Here’s the fifth in a row of AntiViews – enjoy!
Vorlin’s profile on Antionline
Name: Grantland Todd Keller
Place and date of Birth (or age): Augusta, Georgia 1975 (29 years old now)
Current place of residence: Tampa, Florida
Marital status: Single, but that's probably changing within this year, hehe...
AO: How did you get into computers?
Vorlin: I knew when I was 12 years old, I wanted to be into computers. It was my life all the time, tearing apart old machines, working basic code, playing every game I could find, jumping onto the internet as soon as I could when I was 14. Working the bbs', playing telnet-based MUDs which got me into the unix side (VAX/VMS to begin with) and light programming. All that led me up to my first job.
AO: What is your area of specialty?
Vorlin: If I had to pick an area of specialty, that being defined as one the most liked and worked, it would be unix administration (or *nix administration, if it's broadened a bit).
AO: What do you do for a living?
Vorlin: Official title is Unix Administrator but where I'm now, I do a bit of everything from PC repair to PostgreSQL database administration, to 2000/XP administration, etc...
AO: How did you get into your career?
Vorlin: My first corporate (official) job was in December 1995, starting as a systems operator for a company called FYI Online in Washington, DC. From there, it was a simple task of starting to learn from those who were unix admins. I was definitely enthralled by the ability of the shell, what you could do with it, the flexibility and more efficiency than anything else I had run across.
AO: Describe your education and/or training?
Vorlin: Not unlike a lot of those like me, I have zero training. Everything I've done or learned has been self-taught. I read rather voraciously, whether it's mythology, history, fiction, military, sci-fi, or education and all that helped. When I went to my first job, I had bought the first version of the "Unix in a nutshell" by O'Reilly and wrote down over 100 commands and what they did, not knowing what they were, but it helped nonetheless. I believe in the school of life where pertinent and relevant information is more important than taking four years of a college of stuff that you may or may not ever use (and from what I see, it's the latter not the former). My training is self-education and I accomplish that by writing things myself, finding out everything I can, whatever... You can never know too much!
AO: Do you plan on staying where you are (career-wise) or are you still in school / working on certs to get into another area?
Vorlin: I plan to one day get the esteemed "Senior Unix Admin" title and if I had my way, I'd be in charge of a data center or at the very least, work in a very big data center. I had been able to be in complete control of a build where two RP8400s with 8 procs and 16gb of ram apiece working alongside an XP512 which already had over 300 disks in a variety of RAIDs from 0 to 1 to 5. That was fun and something I want to do a lot more of.
AO: What one piece of advice would you offer to others who may be interested in following a career path or educational path similar to yours?
Vorlin: Never give up when it seems like it's impossible. Many many times I've had to rethink my strategy and wonder if what I was doing was "what I wanted". You have to REALLY want to get into unix administration, because it's nothing like a normal job. It's not 9 to 5, it's not one specific path, it's everything and nothing at the same time. It's programming, security, administration both for users, software, and hardware, and it's a very thankless job. The 600+ users you may keep going with your knowledge and your diligence and dedication won't ever see you. It's late nights, weekends, caffeine, and frustration. Never stop learning. Work your own server, write your own code, and keep going up that ladder.
AO: What skill do you think is invaluable in your area of specialty?
Vorlin: Troubleshooting, the most base of my job, has taught me, in more ways than I can even count, how to look at everything from six different angles that nobody else thinks of. I still surprise myself when I can take a problem that's causing issues with others and dissect it down to minute pieces and fix it without having too much information. When that seeps into your regular life and you're much better at things because of it, you'll know what I mean, hehe...
AO: Describe one of your best / most effective security practices.
Vorlin: It'd have to be through the education of those around me. To have someone who's wanted to learn recite something or watch them fix their own issues is amazing and they spread the wealth out. To be known for educating people on little things they can use to help themselves out in the computer world is a great thing. To hoard it and keep it to oneself like I've seen so many other "IT professionals" do, because they think that makes them invulnerable and more knowledgeable, well...that's pretty lame and I don't associate with them at all.
AO: Do you have a little-known fact about yourself (personal, hobbies, tech-related) that you would be willing to share?
Vorlin: I used to live in Saudi Arabia for 10 years and have gotten to see more countries than there are states in the US. I've been to London 49 times, Paris 28 times, have gotten to see the Eiffel Tower before the nets went up, got to touch Stonehenge before they roped it off due to vandalism (did you know the rock that Stonehendge is made of isn't found for 300+ miles in the surrounding area? Hmmmmm....interesting!), have gotten to see the entire inside and all levels of Notre Dame and Big Ben.
Got to fly on the prince of Saudi Arabia's 747 and our family got approached by the guards on the plane (which were all wearing AK47's) and the prince, who knew my dad by name from his own informants, and we got to go upstairs to spend the flight with him and his harem (no kidding!).
I wouldn't trade my sights and views for anything.
AO: How did you find Antionline?
Vorlin: I somehow hit the link entirely by accident in a search and the title "Hackers know the..." got me interested so I started reading. It's been one of the better sites I've been on, ever.
AO: Anything else you'd like to share?
Vorlin: While we've all been to, have seen, and will see bad people on message boards of all types, the people I've been able to meet and share knowledge with on AO have been invaluable and I'm sticking around for thelong term. I won't miss a lot of those who've just come and gone like so many fly-by-night dot coms.
