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Dana French: Resume, Web Sites, Products and Services

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Home Page

Welcome to my home page. The menu on the left side and the link bar at the top of this page will direct you to various locations where you will find my resume, Korn shell, many Korn Shell applications, tools and utilities, and MicroEMACS.

I am actively seeking Korn Shell or Perl related, project-oriented contract work. I can travel to your site or telecommute. For Examples of my work, please go to: http://www.mtxia.com/fancyIndex/Tools/Scripts/Korn/. If interested, please contact me at:

• Phone: 405.329.6578
• E-mail: dfrench@mtxia.com

A History of my Career

In the summer of 1979, while I was on summer vacation during my sophmore year in college, I took a job with a company called "Applied Technology, Inc." (ATC) in Norman, OK. My job title was "Chemical Engineering Technician" and my duties were to assist the company engineers in two large scale testing projects being performed by the company.

The first project was to test the extinguishment characteristics of Carbon-disulfide in controlled burn situations. The tests were conducted on a prepared test site in Newcastle, OK, adjacent to the South Canadian River. This test site had a large concrete building which contained a test monitoring lab and provided storage for test equipment, tools, etc. The site contained multiple pits of various sizes which were used to burn the Carbon-disulfide. The pits were of three sizes which were 5'x5', 10'x10', and 20'x20'. A variety of extinguishment methods were tested on the carbon-disulfide which included low-volume foam, high-volume foam, and dry chemicals. Measurements of several parameters were recorded from the test such as temperature, extinguisher flow and volume, time to extinguishment, etc.

The second project was to test the burn characteristics of a wide variety of crude oils from around the world. This project was sponsored by the Battelle Institute in Seattle, Washington. There were approximately ten barrels of oil from locations such as Venezuala, Saudia Arabia, California, Alaska, etc.

A burn pit had been designed for this project which would measure the temperatures and burn rates of the oil. This pit was designed to maintain the surface of the oil at a constant level. This was done by injecting wate under the oil as the oil burned. A wind screen was also built around the pit to reduce the effects of the wind.

It was expected that several of the "heavier" oils would require significant effort to ignite them, this was not the case however. All of the oils ignited easily with a single match. After the oils had burned out, samples of the residue were taken to be analyzed.

I worked with ATC for the summer and when the tests were finished in August, 1979, I went back to school. Then in the fall of 1980, I received a call from Bill Martinsen. Bill was an engineer with ATC, and had moved to a company called "Energy Analysts, Inc." (EAI). He asked me if I would be interested in working with EAI on test projects, programming, and miscellaneous stuff. EAI did a variety of work including safety analysis, risk assessment, and product liability studies.

My duties with EAI changed dramatically during the eight years I worked for them. I began as a laborer on testing projects, and eventually became the Senior Systems Analyst. I designed, wrote, implemented, and supported all of EAI's software products, which included:

• EAHAP: Energy Analysts Hazards Analysis Program
• EAEPP: Energy Analysts Exposed Population Predictor
• EAPRA: Energy Analysts Probabalistic Risk Assessment

In 1989, EAI had the best financial year of its history, this caused the three owners of the company to begin fighting over the money. Their solution was to disolve the company. I was offered a position with one of the partners who was beginning a new company but decided to go out on my own and start my own company. I operated a consulting company called "French Consulting from 1989 to 1993 during which time I worked for a number of clients in various industries. My clients included:

• Federal Aviation Administration: Worked with the FAA for 10 months to port the Instrument Approach Procedures Automation system to SunOS environment. Project involved porting a large quantity of fortran code from Data General Mainframe running AOS to fortran and C language on the Sun.
• Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems: Designed and built high availability database system for Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems to keep track of error notifications generated by the cellular transmission towers.
• Data General: Worked with Aviion servers and Clarion disk arrays in High Availability database environment.
• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.: During my time working with Wal-Mart, I designed, built, and implemented, distributed Informix Database Systems on NCR platforms. Also worked with Hewlett Packard equipment as a back office processor for the stores, and as intermediate servers to relieve some of the burden from the Teradata machine.
• Applied Intelligence Group, Inc.: Unix Consulting in retail environment.

During the spring of 1993, Applied Intelligence Group (AIG) hired me to perform some Unix consulting work. They subsequently offered me a job which I accepted. AIG was a systems integration company which specialized in the retail industry. My job was to consult with clients on Unix related issues. AIG clients with whom I worked included:

• Eli Witt, Co.: I was the lead consultant during Eli Witts LAN/WAN upgrade to these servers running NCR SVR4. This implementation required integrating the servers into a LAN/WAN environment using both TCP/IP and UUCP over leased lines with dial backup. Eli Witts NCR machines ran the Galaxy environment as an emulation of the NCR 9400 ITX systems. The Galaxy environment allowed Eli Witt to migrate from the legacy system into a modern system.
• United States Marine Corp: USMC hired AIG to provide 3rd party analysis of an application being written by IBM for the USMC. My job was to analize the design and implementation of the application. The AIX box was used as a central controller.
• Stop & Shop: As a subcontractor to IBM and working with Stop & Shop, I was part of a team to integrate Hobart, Franklin and Toledo scales into an AIX environment. This required an indepth knowledge of async communications and application in an AIX environment.
• Home Quarters: Home Quarters uses NCR 3400 machines as back office processors. I designed, built, and implemented a shelf tag printing system from an AS/400 at the headquarters to the NCR back office processors. The printers included Printronix and Texas Instruments.
• Sonic Driveins: I have performed a number of roles in support of Sonic. I participated in the hardware selection effort for selecting a new restaurant POS system. I was part of a team which designed, wrote, and implemented an unattended installation system for the POS system which ran on a Windows NT platform. I also designed, wrote, implemented and maintained a World Wide Web Support site for Sonic and their vendors.
• Urocor: Participated in the systems analysis phase of their World Wide Web conversion effort.
• Follett Campus Stores: With Follett Campus Stores I participated in a team to port a Cobol application purchased by Follett onto the AIX-RS/6000. My duties included providing design and implementation consulting to the project team.
• Fleming Foods: Performed a Y2K upgrade of all RS/6000 - AIX machines in all warehouses, nationwide. These upgrade could only be performed during the warehouse downtime, which was usually on Saturday from midnight to 6:00am or 8:00am.
• Siemens/Nixdorf and Nordstrom's: Provided technical support for a Siemens/Nixdorf development project with Nordstrom. Involved writing a device driver for proprietary Siemens/Nixdorf network card and also required writing a printer configuration system.
• Brookshire Brothers, Inc.: Designed, built, implemented and supported an enterprise wide LAN/WAN environment which included HQ environment, backoffice, POS, and DSD systems.

In October of 1998, the consulting arm of AIG was sold to "The Netplex Group, Inc." (Netplex). As part of the consulting arm, I became an employee of Netplex and continue to work for them. My duties are essentially the same as they were with AIG.

In August of 2000, I began consulting on my own again. Formed the company Mt Xia. This company concentrates on the IBM Unix operating system AIX. In fact, Mt Xia is actually just AIX^tm spelled backwards.

I have a number of other ventures I am currently working as well. I provide the venture capital for a group of home builders in the Austin, TX area. I am also working with IBM on a new RS/6000 marketing idea and plan. And a couple of other secret projects that I don't care to divulge at this time.

Copyrights

Over the years, I have also developed a number of programs, applications, and utilities which were not necessarily created for a particular client, but were used in support of many clients. These programs, applications, and utilites include:

• Shell Curses: Shell Implementation of the UNIX Curses Library. Provides Screen addressing capabilities to the Shell Programmer. Comes with Menuing and data management system and complete source code.
• kshIndex: A set of utilities and scripts build around the Apache fancyIndex functions. Allows webmasters to provide a variety of functions to users including automated indexing of URLs, files, and directories, user authorization management, etc.
• kshEvents: Web Based Events Calendar. Configurable, written in korn shell, complete source Code. Users may submit events. Calendars can be open to all or moderated. Ability to mark holidays and special days.
• kshSchedule: Web Based Reservation / Scheduling Software. Configurable, written in korn shell, complete source Code. Reserve or Schedule Items such as conference rooms, office equipment, computers, etc.
• kshEngine: Web Site Generator. Automatically and dynamically generates complete web sites from Unix directory and file system structure. Configurable, written in korn shell, complete source Code.
• kshMenus: Web Based Menuing and Data Management System. Provides Web based Menuing, Data Entry, and Web Database Program Generator. This system allows a user to create web based menus and data entry screens.
• kshAddURL: This program provides the ability to submit a URL to any number of Search Engine Indices. It comes preprogrammed with the ability to submit to several Indices, and the user may add as many Indices as desired.
• kshNoSpam: This program provides a SPAM filter and reflection mechanism for unwanted Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE).
• kshContact: This program is similar to a company rolodex except that it generates web accessible documents which can be linked into any other document on the Internet or Intranet.
• kshLink: Web Based Communications Control System. Provides the ability to configure, control, record, and report on communication sessions between computers. Communication Sessions include file transfers, print jobs, remotely executed commands, etc.
• kshBackup: Web Based Automated Backup system for LAN/WAN attached system. Provides the ability to perform backups of remotely attached systems to a local device. Desktop user may provide backup information such as a local directory and attachement method.
• kshInstall: kshInstall is a generic installation program which utilizes shell curses and FrenchMenus. It can be configured to be the installation process for any Unix program or package by providing a character based menuing and data entry interface.
• kshSQL: kshSQL is a database management system with an "Ingres" like interface. It reads SQL commands interactively and executes those commands by creating and manipulating Unix files.
• kshSpider: This script performs WWW crawling or spidering, which means that it will to go a specified URL and crawl through the web site detecting other pages and links. The output of this program is a list of URLs.
• ftpSpider: This script performs FTP site crawling or spidering, which means that it will to go a specified URL and crawl through the FTP site detecting child directories. The output of this program is a list of FTP directories.
• mkdlbat: This script generates a DOS batch file to FTP download an entire Unix directory structure including all files.
• isLeap: Korn Shell function to determine whether or not a specified 4 digit year is a leap year. This function is designed to return the result as the return status of the function.
• cgiparse: Korn Shell function to parse CGI form variables and values. Processes a standard input stream and provides as output the processed stream, one variable/value pair per line.
• getch: Korn Shell function to read one character from standard input (STDIN) without requiring a carriage return. This function would typically be used in a shell script to detect a key press.
• eStorLink: UUCP Based Communications Control System. Provides the ability to configure, control, record, and report on communication sessions between computers. Communication Sessions include file transfers, print jobs, remotely executed commands, etc.
• DBIforms: Developed database and platform independent, web based forms generator. This program allows a user to create and maintain databases from a web browser. It also allows users to perform data entry and reporting from a browser.

Awards, Honors, Certifications

• Marquis Who's Who in the World:
• Marquis Who's Who in Science and Engineering:
• Marquis Who's Who in the South and Southwest:
• IBM Certified - Advanced Technical Expert:
  Certifies an advanced level of AIX knowledge and understanding, both in breadth and depth. Verifies the ability to perform in-depth analysis, apply complex AIX concepts and provide resolution to critical problems, all in a variety of areas within RS/6000 AIX.
• IBM Certified Specialist - AIX System Support:
  This certification validates a broad scope of AIX problem determination and resolution skills, and the ability perform general AIX software system maintenance.
• IBM Certificate of Proficiency - AIX Performance and System Tuning:
• IBM Certificate of Proficiency - AIX Installation, Backup and System Recovery:
• IBM Certificate of Proficiency - AIX Communications:

Interests and Hobbies

• Hang-gliding: I became interested in hang-gliding at an early age, about 16 years old. In fact, I was one of the first people in Oklahoma who was a hang-glider pilot, this was about 1975. My first kite (hang-glider) was called a "Pliable Moose", and that is about how it flew, like strapping a moose to your back an jumping off a cliff.
• Water Skiing: Love it, don't get to do it often enough.
• Snow Skiing: Have skiied a number of locations in Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. My favorite: Beaver Creek, Co.
• Scuba Diving: Have only been once, in Cancun, Mexico. I would like to do this more often.
• Sky Diving: Went a few times. It was a lot of fun, but did not continue with the sport. I found that the vertical wind tunnel in Las Vegas called "Fly Away" was just about as much fun.

My Web Sites

• Home Page of Dana French: This is the web site you are looking at now. This provides a detailed description of my career, links to my resume, descriptions of some of my interests and hobbies, and some general information about me.
• Korn Shell Web: This is a web site devoted to Korn Shell programming. This is a Unix user environment and programming language for which I have designed, developed, implemented and distributed a number of programs and applications.
• MicroEmacs: This is a web sited devoted to a collection of MicroEmacs binary executables. I started this site because I am continuously working on a variety of platforms and operating systems and every time I changed platforms, I would have to port the MicroEmacs code over to the new platform, install the C compiler, and recompile it for the new platform. I thought other people were probably doing this as well, so I started the site as a repository for MicroEmacs binaries. This way, regardless of operating system or platform, the MicroEmacs binary executable is probably there and does not need to be recompiled.
• Ridmail: 100% Spam Free Email. This site is a free web-based email server blocks 100% of all spam. This site also provides a free webdisk, and free web hosting.
• Mt Xia: This is my Consulting company web site. Mainly focused on AIX, High Availability, Disaster Recovery, and Business Continuity. Also provides a very large collection of advanced Korn Shell Scripts.