Cole Brand – An introduction

This presentation prepared for ISSGC’09.

Background

• Previous history has always been about hardware and networks

• Do internal IT work for smaller company

• Use lot of different OS and OS versions

• Familiar with Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac

• Working with computers since about 12

• Love working with databases

Academics

• A AAS in Comp Sci from a 2 year tech school in Eastern Alabama

• A BS in Comp Sci with minors in Elec Eng, Applied Math from University of Houston – Downtown

• At UHD I and a team-mate built Grid.UHD.edu

Grid.UHD.edu

• 48 nodes• Rocks distribution• Had no formal architecture or direction, we

gave it both• Not as maintainable as we would like

(hence my desire to attend ISSGC and learn!)

• Have had a lot of odd requests, that don’t seem “reasonable”

Going Forward

• I want to get into formal work on clusters, especially given my background in hardware and networks

• I’ve been looking at graduate programs, but haven’t started applying yet (Hey, I just graduated ;-)

• Corporate IT is not for me– Think: do the same tiny cog-thing everyday…

Research Interests

• I like what the Rocks group has going right now, but I don’t quite know enough about other options

• I want to help work on making a GUI sort of interface for clusters, as that seems to be something that a lot of people would like, but it may already exist

• I intend to bring my background of hardware and networking installations and troubleshooting to bear to add value to the current projects underway, pending a distinct focus on graduate work

Future Plans

• Grad School

• Either R&D or teaching, but I would love to do both– R&D in a corporate environment, not just

academically– Teaching at either a primary-education level

or in a post-secondary level

Questions

• Or as my favorite high-school teacher used to say:

• Questions, comments, rude remarks?