Marc Robinson
marc@thusness.com

Education

B.A. in Philosophy, University of Kansas
Graduate work in Computer Science/Networking, University of Missouri at Kansas City,
1989-1991

Skills

Languages:  C, SQL, many assemblers; FORTRAN, BASIC; various VRU languages; HTML, some Javascript
Operating systems: Unix (HP-UX, Sun, SVR4, some AIX), QNX
Telephony:  click here
Application expertise: data communications, battlefield simulation, typesetting, stocks and commodities, travel
Job roles:  Analyst, systems programmer, applications programmer, project lead, consultant
 

Employment History

Compuware (contracted to Sprint), August 1997 to present
Senior programmer

Currently developing software under Gensym G2 and Integrity packages
to track network elements in a large telephony testing lab. The software
allows users to relate the elements to each other, and ultimately automate
the testing. This includes using SNMP and MIBs to discover, describe,
and model the devices so users can relate the devices to each other on
graphical workspaces, and reserve and display resources. Future work will
track test progress, monitor tests while animating the graphics to show
test progress, and possibly do root-cause analysis for determining the
reasons for test failures.

Worked as a system administrator on HP and Sun machines on the
ION project, laying down operating systems, Veritas file systems,
etc., and doing application support.

Coded Informix SQL and ESQL for various utilities. Also did a lot of shell
script programming. In addition, I wrote C code to discover and document dependencies
between tables in the database, establishing a table hierarchy. My main responsibilities
were the extraction and processing of data from various databases to an online data store.

Responsible for maintaining existing application code and writing new code for a
prepaid calling application. This required coding in Oracle SQLPLUS, PL/SQL, and Pro-C.
Ensured database integrity, and solved problems on the application server caused by
size constraints.

 

Trans World Airlines, May 1996 to August 1997
Senior systems analyst

Developed and maintained interactive voice response (IVR) applications on Syntellect
and Conversant Voice Response Units (VRU). Coded application development tools
on Conversant VRUs. Also maintained mainframe data and reports related to the
applications.

 

Brite Voice Systems, April 1991 to May 1996
Senior systems analyst

Coded and tested software to improve efficiency of digital compelled signalling for E1
(foreign digital) lines on Brite VRUs. This was written in C language.

Designed and developed application software in C for foreign telephone companies:
Spanish (call transfer), South African (debit card), Singapore (cellular voice mail).

Developed IVR products in C using TCP/IP, X.25, and SNA. This included designing and
coding the low layers of the X.25 and TCP/IP products to use multiple vendor APIs and
hardware, and extensive testing of vendor products.

Developed an IVR product for the international market. This product interfaced to analog
and digital phone systems and can be customized for multiple languages and mixtures of
applications. Users can also plug in new features, such as voice recognition. This was
written in a mixture of C and proprietary scripting languages.

Wrote an ISDN PRI driver, and certified the driver and application code at Bell
Laboratories. Features included alarm processing, incoming and outgoing call setup and
teardown, ANI/DNIS retrieval, and variable billing. I adapted the driver for multiple
vendor boards, and for Northern Telecom and 1TR6 message sets..

Designed and implemented a protocol that runs on top of UDP. The protocol efficiently
updates voice and data files across a Unix LAN. Both broadcast and multicast
transmission are provided. The protocol also resolves contention for simultaneous sends.
The system was implemented using both socket and TLI APIs on System V.

 

Knight-Ridder Financial Information Systems, April 1990 - February 1991
Project leader

I designed and coded a specialized transport layer for an on-line financial service. The
transport layer ran on top of several Netbios packages as well as a proprietary serial data
link. Server PCs used the software to update displays on customer PCs running Windows.

 

PARS Service, January 1984 - April 1990
Consultant (1984); project leader, senior analyst, communications analyst

My duties included evaluating software designs, deliverables, schedules, and contracts for
communications products PARS was considering. I was responsible for certifying all
vendor equipment before it could be put on the PARS network.

Member of an international committee to design software and select the vendor for
software used to share workstations among multiple companies on a single LAN. The
committee wrote the technical specifiications that allowed all participating companies to
share the workstations and LAN without modifying their hosts or protocols.

Managed Travelshopper, an on-line service that allowed CompuServe users to book
flights and hotels. The system was the first of its kind. This required heavy troubleshooting
of X.25 protocol incompatibilities and PAD problems, and writing special code to
circumvent deadlocks in our Xenix host.

Designed changes to proprietary protocol conversion equipment to allow European
customers to dial up our U.S.-based mainframe via X.25 PDNs. I worked closely with the
vendor and British Telecom and European networks.

Supervised up to 6 programmers and installers.