C:\utilities\whoami.exe /?
Who is Slimgin? Take a minute to read more about him and his life to date. In the early to mid 90’s, I was a huge fan of MS-DOS 6.22, and it was my jam at the time. I loved it so much that I memorized both my autoexec.bat and config.sys. At the time, I had no networking experience to speak of, except the bulletin board systems (BBS’s) that I regularly logged into after school. I had America Online (AOL) at the time, but with a 2400 BPS modem, it was a bit too “fancy” for my modem, and the experience was not enjoyable (not that the experience was ever enjoyable on AOL). Later on, I leveled up my DOS skills with Norton Commander, which made DOS even better! Other than dialing into private BBS’s, my computer network journey did not begin until me and my mother relocated from outside of Chicago to near Denver, in 1996.
A new friend I met after starting my junior year gifted me a US Robotics 14,400 BPS modem, as he had either upgraded to a 33,600 BPS modem, or a 56k modem. At some point in late 1996, I managed to procure a 56k internal MODEM, and I thought I was set forever! I could play online games; I could chat with friends via ICQ or IRC; and I could “sample” techno music from a friend I met on IRC, who lived in Alberta, Canada. His father owned a construction company along with a website which was hosted in their house, along with my buddy’s website and FTP server. At the time, I remember being confused that two websites and an FTP site could exist on a single IP address.
During my final two years of high school, I learned a little more about computer networking, but I was mostly focused on learning all I could about Windows 98. At one point, I remember trying to `ping 255.255.255.0` and wondering why I didn’t receive any replies? I was also confused how my computer could have multiple IP addresses, when I had only one dial-up modem!?! And why couldn’t I get as fast a response when I pinged sourceforge.net as I did when I pinged 127.0.0.1!?!
Finally, the day arrived when I was done with school – 06.11.1998! Without mincing words, I HATED school! I had about a one-month break and then I was headed off into the U.S. Army and began training as a 98-Kilo (Non-Morse Signal Intercept & Analysis), on a Navy base in Pensacola, FL. I was in the Army from 07.16.1998 to 12.01.2010 and was stationed at the following locations:
- Camp Humphreys, South Korea – 03.05.1999 – 03.02.2000
- Fort George G. Meade, Maryland USA – 03.05.2000 – 05.2005
- Fort Monmouth, New Jersey USA – 07.2005 – 05.2008
- Buckley AFB (Now Space Force) – 05.2008 – 12.01.2010
I ended up returning to Pensacola, Fl three additional times and attended the following courses:
- Intermediate Communication Signals Analysis Course 10.2003 – 03.2004 Graduate with Honors
- Basic Digital Network Analysis Course – 05.2005 – 07.2005
- Advanced Communication Signals Analysis Course – 01.2010 – 05.2010
After leaving the Army, I worked for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton as a protocol analyst in several different positions. Sadly, due to foreseeable circumstances, my time at Booz ended in December 2015. Despite only working there for 5 years, they were an AMAZING company, and I enjoyed every minute!
After leaving Booz Allen, I worked in a series of companies/positions with an ever-increasing network engineering workload. During these positions, I endeavored to create a network monitoring system utilizing Icinga2 for a law firm in Baltimore; a vCenter infrastructure project between two network staging centers located in Orlando, FL and Baltimore, MD interconnected with a site-to-site VPN for vMotion and VM backup purposes; a network refresh project migrating a company from an Extreme based network to Meraki for its central monitoring/managing features. In my current position as a Senior IT Infrastructure Analyst, I am leading efforts to centrally manage FortiGate-40F appliances deployed across the country to, when the project is completed, nearly 500 locations. Being a Cisco guy for most of my network engineering life, having to manage and configure Fortinet can be quite daunting. Luckily, I have access to one of their senior engineers to ask questions and discuss ideas.
I was born in Elgin, IL on 10.31.1979, graduated from Arapahoe high school in Littleton (Centennial), CO. I have been married to the former Suzanne Dayton since 06.11.2002 and we have a 12-year-old daughter named Ruby Caroline. I am interested in all things network engineering and technology, Python3, and doing little projects on my Raspberry Pi-4B cluster. If you have any questions, or just want to drop me a line, feel free to Email Me! Thank you for taking an interest in my website and I hope you have a great day!
