I earned the CompTIA A+ Certification around 2001, and it still appears to be valid as of May 2024. The logo is pretty, so I’m adding it here. Many of my other certifications from back then have been retired (Zend PHP5 Certified Engineer, Certified Novell Engineer 5, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer [NT4], and Linux Professional Institute Certified Level 1 [expired 2008]). For fun, I might take some new certification exams as time allows.

Other pieces of my history:

-July 2016: Certified as a Mentor on Coursera after completing a mentoring course.

-April 2016: Completed the Coursera Course: “Build Your First Android App” via Central Supelec, a French school. (where the instructor spoke understandable English)

-July 2015: Completed the Coursera Course from UC San Diego: Learning How to Learn (since renamed)

-March 2013: Took a Coursera Hosted Course from CalTech on Drugs and The Brain.

-April 2007 (about the same time my first niece was born): Achieved the status of Zend PHP5 Certified Engineer.

~2006-2008: Wrote a custom CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software package (“Cloud-based” – remote servers written in PHP sharing XML data with a C# written Windows Client which showed customers in a tree hierarchy) for Anritsu. It exported the contacts to Microsoft Outlook and other formats. The purpose of the CRM was to track field service engineers for their Communications company customers (for example, there was a tree for T-Mobile, another for Verizon, another for AT&T, etc.). At the time, I called this software RWD Contact, because I started writing it on this website’s server (RWDC = “R”ob”W”ilkens”D”ot”C”om), but ultimately moved it to its own domain. I had a health emergency in 2008, and both had to leave the project and simultaneously lost the contract (it was kind of a mutual parting, no hard feelings, they even sent me a card with a nice note).

-January 2003: Certified : Linux Professional Institute Level 1

-Late 2001: City Spec, Inc. – Queens, NY – Boiler Inspection Company, I wrote software in Visual Basic that interfaced (via API) with Microsoft MapPoint, and read in (from database) a list of scheduled appointments for the boiler inspections, and optimized the routes so that the drivers had the shortest path from starting at the home office and finishing near the home office again.

-May-June 2001: Geo-Centers (now called SAIC, I think), Title: “Senior Engineer II”, I was contracted to help build a biochemical weapons detection system. This involved C/Linux socket programming (using TCP/IP to communicate with the sensor), GTK+ interfaces, Apache HTTPD configuration, and related tasks.

-December 2001: Achieved A+ Certification

-2001: Attended the ACM 1: Beyond Cyberspace conference. My notes are archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20010502070625/http://www.robwilkens.com/ACM1-Notes.html – Learned interesting concepts like Nanotechnology that was planned to be used in humans and to network people.

-October 2001: Completed Requirements to become A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE)

-May 1999: Became a Microsoft Certified Professional

-1998-2001: New York State Unified Court System (including Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, 2nd Department – primarily the Mental Hygiene Legal Services offices at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center and Pilgrim Psychiatric Center – and New York City Civil Court, including Manhattan Civil Court and Bronx Housing Court): Local Area Network Administrator. I supported databases (Advanced DB Master), ran cabling (crimped and tested Ethernet cables), and provided general tech support for Novell networks and Windows Peer-to-Peer networks.

-1998-2003: Worked by contract with NAV Co., LLC (Norman A. Vernati, RIP), to co-author annulment case management software for the Roman Catholic Church – among other things, I wrote the Rome Report feature which generated reports sent to the Vatican, and I also visited several Diocese offices, starting with the Archdiocese of Atlanta in 1998, to help debug things and get the software up and running. Also visited the Syracuse and NYC Archdiocese offices at other times.

-1998: Telephonics (A Griffon Corporation) now known as TTM Tech. Senior Engineer. I was briefly employed here as an engineer, however, after talking to other coworkers there who i knew from other jobs, I decided to seek a Novell Networking Certification since I already had been exposed to Novell Netware Networks at Clemson as an Employee of the college of Engineering, and quickly got certified and moved on to a job in the ocurts (in between, I did some contract work for the Church via NAV Co., LLC, possibly mentioned elsewhere here).

(The above logo is for the below company, we were once given a keychain in that shape, though gold in color, with that logo in that shape, which i no longer possess.).

-1996-1998: Concurrent Computer Corporation (Formerly Harris Computer Systems Corporation, now I think they go by Concurrent Real Time, which has the same logo when I google it). C/UNIX Systems Software Engineer on the Quality and Reliability Engineering Team, I developed, debugged, and tested UNIX Kernel, Library, and Command Tools code for a custom Real-Time implementation (PowerMAX OS or PowerUX) of UNIX System V Release IV. When I was there, the company created one of the first interactive video-on-demand server systems used by cable companies like Time Warner at the time, sort of a predecessor to YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok, etc. Example Project(s) from memory include making PPP (Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet) work on our implementation of UNIX – to fix this, I detected an issue with Little-Endian vs. Big-Endian binary number format – as a result of our UNIX being translated from an Intel-like platform to our PowerPC Platform, which used the opposite encoding of bits. I also was responsible for designing (writing specs) and implementing (coding) new kernel features to enable the Hardclock Timer Frequency to be set both a “tunable” boot time parameter or be set at run time dynamically – this affected the number of ‘ticks per second’ or ‘hz’ that the system used to count seconds (this may have been a motorola-only feature). I solved an emergency post-release bug where the job control functions of the command shell were disabled, yes – I also created that bug, but that’s besides the point. My first performance review in the company reported “Robert solves at least 2x as many problems and is the lowest paid member of the team”, which resulted in me getting a boost in salary (significantly above company average annual increases at the time) and a promotion from Lead Software Engineer (my hired title) to Senior Engineer. Kernel development targeted two architectures: the Motorola 68k and the PowerPC 603/604.

-1995-1996: Simple Solutions of Clemson (one of my roommates’ friends’ businesses), I visited some VHS Video Rental Stores (such as nearby ones in Georgia) to perform backups on their systems and perform system optimizations (de-fragmentation and more).

-1994-1996: Clemson University College of Engineering: Student Employee solely responsible for the PC Labs throughout the college (there were about 5 public access labs where students could use the PCs). I wrote software that, at each start-up (and Netware Login Script), would replace all the Windows configuration (.ini) files with fresh copies, inserting anything custom like the machine name, and it would also delete any user-created files and restore any deleted files from the “image” I made of what each PC would have. This was on Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

-1991-1996: Concession Staff, Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Mostly, I was a popcorn/candy/soda salesman (suggestive selling, upselling, etc.) at a local theater run by Sony Pictures. I was featured in the Northeast Regional company newsletter one holiday (4th of July?) weekend for selling the most at the theater, which sold the most. Was cross-trained as a Usher, Doorman, Greeter, and in Box Office Sales. During the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment (the parent company of Loews at the time I worked there) my employment information was leaked, and I received credit montoring from that.

-1996: Graduated from Clemson University with a degree in Computer Science, originally with an Applications emphasis in Geology (took at least one class in that), but found the subject Dull and switched that to Psychology, which was in the same building (Brackett Hall at the time). In computer science, as an undergrad, I took graduate level classes (with other graduate students) in both Operating Systems Implementation (Linux, we did things like make a new disk scheduling algorithm), and also Programming Language Implementation (We designed and implemented a Pascal Compiler, using tools such as Lex (Lexical Analyzer) and YACC (Yet another compiler compiler).

-1994-1996: Sysop (Systems Operator), Mocking Reality BBS system. A dial-up computer system that provided software backups, allowing people who purchased commercial software to store remote copies in case their copy/system was damaged. Handle: The Lone Viking. The BBS was also connected to message relay networks, enabling cross-site communication on message boards before the widespread adoption of Internet browsers. Authored a voting tally system for PCBoard BBS to allow users to vote on topics of interest.

1992: Graduated Chaminade High School, an All Male Catholic school on Long Island’s Nassau County.

-1990: Video Game Discount Outlet. @ Nassau Mall – Nintendo and Sega game sales, mostly open-box video games, and, to my recollection, we also purchased used games there.