, NT (along with many other platforms) expert with a strong
networking, systems, development and security background in the
financial systems industry, please keep me in mind.  I really loved my
brief stay in St. Louis, and hope to make it permanent sometime in the
future.

Thank you for this blatant re-abuse of the list.  I promise not to make
another one again until at least 2006.  ;->

Sinerely,

Bryan J. Smith
(407) 718-6434  (professional cell, on me 24x7)
(407) 489-7013  (personal cell)

--- FORWARDED MESSAGE ---

Subject: [DISCUSS] [OT] Introduction and blatant misuse of list
resources (i.e., looking for work)
From: "Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:31:18 -0400

________________________________________________________________________
Someone referred me to this list mentioning that several Solaris gurus
work locally over at a leading brewery.  So please excuse this blatant
abuse and misuse of list resources.  ;-p

I'm not big on introductions, so I might as well get to the point (and
my blatant misuse of list resources).  I've been in-town for a month and
love the city.  Originally from the mid-west, I'd rather live here than
my current, permanent residence (Orlando).  I'm not the "consultant
type," but that's mainly what I've gotten into over the last 3-4 years
(largely because of the economy) as almost every company I've contracted
at has been on "hiring freezes."  I'm really looking for a place to
"plunk down" for 10+ years and start a family and the mid-west is far
better than Florida.

So I came up on a right-to-hire position as a "Linux Architect" at
financial services company c/o a leading storage and service vendor.

That contract was in trouble even before I started my first day, and I
just got confirmation last night (it's been a month) that it's not
likely to be resolved between the vendor and client.  This was through
no fault of my own and I can provide a contact to verify the details
upon request.  The vendor is providing an outstanding reference of my
"professionalism," as I did work with the client a few days before
things went south outside of my dealings.

Short of testing my legal standing and burning bridges with the rather
large vendor because the client still wants me (everyone has been honest
and I'm loyal to who I work for), I am most likely heading back to
Orlando.  Although I have picked up some contract work over the last
week or two while I waited for a resolution (I always seem to know 1-2
companies in any city who say "if you're ever in town, we could use you
for a few days), I've got nothing to sustain me here.  Which brings me
to this e-mail.

As such, before I leave, is anyone interested in a Solaris
(SCSA8/SCNA8/SCSecA9) or Linux (LPIC-2, RHCE9, I also was one of 5
sponsored/paid exam writers of the new LPIC-1/101/102 exams) guru who
also has a bit of networking (CCDP/CCNP), security (various certs,
probably too many), architecture and even, gasp, NT/200x
(MCSA/MCSE2000+Security)?  Most of my work over the last 3 years has
been "architectural/security" (heavily "policies & procedures" type
stuff -- writing docs one day, supervising the next, hacking with the
"grunts" the day after that, etc...) level over financial systems at
Fortune 100 companies like Disney, State Farm and, before this happened,
a recognizable, St. Louis-based financial services company.

I appreciate everyone tolerating this message in advance as I'm sure it
is a blatant abuse of list ettique and policy.  Also thank you in
advance for any considerations made in my regard.

-- Bryan J. Smith
   (407) 718-6434  (<ED>yes, that is the correct number</ED> ;-)

P.S.  If you read Sys Admin, you might have read my "Dissecting"
articles over the past year, including this months article "Dissecting
PC Server Performance" which largely covers how the Opteron
NUMA/HyperTransport platform _finally_ brings the PC Server to the level
of traditional RISC/UNIX in terms of I/O scalability:  
  http://www.sysadminmag.com/documents/sam0411b/  

I'm also the guy who wrote the SunOS 4.1 / Solaris 2 appendix (among
other appendixes/chapters) in the (now aged) mammoth 1,248 page book
"Samba Unleashed" -- among other publications (books and magazines) over
the last 5 years.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                    b.j.smith@ieee.org 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly
retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in 
compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for
latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.




-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@silug.org with
"unsubscribe silug-discuss" in the body.