User:Pecosdave

Pecosdave is a geek (real name David Allen Monroe) and divorced father of one who has showed a passing interest in technology and physics since childhood. Due to his rural upbringing in Pecos, TX he was limited in his oppertunity to explore his interest until he graduated high school in 1996. As a result much of what he was able to learn on was depricated when he was first able to get his hands on it, for example his first computer - aquired in 1995 - was an IBM PC Convertible. He learned computers and operating systems that are before his time, but unlike his technical peers he learned them in a catch up manner. As a result he has large amounts of knowledge from experience, but his knowledge also contains large amounts of holes from being "out of time".

Career History
His knowledge is not limited to the computer field. He has experience with audio/video, wiring relay panels, and is a decent mechanic. When he was younger he actually desired a career in audio/video, but due to various factors such as poor hearing, the onset of the dot com bubble, and the plethora of available jobs that resulted he slowly migrated into the computer and networking industry.

Pecosdave started out with a variety of manufacturing jobs in Phoenix, AZ and the surrounding area in 1996, then after frustration of making less than minimum wage, (when you count hours while on salary) and living in the bad neighborhoods of Phoenix he decided to move back to Texas. He worked for a year for a company called Alpha Networks. Alpha Networks did the technical work for small companies, large enough to have networks, but not large enough to have their own IT department. Pecosdave credits Alpha Networks as being the single most important piece of his education to date. Starting work there at 20 years old with very little networking experience, Randy and Marshall Williams were very instrumental in teaching Pecosdave networking and many aspects of Novell NetWare in particular.

Alpha Networks began to fail as a company. As Y2K many of their clients began to fear the "bug" and refused to have any computer work done, including needed maintnance. They commonly had the belief that doing any computer maintnance before the Y2K bug hit would be a complete waste of money since it was all going to break the last day of December 1999 anyways. Something had to be done. One of Alpha Networks clients was a local buisiness name Beeper Boutique. Randy had long casually spoken with the owner of Beeper Boutique about starting an ISP. That's when Everyones Internet was born.

Pecosdave quickly found himself doing more and more work on the ISP end of the buisiness, building servers, running Ethernet, and taking support calls. After a few weeks he transfered over to Everyones Internet all together and left his job at Alpha Networks behind. Over the next few months Alpha Networks dissolved into Everyones Internet completely, all employees moving over. This put Pecosdave in the position of being the first actual Everyones Internet employee, being the first person to recieve a paycheck with the name Everyones Internet at the top instead of the previous employer. For P.R. and ego purposes, Jeff Lowenberg is offically refered to as the first Everyones Internet employee by the official history on the website and in all company documentation except for actual pay records. In all fairness Jeff was answering support calls as a Beeper Boutique employee before Dave, as Dave did background work at the Alpha Networks office while an Alpha Networks employee.

Due to frustrtions over ethical, health and social life concerns Pecosdave took another job that was offered to him supporting Shell and Texaco gas stations for Equiva Services. Due to the fact this was an oil field company Dave soon saw his contract to Equiva being handed to Computer Sciences Corporation where he soon became a CSC employee.

Soon, Texaco left the alliance, and with that Equiva was adsorbed into the remaining Motiva and Equilon parent companies, Equilon being renamed to Shell Oil Products US. Over time, Shells new CEO decided it was not econmical for Shell to own their own gas stations, and sold all corporate stations to private investors. Since Daves job function was to keep corporate sites working, he soon found himself on the job market.

Since that time Dave has done various contract jobs for Tek Systems out of their Houston office.

Pecosdave is now employed by the GHG company, contracted to Lockheed Martin in the Ground Systems Maintenance department at NASA. As a member of the Datacomm group he is responsible for ensuring the Johnson Space Center can communicate with the International Space Station, the shuttle orbiters, and the other space centers.

Dave likes:

 * Linux and Free Software