Michael Fariss

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Systems Administrator

Digital Marketing Research Associates (DMRA)

2011-Present

Planned, Implemented & supported company-wide smart phones, security systems and computers.
Created and monitored company's IT budget and capitol assets.
Maintained security-monitored data center and helped make system-wide design decisions.
Implemented and maintained secure data processing servers and workstations.

Database Administrator

Sacred Heart, San Francisco

2009-2011

Saved staff over 1000 hours of labor per year & every year thereafter.
Wrote exciting databases & reports that reduced painful 3-day tasks, into easy 3-minute jobs.
Ran weekly meetings, balanced competing priorities & deadlines by maintaining project schedules.
Earned praise from many departments for creating professional tools and enjoyable training that made professional grading, financial reporting and creating ad-hoc lists, a breeze.
Worked with school administrators develop appropriate databases and tools to meet present and future needs.
Configured various database and web servers including (Windows, Linux & Mac OS X).
Advised technology staff on options for advanced networking and diagnostics.

(Sr.) System Administrator

Woodside Priory School

1996-2009

Interviewed, trained and managed 7 employees, at different times, since 1999.
Directed daily meetings, took minutes and prioritized plans according to the needs of management.
Created and tracked the annual budget for the Technology Department every year since 1999.
Built and successfully operated a 34-building network of 700 computers & industrial servers (including payroll, various databases and 32 other services).
Achieved more than 99.8% up time, in a small school, with an extremely small budget.
Invented a dynamic method to keep all 1200 users on the Internet for a low-cost, despite the challenge of unreliable primary Internet line (a T-1 line that the telco refused to stabilize).
Managed over 20 major projects that concurrently involved several departments and contractors.
Translated user needs into business requirements, then into production-grade solutions, on a tight budget.
Wrote over 30 database-driven programs in various languages, most are in production today.
Documented: tests, procedures, long-term plans, network upgrades & maintained inventory.
Designed & implemented network security systems for sensitive Business Office records.
Wrote policies, created & tracked budgets. Recently came to within 1% of predicted budget.
Created a Disaster Recovery Schedule to restore core services after a disaster.

Performance Engineer (SEED)

Hewlett Packard

1997-1998

Wrote software in C, for running tests on HP-UX (UNIX) web servers including performance tests, then wrote performance assessment reports.
Responsible for configuring and optimizing HP-UX (UNIX) servers to be tested under load, in order to demonstrate the competitiveness of HP products.
Installed and configured HP-UX (UNIX) workstations in a cluster, to do performance testing on various servers.
Found and fixed a manufacturing defect.
Learned various industry Best Practices for writing code and doing IT in a large corporation.

Founder and Manager

8th Day Computer Consulting

1991-Present

Connected private clients and schools to the Internet, configured E-Mail servers, file servers and routers
(St. Elizabeth Seaton, Old Orchard, Cagen, St. Martins, SJU & Others).
Setup computer labs, accelerated Internet connections and did troubleshooting, performed system installs.
Did troubleshooting, installation and setup wired/wireless networks.
Trained commercial and private clients how to use Internet, E-Mail and other programs.
Helped various schools properly integrate technology into the curriculum.
Managed part-time employees, managed suppliers and did all billing and promotion.

High Speed Internet Co-Op

Founder and Manager

1996-2008

Offered high-speed Internet access to neighbors for just $8/month.
Achieved this by putting network cables on the fences of 9 neighbors, connected to a common router to share costs. This was extremely uncommon in 1996.
Managed customer relations, provided initial financing of equipment and provided technical support.

Metro Newspapers

Web Content Intern

Summer 1995

Offered high-speed Internet access to neighbors for just $8/month.
Achieved this by putting network cables on the fences of 9 neighbors, connected to a common router to share costs. This was extremely uncommon in 1996.
Managed customer relations, provided initial financing of equipment and provided technical support.

CORE COMPETENCIES:

MANAGERIAL, ORGANIZATIONAL AND COMMUNICATION:

Consistently earned praise for my cheerful & professional demeanor while working with others.
Managed, trained and mentored 17 people, over 16 years
(11 years part time & 5 years full time).
Delivered over 30 major projects to several departments, each with varying needs, on-time or sooner.
Fantastic time-management skills (forecasting with Gantt charts), detail-oriented and energetic.
Directed other employees who did troubleshooting, repair and configuration of computer systems, with no problems “on my watch” (technical or managerial).
Negotiated significantly lower costs (44% off) with vendors including AT&T, ISPs and VARs.
Able to prioritize in a multi-tasking environment & remain organized and on-schedule 91% of time.
Verbally communicated technical concepts to technical and non-technical people alike.
Requested by peers, to be Project Manager for more than 5 different groups at San Jose State University, including the 5-person Engineering Senior Design Project.

TECHNICAL:

Programmed 15 databases with GUIs, that are used by 16 people, in 7 departments, everyday.
Wrote about 50 well-structured programs in various languages (defined requirements, tested, etc).
Wrote over 12 binders of clear system documentation for technical and non-technical audiences.
Have performance-tuned over 20 systems, extremely familiar with TCP/IP and related protocols.
18 years of experience doing IT work for 25 organizations and individuals, under my own business.
Installed or supervised the installation of hundreds of fiber & copper cables for various organizations.
Setup 800+ professional-grade servers, clients and routers (including AC, raised-floors & racks).

OTHER EDUCATION:

	UNIX Administration Certificate	Sun & SJSU	[2000]
	Communications Skills Course	CareerTrack	[2008]
	Management Course	CareerTrack	[2009]
	Certificate in Management (in progress)	UC Berkeley Extension	[2012] GPA: 4.0

TECHNOLOGY SKILLS:

Software: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, Illustrator, OO.org, InDesign, Apache, Sendmail, Squid, PmWIKI, IIS, VMware, FileMaker Pro +IWP, OpenSource.
OS: Win 2000/XP/2003, Mac OS X +Server, UNIX/Solaris, Linux (RedHat,Fedora,Ubuntu,SuSE).
HW:PC, Mac, Cisco, FortiNet & SonicWALL Routers, Switches, Fiber Optics & Wireless 802.11b/g/n.
Net/Misc: DNS, backup (Retrospect, scripted, FTP), TCP/IP, net tools (tcpdump, wireshark, iptraf, iptables, ebtables, monitoring & paging), 1394b, USB 2 & FibreChannel, RAID, AntiVirus, AntiSpam.
Code: HTML, CSS, C/C++, PERL, PHP, JSP, XML, XSLT, command line, shell scripting, some Java, regular expressions, sockets programming, MySQL, some Oracle 9i.

VOLUNTEER WORK:

Santa Cruz Animal Shelter (helping to sell cats to the general public) for over a year.
Helped the Bay Area chapter of Habitat for Humanity, build three houses.
Fostered kittens for various bay area animal rescue organizations for over 5 years.
Provided Ham Radio communications during 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Various diabetes bike-a-thons (providing Ham Radio communications).

References & recommendations available upon request.