About Me

Cisco Unity Tools

About Me

(Updated Aug 2007)

Who am I and what am I doing putting up Unity tools on my own web site? Good question...

I worked for Active Voice from May of 1990 until we were purchased by Cisco Systems just recently in February of 2001. Outside of a short, depressing, slow moving stint at IBM, that constitutes my entire professional career… if you don’t count the 15 or so jobs I held while I was in school… I don’t. While the time spent renting rooms to the "interesting" people found along Highway 99 at the fabulous Thunderbird Motel was certainly good life experience, it's not really a career builder.

I started my career as a student testing voice boards on the 10^th floor of the Stewart building back in the days before Dialogic would take them back if they had not failed their D40Check test program. Part of that job involved holding a hair dryer up to the 8088 processor on the board while it was running the test to “simulate real world heat” and “help” it fail the test. Those were the days… It’s funny and sad at the same time to admit I remember when 8 ports was a big system , a 40 meg MFM hard drive was cutting edge technology and you were the coolest if you had a 500k expansion RAM card in your XT. I’m sorry, but the best OS we ever shipped on was still DOS 3.3. Booted like greased lightning and it fit on one floppy… doesn’t get any better than that.

Since that time I worked on most products Active Voice shipped in one capacity or another from QA tester to project lead. I came on board when Repartee 6.2 was in full swing, moving to Replay to the much loved Replay Plus to the dark horse revenue machine that was Hospitality/PMS 6.3 offering, to the much misunderstood and under appreciated PhoneMax and ViewCall Plus applications (PhoneBASIC rocked so much harder than most people ever realized), to, of course, the birth of Unity circa 1997. I was part of the original crew that helped define what Unity was and it's chewed up most of my waking hours since that time. Kinda like a child... a wonderful, beautiful, cranky, loud, demanding, fussy child.

I'm working for Cisco these days, but doing pretty much the same thing as I did for Active Voice. My official title these days is something like “Unity Product Architect” but no one really knows what that means, exactly. I work on the Unity CPR team (Critical Problem Resolution), I write a lot of requirement definitions (the docs engineers are SUPPOSED to use when developing product but it doesn’t always work out that way) and I answer a lot of questions. Most of them start with “How does this work in Unity?” almost always followed by the predictable “Why the hell does it work that way?”. I love my job. You’ll also find me moderating the New Unity forum.

When I’m not at work and I’m not putzing around in the attic with the old knob and tube wiring in my house, I fiddle with scripts and programs for working with Unity. What that says about my social life is left as an exercise for the reader. You’ll find the more useful ones collected on the tools pages on this site.

When I get a chance, I drag my fabulous CK17 trailer out and go camping with my wife, Heidi. Or we stay home and transform the nasty looking back of the house with a new deck. Now I just gotta figure out what to treat my deck with to fight off a TAC Infestation.... much peskier than the average termite. For more exciting home project action shots, be sure to check out Heidi's fabulous web page of home improvement projects.

And when I’m really strung out, I rewire my house for full network capabilities or build my own PVR Exercise and sports are for folks who can’t handle a good 110 patch panel. Which is not to say that tromping around in my attic is not every bit as dangerous and exiting as any extreme sport... lets see some weenie rock climber pull a header through his living room ceiling and show up for work the next day. And yes, I do have two Exchange servers and a Unity running at my house at any given time. It’s not healthy but it pays reasonably well.

And since I get asked so often... here's what I did on my sabbatical.

Consolidated home improvement link page - I got a lot of folks complaining that our projects pictures pages went away (had those on another site that went off line). So I've redone the project links and added new pictures for the fab Home Theater, Media Center and Hot Tub room project... and the new Solar panel installation! enjoy.

Thrilling vacation pics. Mexico (Dec, 1999 - coming soon). Greece (Oct, 2001). Panama Canal (Oct, 2003). Egypt (March 2006).

Now c'mon... you didn't really come out here to read my bio... head over to the tools pages, get what you need and go back to work.

Last modified: 09/07/08.