Resume

Revision 2
Revision 1

Boris Epstein

Malden (Metro Boston), Massachusetts, US (map)

Contact

E-Mail: boris.epstein@yahoo.com
Phone: 617.816.9654

Summary

Strong analytical abilities derived from both study and hands-on experience. Enjoy challenge and uncertainty. Seeking a position where I could contribute and grow, both professionally and personally.

Technical Summary

About a dozen years of full-time experience in the IT industry. That includes programming, systems administration (primarily various versions of UNIX and Linux) as well as network administration.
Participated in development, installation and maintenance of large-scale IT solutions in fields as diverse as telecommunications, financial, internet hosting, e-commerce, etc. Have experience developing standalone applications from scratch as well as working in a team. Diverse client interaction experience both domestically and internationally.
Operating Systems: UNIX, Linux, MS Windows (XP, NT), MS DOS, Apollo Aegis, VMS
Programming Languages: C/C++, PERL, JAVA, UNIX (C-Shell, Bourne, Korn), Tcl/Tk, Lisp/Scheme
Tools: Emacs, MS Office, FrameMaker, VI
Hardware: IBM-compatible PC, HP, SUN

Timeline

April 2004 - present

Freelance writer and activist

Provide technical assistance to several online projects including Cooperative Research and New England JAVA Users Group.
In 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina helped coordinate volunteer relief activities in the Gulf and personally participated in those activities.
Currently work odd jobs to support myself.

July 2001 - April 2004

ARCON Corporation
Waltham, MA

Worked as a programmer involved in development and support of the ETMS air traffic management software for the FAA at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, MA. Specific area of concentration was the CDM component of the ETMS. The tasks included design and development of new functionality, as well as supporting legacy code. A large codebase together with the need for system reliability provide for a challenging task. The code was originally written in Pascal and later migrated to C.
The system was in essence a large transportation management system receiving and reflecting frequent (mostly once-a-minute) updates regarding the status of flights operating over the US airspace. Near realtime requirements were in place for processing and analyzing data which made for an exciting and challenging task.

December 1999 - April 2001

Boston Internet Group
Boston, MA

Performed multiple roles on a daily basis, including those of a senior system designer and developer, Windows NT and UNIX system administrator and web hosting support engineer. Key player in the technology planning and implementation area. As a sole expertise in a number of areas, including object-oriented design and development, networking, network security and systems management, advised other team members on various technology issues.
Main tasks included web site backend implementation for clients, in-house product design and implementation as well as day-to-day activities mentioned above. Most of the coding was done using object-oriented technology, with JAVA as a programming language of choice.
Provided critical insight which allowed to greatly improve stability and efficiency of the internal systems.
Clients included Davox Corporation (now part of Aspect Software), Pilates Store, Lobsters-Online, Inc. and others.

September 1999 - January 2000

Thomson Financial
Medford, MA

Worked as a UNIX administrator in a large-scale web and dataserver hosting facility. Was responsible for maintenance and troubleshooting of multiple industrial-scale UNIX servers in SUN, HP and IBM platforms. Performed database maintenance of SYBASE and ORACLE databases as well as data recovery and general server troubleshooting.

May 1999 - July 1999

GTE International (currently part of Level3 Communications)
Cambridge, MA

As part of the Y2K team worked on the remediation of custom SUN Solaris machines hosting clients' mission-critical WWW sites and applications. Complex upgrades and modifications had to be accomplished requiring an absolute minimum in customers' downtime. Tasks included upgrades of the OS, DB servers and various other third-party software. Custom scripting and coding was often required to facilitate the necessary transition.

November 1995 - May 1999

WorldCare, Inc.
Cambridge, MA

Originally hired as an outside contractor. Accepted a permanent staff position in a three months' time. Throughout my whole tenure was a critical part of a small and continually overtasked team.
Responsibilities included day-to-day maintenance and support of a network of UNIX hosts. Maintained code control systems. Designed and implemented a data backup/archival system for in-house use. Created web pages using HTML, PERL and JAVA. With the emphasis on publicly available software restructured the environment to optimize and economize the development and production process. Modified publicly available software for local needs using C, Tcl/Tk, PERL, JAVA, etc. Was also involved in equipment and software installation and support at client sites. Worked with medical applications and protocols including DICOM, ISG's VRS graphical application and AWARE wavelet compression. Wrote system installation and maintenance scripts. Modified and integrated various third party software packages. Worked with multimedia devices in medical data capture/processing systems. Set up and supported LANs and WANs.

July 1992 - November 1995

Kenan Systems Corporation (currently part of Alcatel-Lucent)
Denver, CO - Cambridge, MA

Participated in database design of SYBASE databases.As part of a product team supported development effort in a heterogeneous UNIX environment. Oversaw the operation of a distributed development environment which included multiple geographically disjoint locations. Wrote a suite of PERL scripts that encompassed the local customizations to ClearCase as required by the project. Other responsibilities included release/code management using ClearCase code control system, SYBASE database administration, system design activities.

Summers of 1990 and 1991

Unisys Corporation
Cambridge, MA

Participated in the development of ATMS (Automated Traffic Management System), an air traffic management and control system for the FAA. Coding was done in Pascal against a proprietary database. The network consisted of a multitude of Aegis hosts on the Apollo platform. The development was done under DSEE as an integrated code control and management environment.

Personal

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1969. Have lived in the US since 18 years of age. Attended Tver University (website in Russian) in Tver, Russia; Boston University and University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics/Computer Science in 1992.

References

Just ask - plenty of people will vouch for me!

Curriculum Vitae

Boris Epstein

Malden (Metro Boston), Massachusetts, US (map)

Summary

An analytical thinker with a poetic perception. Have few goals other than attaining fulfillment in life and being of use to the humanity which includes myself. Can be equally content writing a political commentary, diagnosing a piece of equipment or writing software code.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1969. Have lived in the US since 18 years of age. Attended Tver University (website in Russian) in Tver, Russia; Boston University and University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics/Computer Science in 1992.

Technical Summary

About a dozen years of full-time experience in the IT industry. That includes programming, systems administration (primarily various versions of UNIX and Linux) as well as network administration.
Participated in development, installation and maintenance of large-scale IT solutions in fields as diverse as telecommunications, financial, internet hosting, e-commerce, etc. Have experience developing standalone applications from scratch as well as working in a team. Diverse client interaction experience both domestically and internationally.
Operating Systems: UNIX, Linux, MS Windows (XP, NT), MS DOS, Apollo Aegis, VMS
Programming Languages: C/C++, PERL, JAVA, UNIX (C-Shell, Bourne, Korn), Tcl/Tk, Lisp/Scheme
Tools: Emacs, MS Office, FrameMaker, VI
Hardware: IBM-compatible PC, HP, SUN

Timeline

April 2004 - present

Freelance writer and activist

Maintain two websites, Sniffing Out The Higher Truth and Building a Pyramid. Provide technical assistance to several online projects including Cooperative Research and New England JAVA Users Group.
In 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina helped coordinate volunteer relief activities in the Gulf and personally participated in those activities.
Currently work odd jobs to support myself.

July 2001 - April 2004

ARCON Corporation
Waltham, MA

Worked as a programmer involved in development and support of the ETMS air traffic management software for the FAA at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, MA. Specific area of concentration was the CDM component of the ETMS. The tasks included design and development of new functionality, as well as supporting legacy code. A large codebase together with the need for system reliability provide for a challenging task. The code was originally written in Pascal and later migrated to C.
The system was in essence a large transportation management system receiving and reflecting frequent (mostly once-a-minute) updates regarding the status of flights operating over the US airspace. Near realtime requirements were in place for processing and analyzing data which made for an exciting and challenging task.

December 1999 - April 2001

Boston Internet Group
Boston, MA

Performed multiple roles on a daily basis, including those of a senior system designer and developer, Windows NT and UNIX system administrator and web hosting support engineer. Key player in the technology planning and implementation area. As a sole expertise in a number of areas, including object-oriented design and development, networking, network security and systems management, advised other team members on various technology issues.
Main tasks included web site backend implementation for clients, in-house product design and implementation as well as day-to-day activities mentioned above. Most of the coding was done using object-oriented technology, with JAVA as a programming language of choice.
Provided critical insight which allowed to greatly improve stability and efficiency of the internal systems.
Clients included Davox Corporation (now part of Aspect Software), Pilates Store, Lobsters-Online, Inc. and others.

September 1999 - January 2000

Thomson Financial
Medford, MA

Worked as a UNIX administrator in a large-scale web and dataserver hosting facility. Was responsible for maintenance and troubleshooting of multiple industrial-scale UNIX servers in SUN, HP and IBM platforms. Performed database maintenance of SYBASE and ORACLE databases as well as data recovery and general server troubleshooting.

May 1999 - July 1999

GTE International (currently part of Level3 Communications)
Cambridge, MA

As part of the Y2K team worked on the remediation of custom SUN Solaris machines hosting clients' mission-critical WWW sites and applications. Complex upgrades and modifications had to be accomplished requiring an absolute minimum in customers' downtime. Tasks included upgrades of the OS, DB servers and various other third-party software. Custom scripting and coding was often required to facilitate the necessary transition.

November 1995 - May 1999

WorldCare, Inc.
Cambridge, MA

Originally hired as an outside contractor. Accepted a permanent staff position in a three months' time. Throughout my whole tenure was a critical part of a small and continually overtasked team.
Responsibilities included day-to-day maintenance and support of a network of UNIX hosts. Maintained code control systems. Designed and implemented a data backup/archival system for in-house use. Created web pages using HTML, PERL and JAVA. With the emphasis on publicly available software restructured the environment to optimize and economize the development and production process. Modified publicly available software for local needs using C, Tcl/Tk, PERL, JAVA, etc. Was also involved in equipment and software installation and support at client sites. Worked with medical applications and protocols including DICOM, ISG's VRS graphical application and AWARE wavelet compression. Wrote system installation and maintenance scripts. Modified and integrated various third party software packages. Worked with multimedia devices in medical data capture/processing systems. Set up and supported LANs and WANs.

July 1992 - November 1995

Kenan Systems Corporation (currently part of Alcatel-Lucent)
Denver, CO - Cambridge, MA

Participated in database design of SYBASE databases.As part of a product team supported development effort in a heterogeneous UNIX environment. Oversaw the operation of a distributed development environment which included multiple geographically disjoint locations. Wrote a suite of PERL scripts that encompassed the local customizations to ClearCase as required by the project. Other responsibilities included release/code management using ClearCase code control system, SYBASE database administration, system design activities.

Summers of 1990 and 1991

Unisys Corporation
Cambridge, MA

Participated in the development of ATMS (Automated Traffic Management System), an air traffic management and control system for the FAA. Coding was done in Pascal against a proprietary database. The network consisted of a multitude of Aegis hosts on the Apollo platform. The development was done under DSEE as an integrated code control and management environment.

References

Just ask - plenty of people will vouch for me!

Invitation to contributors

By Boris Epstein
December 11, 2006

OK, I've been here by myself long enough... Time to let other voices be heard too.

First - a little history. This project was initially started in August 2004 as Sniffing Out The Higher Truth. The principal purpose was for yours truly to allow to express his views as well as counter the overwhelming bias of the mainstream media. Later on I started another blog site, Building a Pyramid. The reason for this migration were technical - the hosting service at the Blog-City at the time appeared to have some features that the Blogger lacked. In terms of those features the Blog-City has since disappointed me on several occasions but it definitely does offer one great feature - the Link Blog - which, as you can see I am using extensively. It is used to provide links to external articles I find to be worth a read as well as to articles published on my sites. You can gain access to everything this web project of mine has to offer by just reading the Link Blog.

At one point the Blog-City allowed RSS-based site mirroring which I wasted no time taking advantage of. So at this point all posts published on Sniffing Out The Higher Truth are automatically copied to Building a Pyramid. Thus both future contributors and myself are expected to publish their posts on Sniffing Out The Higher Truth. And for that they will need a Blogger invitation which ought be requested from yours truly.

Hence allow me to invite anyone and everyone willing to contribute to this project. A couple of guidelines to follow:

1. These guidelines are not final and may have to be revised.
2. I do reserve a right to censorship within this project though I sincerely hope never to have to excercize this right.
3. All contributors must be willing to use their own name and provide a contact e-mail or site reference in their posts.
4. Please sign and date your post in a way similar to this one (see upper right corner).
5. The topics of this forum are history, politics, psychology, science and just about anything else that helps us understand the complex world we live in. Something highly specific - such as knitting technique posts - may not belong here. Internet marketing definitely does not. If I believe your posts are too far off-topic I will contact you and inform you to that effect.
6. Needless to say, all content viewed as illegal - such as illegal pornography, for instance - will not be tolerated and if I believe you are breaking the law I consider constitutional have no doubt I will report you to the law enforcement.
7. While all criticism, no matter how harsh, is accepted try to avoid ad hominem attacks and threats. Or try to limit them to yours truly as he is quite immune to them.
8. All posts must be in English - or at least contain enough English to be of interest to English speakers.
9. Spam is not allowed. Attempts to sabotage the project by spam or by any other means will be vigourously repelled.
   

E-mail me if you are interested or have any questions. I will need your e-mail address to invite you to participate in the project. You will also need to obtain a Blogger profile in order to get started in case you haven't done so already. If you don't feel like writing a whole post but instead would like me to post a link e-mail it to me and chances are I will publish it - provided it matches the guidelines above.

And, lastly but not leastly - on more than one occasion I have been accused of presenting things in a one-sided and biased manner. Those accusations have undoubtedly been correct to some extent or other as everyone is by their very nature biased and subjective - though yours truly has tried to present his readers with a diverse variety of viewpoints, some very different from his. But regardless - here's your chance to counter this bias. Do it - or forever hold your peace.

Donate to help my effort along

It has been over two years since I started my website at Sniffing Out The Higher Truth. I then moved to Building a Pyramid publishing the bulk of my work there. At this point I found what seems to be the best possible setup - all articles are originally published at Sniffing Out The Higher Truth and then automatically mirrored to Building a Pyramid. I also publish a link blog whose contents are periodically collected into summary articles.

The main point of this project is to fight the bias in the mainstream media and inform the public about issues of import. A major part of that is uncovering the truth of 9/11 and trying to see to it that the great deception most vividly punctuated by the dreadful events of that day comes to an end.

I have put a lot of time and effort into this project. I have heard both praise and scorn - and that I consider a good sign. But no project can be run on enthusiasm alone and, just like everyone else, I need cash. So if you like what you see consider donating. You can use the button at the top of this post to securely donate via PayPal using a debit or credit card, or your PayPal account.

Thank you all in advance.