Welcome to www.cdalexander.net!

This website is dedicated to the technical-side of my life and covers a few of my experiences, likes, dislikes, and other related topics.

This website is under development and is filled with place-marker text and images as well as indirect or broken links. No dates or promises are given to suggest or imply if and when the completion of this site will be made. Your visit here is taken that you understand these conditions. In the event you do not understand these conditions it is recorded that you do. Otherwise, please continue to the next site of your choosing and refrain from visiting this website again until your ability to consume, retain, and comprehend the meaning of the aforementioned warning at which point you may continue with your online browsing experience. -- Thank you.

- WHO AM I -

Hey there! I'm Clint Alexander and I am a 38 year old Internet Technologist. Hailing from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, also known as the land of the Amish, I am the proud father of 3 wonderful children and a husband to a wonderful lady who had saved my miserable life.

For any of you LinkedIn users, you can check out my profile here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cdalexander/

Since 1993, I have studied and practiced engineering and administration in almost every field there is on the Internet. I do not "specialize" in any one area -- that would be way to boring. Instead I enjoy being a "Jack-Of-All" in everything I.T. -- Archetect, Administration and Engineering of Systems, Network & Security. I'm also involved with software development -- actually Internet Application Development as I very much dislike writing desktop applications.

- TECHNOLOGY AND ME -

My professional career has already been quite a journey. I certainly did not expect to get involved with world of technology. Since I was 16 I worked in the labor industry doing Roofing, Blacktop, Framing, Demolition, et cetera. I stuck with Roofing the longest and even became a Foreman running my own crew and job sites. Like I said, becoming a technologist was not on the agenda.

In the late 80's, my Aunt had bought a PC and hooked into the Prodigy network. We had a list of local numbers and what I remember as 'toll-free' numbers to free and subscription-based Bulletin Board Systems through POTS or X.25 networking. I committed a lot of time connecting to many bulletin board systems for games, general information, browsing ASCII Art or post chatting. This cool thing called "technology" was ... well, cool!. The electronic message boards were fascinating and just a ton of information, new games, new ways to communicate - was being poured onto them.

Not to long afterwards I bought my own IBM 386 with MS-DOS 3.2 and I learned my way around it pretty well. I am one of those "Do It Your Self" types, so when I got this PC, I learned all about screwing up hardware settings; IRQs, direct memory access, buses, threads -- oh yeah, and data corruption and re-formatting the hard-drive that I accidently screwed up the partition or boot sectors to. I must have reconfigured the operating system about 15 times before I got the darn sound-card to work.

But even having so much fun "learning" how to properly destroy, I still maintained a roofing career. I never really thought about technology as a job until I did a job on a guy's roof who was in the telecommunications business. We spoke at length about using the PC at home; we hit it off pretty well. It all happened by accident when I took a part-time job to help this fella "fill-in" a position over the Winter. With the added ability to type a whopping 30-40 words per minute, I felt almost like a pro! (Hey, don't laugh! That was a big deal for me back then!)

During those 3 months I had access to a lot of hardware and software with different operating systems running on a few different network protocols. By the end of those 3 months I knew 10 times what I knew when I started and my friend asked me to stay on board and make a career out of it. Unfortunately, I have a deep sense of loyalty and dedication and I had an obligation to my roofing employer. But, the seed was planted and thus began the transition in my mind from the physical universe to the electronic metaverse.

Eventually, I hung up my hammer and tool belt and acquired a whole new set of tools - 14.4bps modem and a kick-arse 512k trident video card (hooah!). Since then I've worked for marketing firms, ISPs, different types of communication services, yada yada. I taught myself everything I could using all the resources at my disposal, and I ended up in places that had a lot of resources. I sucked it in, I had received the opportunity to play just about every role there was and as a result, there was not one part of a process that I didn't fully understand.

Enter the world of the "Computer Hacker". Yes, I dove head-first into this field as well. I couldn't help it -- it was a huge word, the idea was intriguing and gave a large sense of adventure as well as mystery; cloak and dagger-like. I began to learn the requirements as soon as I learned what they were. Surprisingly, you don't have to learn that much. It's more about procedure and policy; the order in which you do a few things, than it is about reading 1's and 0's (uhh, that's ones and zeros for those who need clarification).

I chatted a lot with some of the now, not so famous hackers: HyperViper, Silcon Toad -- they owned the site www.hackers.com which at one time was the icon, the representing site of the computer hacker. No, it's not there any longer. One of the founders was killed in a car accident and the crew lost their momentum. But, we spent a lot of time on the IRC networks hosting webinars covering everything IT - programming, networking, protocols, various "how-to's"; generally spreading the knowledge of technology.

Being a 'true hacker' is nothing like people think. It really has nothing to do with breaking into another computer or phone network. It kind of works like this..., you can make an ax out of a few pieces of wood, some rope and a stone, to cut wood for a fire. But, the same "ax" can be used to destroy other objects it was not intended for. Hacking was the processes of creating a tool from separate objects that were not originally related to each other. Hacking is an inventive technique used by many people, and it has no requirement to be within world of electron. A hacker has a discipline in their field. You could call it an addiction, but discipline sounds much more professional. I certainly learned a lot about this field and gained a rare level of respect for the true hacker.

Moving along...

Over the past decade I have been a part of many different projects; specialized projects; unique projects.

SAVING CHILDREN

On one very unique project, I was privileged enough to work with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and equivalent personnel from Canada, Germany, Russia, and Brazil in an effort to collect evidence on groups and individuals committing child crimes on the Internet.

At the time, I was the Director of Research & Development for this non-profit organization and my team was responsible for writing the reporting applications used to search, flag and analyze content to provide to the authorities. In fact, our group was responsible for bringing down the 2nd largest international ring that stretched across several countries. The event made the news internationally, but no credit was to be given directly to our organization.

No Fame, No Fortune. Unfortunately, as our FBI contact said, we were "X-Files" and any information received from us would be marked from an "anonymous source". At the time we didn't care, the mission was much more important than the recognition and we felt that being in the "X-Files" was really cool. But, it would have been really nice to have our organization recognized for its tireless commitment.

If you're wondering what the name of the organization was or the details of the international sting -- I won't give them out. I do not want to shine any light on the names of groups and individuals involved. If it helps, I not interested in substantiating the experience; the story is more for me than it is for the Internet at large. I only touched on it because it was something I did with technology, it was unique and tons of fun, and most importantly, it fills in space on this page. Who knows, maybe it will give you a better understanding of my personality... or maybe not.

AMERICA'S ARMY: THE OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY GAME

To mention another unique project, I am an IT Consultant and provide all kinds of technical services to the United States Army on one of the most historic campaigns they have ever conducted titled: The Army Game Project: "America's Army". America's Army is a communication initiative to connect with the youth of today through video game technology.

I started here as a Community Manager with the intention of succeeding the Webmaster who was moving to game development. I helped build the 2nd half of a Community Management team, then helped build a Web Applications Team and get them situated and now I've moved completely into the world Systems Adminstration. To you other Sys Admins out there -- yes, my hair is falling out.

Oh yea, there has been a lot of media and hype surrounding this project. As it is military backed and supported with a foundation in the recruitment sector, it has been labeled by some as a recruiting tool, others as a brain-washing technique.

I would like to publish my official response to this as a member of the Army Game Project, Read my point of views about the Army Game Project, "America's Army", right here very soon!

- MY PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES -

Here's a history of all the places I've worked; or at least earned a paycheck of some sort -- complete with raw commentary (actually, commentary is coming later).

U.S. ARMY - ARMY GAME PROJECT	2003 - 2010
Network Architect & System Administrator
I helped create and maintain data security policies; backup and restoration procedures; keep software up to date system logging and statistical usage reports; assortment of your average SA tasks. This environment is filled with high-volume NAS, transaction servers, Oracle; PostgreSQL; MySQL servers, web farms, high-profile forums, IRC services, Wiki sites, ... and the list goes on. Of course there was the paper-work (ick) -- yearly projection reports and cost estimates, software, hardware, quotes, "Oh, my".
MySQL Administrator
Websites not only demand dynamic content, but shared content is a requirement as well. We stored a lot of public web data on SQL services. Using a very unique configuration we put together a large integrated network of services.
Project Manager
I managed 7-man web applications team of multi-talented professionals who designed, developed, and maintained several websites of different (sometimes unheard of) architectures and frameworks. I also operated as a sudo Project Manager for a 5-man Community Management team. We designed and produced activity reports, keep community events scheduled -- made them up if we had to... We kept the news up to date with sneek-peaks and AA community highlights. The AACM team also managed a volunteer team of 50+ people, each of them contributing a small service to the project such as user support. These guys were the absolute heart-beat of the community in every way -- it was a virtual "army" of folks who simply enjoyed helping the project.
Webmaster / Web Developer
As a Webmaster, I handled custom configuration requests, adding modules where needed, creating web applications, and performing upgrades when required.
Community Manager
I learned first-hand how to be a Community Manager. Operating as a liason, the job was simply help keep the Internet Community interested and active. We came with creative games and events and used all of our communication devices to get the word out. You can only do good having an efficient Community Management team -- they are the glue that keeps the "word-of-mouth" marketing a powerful resource.
Commentary:
CDA CONSULTING	2002 - 2003
Owner/Operator
Developed public and private networks and applications to a few companies to make ends meet while in transition.
Commentary:
CYBRTOWN INC.	2001 - 2002
Systems & Network Administrator
I worked for this dial-up and wireless ISP which serviced about 600-900 local customers at the time. I redesigned their whole network from the bottom up using the existing barebones hardware they had available. Believe it or not, we made it work well. To keep it short, the keywords here are: 3Com RAS, Portmaster2, Radius, Dual Gateway BGP, Cisco routers, Rackmount servers, and all the common Internet services.
Commentary:
PENTELEDATA INC.	1998 - 2000
Network Engineer
I created network monitoring applications using the SNMP protocol for the core fiber optic network; managed Cisco Access Lists and BGP routing tables; upgraded firmware when necessary; provided an assortment of network services to commercial clients including Government and Law Enforcement entities
System Administrator
I also provided standard system administration duties; managed online services such as DNS, POP3, SMTP; beta tested and administrated CheckPoint firewall services; and provided training to local law enforcement on how to process reports on computer crimes and related topics
Security Task Force Engineer
I had the privilege of playing a part to co-design the new Security Task Force; drafting standard operating procedures for commercial customer reports and response; provided system, network, and data analysis for reporeted events.
Commentary:
INTERMEDIA MARKETING SOLUTIONS	1997 - 1998
Network Engineer
I provided networking services across the LAN/WAN; light systems administration work on Windows NT and Data General (DG) systems; and technician support on DOS, Windows 95 and 98 clients.
System Technician
Position Overview
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WAWA INC. - RED ROOF	1996 - 1997
Windows NT Support Specialist
I provided remote technical support over a WAN on Windows NT servers located at each store location via PC-Anywhere dial-in application.
Commentary:
INTERMEDIA MARKETING SOLUTIONS	1994 - 1996
Computer Operator
I handled electronic data for clients such as Bell Atlantic, Sallie Mae, and other fortune 500 companies. My duties included secure data transfers; managing print queues; nightly tape backups; batch file creation, Netware user/group management and Windows NT service administrator.
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