Windows and Cisco ASA5505 Problems…

Anthony Curreri is currently a Programmer Analyst at the University of Washington, and is no longer looking for work. You can keep track of him on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Anthony Curreri’s Experience

• Seven years developing PHP/MySQL-based web applications.
• Four years as System Administrator using Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and RedHat Enterprise Linux.
• Four years as Database Administrator using MySQL and Microsoft SQL.
• Data migration to/from: Excel, Access, MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, MYOB.
• Web design using HTML/CSS and Adobe Dreamweaver
• Web marketing and search engine optimization.
• Networking, VPN’s, and firewalls.
• Motivated self-starter, able to work equally well independently or on a team.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, for technical and non-technical clients.
• Believes that good code is self-documenting and is also accompanied by comments and external use documentation.
• Recognized as a named author on a published research paper, and nominated for the College of Engineering’s Community of Innovators award at the University of Washington.

Anthony Curreri’s resume is available in these formats:

Development and Project Management Experience

As principal programmer, Anthony Curreri was responsible for the complete systems development life cycle (feature analysis to documentation) on the following projects:

Post Award Tracking

Project Start: April 2011
Project End: May 2011
Technologies: PHP, Javascript, MySQL, Linux

This project was required for audit compliance. The director of TransNow needed to be involved in tracking the spending of budgets which TransNow administered. They could have come up with a paper and pen solution, but we decided to make it easier for the director, and also for PI’s and TransNow office staff to use. I developed an application that allowed office staff to enter the budget information for approved projects into an extension of the web application they were already using to solicit proposals for those projects.

The timeline for this project was short due to the hard deadline of meeting audit compliance. I was able to prioritize this project ahead of my other work and complete the project on time.

I also didn’t have much experience with budgets before this project started. I had to get up to speed quickly in order to take requirements for this project. I created a prototype first, to ensure that I had understood everything, before I began development.

Contacts and Student Database

Project Start: June 2007
Project End: March 2011
Technologies: PHP, Javascript, MySQL, RedHat Enterprise Linux

When I started at TransNow, they were using an Excel spreadsheet to manage their Contacts Database, a list of all the people they wanted to keep in contact with: students, PI’s, and industry professionals. They had some people designated to receive an annual report, some to get a quarterly newsletter, and the director also periodically requested adhoc queries: lists of people who were PI’s in a certain range of years, students who graduated during a certain time, etc. All these things were difficult to get from an Excel spreadsheet. I imported all the data into a MySQL database and wrote a custom web front-end to make the data easy to manage.

The Excel spreadsheet had some data inconsistency issues. I was able to do a lot of the clean up automatically in the parse and import script I wrote in PHP, but some of it was done by staff under my direction. After completing the initial contacts database, I worked to incorporate the spreadsheets they were using to track student progress as well. I learned how staff needed to use the student data, took requirements, made templates of the new features, and after another couple rounds of student data clean-up, I imported the archived student data into the new Contacts Database as well.

This custom software streamlined most of the student tracking tasks the office staff were doing, and put the data in a secure system online so that staff could work from home.

At the heart of this system was a sophisticated search function. It allowed office staff to search the database on any criteria they chose, and either individually update records or export the results to a tab-delimited file for Mailing Services, an email list for mailman, or an Excel spreadsheet for the director.

TransNow was able to hire student workers to update contact information without worrying that they would mistakenly alter data.

Request for Proposals (RFP)

Project Start: December 2006
Project End: February 2011
Technologies: PHP, MySQL, RedHat Enterprise Linux

TransNow’s main business was distributing grant money, so I was excited to improve their online Request for Proposals (RFP) system to make it more user-friendly and robust. I added an online Review Section so that peer reviewers could easily and securely login to view proposals they’d been assigned and submit their reviews.

An administration section ties the two sites together, allowing TransNow staff to manage both writer and reviewer users and passwords, assign reviewers to proposals, and track which reviewers have submitted a review. The system also allows the user to make notes about reviewers and to flag reviewers who haven’t confirmed their availability, so that all user management can take place online.

I had the opportunity to re-evaluate the RFP system and improve it each year, and also able to develop software to manage the complete life-cycle of a proposal; both opportunities really improved my abilities as a project manager.

Medisystems’ Online Medical Certification Test

Project Start Date: May 2006
Project End Date: July 2006
Technologies: PHP, MySQL

Medisystems is a medical supplier with some new technologies. They were administering a paper test to certify nurses on this equipment. They contracted me to put these certification tests online. This software presents the user with one question at a time, and saves the answer to the database after every question, so that if the user has to log out, or the session times out, the user can pick up where they left off. The software also records and archives the answers and time spent on each question, so that Medisystems can evaluate which questions were easier or more difficult.

When I started the project, Medisystems had already run out of paper tests, and didn’t want to order any more. I had to create this software quickly, while meeting the needs of an existing contract with another company.

WIDA: Nationwide Test Question Collaboration

Project Start: June 2004
Project End: November 2005
Technologies: PHP, iframes, MySQL, RedHat Enterprise Linux

WIDA is a consortium of states from around the country looking to create a standardized test for English language learners. The stakeholders with the domain-knowledge for this project were located in different states from around the country, and they needed a way to remotely collaborate to create test questions.

An organization in another state ran the pilot program and had created a prototype in Microsoft Access. I was put in a difficult position: as the principal programmer for the web version of this software, I had to create my own milestones and deadlines for this aspect of the project, but I was unable to get the general project manager to set up meetings with end users or other stakeholders to get feedback from the pilot. I made the software closely resemble the prototype Microsoft Access database, but I knew that as users began to use the software, change requests would start coming in. I made the online forms easy to alter: a flat file describes the form layout, and the software learned about database changes and field types through an automated process using SQL describe statements.

I designed all aspects of the web site’s security: SSL, user and password management, and session security. I was also responsible for design and implementation of the GUI, process workflow, and Sec. 508 usability compliance.

Firelog

Project Start Date: June 2003
Project End Date: October 2003
Technologies: PHP, JpGraph, Perl, MySQL, RedHat Enterprise Linux

While working as a student intern in the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s networking department, I realized the need for some way to analyze firewall logs. The networking department began installing Cisco firewalls in remote locations around campus. I had configured all the firewall logs to be aggregated on a single syslog server (running on a RedHat server I installed), but it was not possible for a human to look through these log files to determine problem areas; there was simply too much data.

I built a module in Perl to parse firewall logs and load them into a MySQL database. The frontend, created in PHP, allows the user to enter a timeframe and see pie charts displaying the top 10 attackers, attacked ports, and victims during that timeframe. This allows UWO staff to quickly see problem areas and decide how to address them. It turned their web of firewalls into a campus-wide intrusion detection system.