All posts by mkizer

Desktop Tour 2023

Here’s a tour of my current home office setup as of January 2023. Over the years it has gone through many iterations – triple monitors, many machines connected via complex KVM switching, etc. The current state is the result of stripping down the overly complex setup, going too far, and then adding a few things here and there. I’ve been running with the current configuration for a few months now, and I really like it. Continue reading Desktop Tour 2023

My Periodic IT Career Update

It has been almost 4 years since my last update on the constantly changing badges and company names of my workplace, so I figured it might be time for an update. Yes, fret not faithful readers, there has been another change besides how the worldwide pandemic has changed the entire workplace situation in general. As always, I’ll repeat the entire journey first, with the latest updates at the end.

Take it from the top…

While still in college I started a part-time IT gig with General Dynamics, which turned into a full time position once I graduated in 1989. Only a couple of years into that job, and General Dynamics decides to outsource their entire IT organization to a company called Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). New badge, same job really.

Over the next few years, the General Dynamics business that we supported, changed hands a few times. First to Hughes Electronics Corporation and then to Raytheon. My job at CSC also took me from Southern California to Tucson, Arizona. This lasted a few more years, until my boss asked me if I wanted to move to San Diego, California to help out on a new account. I probably said yes before he finished his sentence.

Job Timeline
Job Timeline

In mid-2000, I relocated to sunny San Diego and began work on writing a little client/server billing system to help CSC provide a detailed bill to its new IT outsourcing client, the County of San Diego. That little billing system lasted longer than CSC did on this contract, about 13 years, which is a pretty decent run for a VB6/SQL Server solution.  ðŸ™‚

At the end of 2006, CSC had lost the County of San Diego contract to Northrop Grumman (NG). CSC’s staff was divided among NG and an IT consulting firm, BearingPoint. We didn’t get to choose, other than to accept the offer or not. So, another new badge. I guess it was time for a new picture anyway.

Just a couple of years in working for BearingPoint, they decided to sell the majority of their public services consulting business to Deloitte. Except our little piece supporting the County of San Diego was spun off to a new consulting firm, Éclat Consulting (no link for them since they folded some time ago. Here’s what the name means though). Ã‰clat didn’t last too long, and we were shuffled to another new consulting firm, Attain. Still supporting the County of San Diego, just changing badges like bad fashion trends.

NG decided to walk away from the County of San Diego contract before their time was up, and passed it on to Hewlett Packard (HP). This time, everyone (that wanted to stay) was moved to HP (yet another new badge). All one big happy family again. At least for a couple of years.

Late into the year 2015, HP announced that it was going to split into two companies. HP would be handling consumer computers and printers, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) would be handling enterprise products and services. The change this time for us from HP to HPE wasn’t too disruptive, and we didn’t even get new badges! Well, we did get a new overlay that got glued to the face of the badge, with the new company name (same old photo though).

Wall of badge holders
Wall of badge holders. Some of the early companies either didn’t hand out much swag or were lost to the sands of time (and office moves).

The stability of being at HPE would only last until May of 2016, when HPE announced that it would be spinning off the enterprise services component to a new company. This new company would be a merger of sorts between HPE and CSC. This merged company would now be known as DXC Technology and it entered the world to much fanfare and business gibberish in May of 2017. This was going to be a great collaboration between two large IT firms that would take on the world… Until a few months later when it was deemed important to narrow their focus a bit and shed some of the newly acquired divisions. Yes, you guessed it, my job is once again up on the auction block.

For the remainder of 2017 and a couple of months into 2018, we didn’t really have any information about what was happening with our company. Nothing like uncertainty to really boost morale. Much speculation was made as to who would takeover this chunk of business, which is the U.S. Public Sector portion of DXC Technology’s holdings (state and local governments, and such). We received word about our fate in March or so, but had to keep it quiet.

On June 1, 2018, it was finally made public that we would be part of a three company spin-merge based upon DXC Technology’s U.S. Public Sector business, Vencore Holding Corp., and KeyPoint Government Solutions. Each of the three companies operates in different areas, so little to no overlap, thus creating a new company of about 14,000. This new company would be known as Perspecta.

Sometime in late 2020 / early 2021, amidst the “fun” of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we began hearing rumblings of a potential sale of our barely a toddler company, Perspecta, being courted for sale. On May 6, 2021, Peraton announced that they had officially closed the purchase of Perspecta. Earlier in the year, Peraton had also acquired Northrop Grumman’s integrated mission support and IT solutions business, so they are ramping up to become a major player in the IT space.

So, here we are in mid-2022 and Peraton still seems to be going strong and we’re slowly getting close to merging all of internal systems (like email and other backend systems) between Peraton, Northrup Grumman, and Perspecta. Hopefully, we won’t have to start dealing with the upheaval of another company change any time soon.

Meanwhile, I am still working on supporting the County of San Diego contract (which I started on back in 2000), so the base job hasn’t changed too much. Although, I have been branching out skills-wise, acquiring Amazon Web Services (AWS) experience, and soon some development using the Outsystems Low-Code platform. So, as long as I can keep learning new things and keeping my job interesting, I don’t have too much of a problem should my badge change every now and then. 😀

A new Perspecta on my IT career

Well, it has been a couple of years since my original article, My IT Career – coming around full circle, so I figured it was time for an update (especially since I’ve added a couple of new badges since then).

What appears below is the original article, reworked a little, and updated so it is current…at least as of today (06/01/2018). Who knows what will happen tomorrow.

Let the whole sordid tale begin.

While still in college I started a part-time IT gig with General Dynamics, which turned into a full time position once I graduated in 1989. Only a couple of years into that job, and General Dynamics decides to outsource their entire IT organization to a company called Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). New badge, same job really.

Over the next few years, the General Dynamics business that we supported, changed hands a few times. First to Hughes Electronics Corporation and then to Raytheon. My job at CSC also took me from Southern California to Tucson, Arizona. This lasted a few more years, until my boss asked me if I wanted to move to San Diego, California to help out on a new account. I probably said yes before he finished his sentence.

In mid-2000, I relocated to sunny San Diego and began work on writing a little client/server billing system to help CSC provide a detailed bill to its new IT outsourcing client, the County of San Diego. That little billing system lasted longer than CSC did on this contract, about 13 years, which is a pretty decent run for a VB6/SQL Server solution.  ðŸ™‚

At the end of 2006, CSC had lost the County of San Diego contract to Northrop Grumman (NG). CSC’s staff was divided among NG and an IT consulting firm, BearingPoint. We didn’t get to choose, other than to accept the offer or not. So, another new badge. I guess it was time for a new picture anyway.

Just a couple of years in working for BearingPoint, they decided to sell the majority of their public services consulting business to Deloitte. Except our little piece supporting the County of San Diego was spun off to a new consulting firm, Éclat Consulting (no link for them since they folded some time ago. Here’s what the name means though). Ã‰clat didn’t last too long, and we were shuffled to another new consulting firm, Attain. Still supporting the County of San Diego, just changing badges like bad fashion trends.

NG decided to walk away from the County of San Diego contract before their time was up, and passed it on to Hewlett Packard (HP). This time, everyone (that wanted to stay) was moved to HP (yet another new badge). All one big happy family again. At least for a couple of years.

Late into the year 2015, HP announced that it was going to split into two companies. HP would be handling consumer computers and printers, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) would be handling enterprise products and services. The change this time for us from HP to HPE wasn’t too disruptive, and we didn’t even get new badges! Well, we did get a new overlay that got glued to the face of the badge, with the new company name (same old photo though).

The stability of being at HPE would only last until May of 2016, when HPE announced that it would be spinning off the enterprise services component to a new company. This new company would be a merger of sorts between HPE and CSC. This merged company would now be known as DXC Technology and it entered the world to much fanfare and business gibberish in May of 2017. This was going to be a great collaboration between two large IT firms that would take on the world… Until a few months later when it was deemed important to narrow their focus a bit and shed some of the newly acquired divisions. Yes, you guessed it, my job is once again up on the auction block.

For the remainder of 2017 and a couple of months into 2018, we didn’t really have any information about what was happening with our company. Nothing like uncertainty to really boost morale. Much speculation was made as to who would takeover this chunk of business, which is the U.S. Public Sector portion of DXC Technology’s holdings (state and local governments, and such). We received word about our fate in March or so, but had to keep it quiet.

On June 1, 2018, it was finally made public that we would be part of a three company spin-merge based upon DXC Technology’s U.S. Public Sector business, Vencore Holding Corp., and KeyPoint Government Solutions. Each of the three companies operates in different areas, so little to no overlap, thus creating a new company of about 14,000. This new company would be known as Perspecta

It is getting close to the end of the first day as a Perspecta employee, so I think I’ll publish this entry before I have to add any more company names. One thing left to do is to crack open the swag box and put the new company sticker over the old logo on my badge. This is really starting to feel like license plate registration renewal stickers. I wonder if I’ll get new stickers next year?

Perspecta Swag

plus ça changeplus c’est la même chose

My IT Career…coming around full circle

So, yesterday (5/24/2016) the company I work for (HPE) made an announcement that they would be merging with another big IT services company early next year (see this article). I had a big chuckle about it. If you want to understand why, just try to follow along…I dare you.

While still in college I started a part-time IT gig with General Dynamics, which turned into a full time position once I graduated in 1989. Only a couple of years into that job, and General Dynamics decides to outsource their entire IT organization to a company called Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). New badge, same job really.

Over the next few years, the General Dynamics business that we supported, changed hands a few times. First to Hughes Electronics Corporation and then to Raytheon. My job at CSC also took me from Southern California to Tucson, Arizona. This lasted a few more years, until my boss asked me if I wanted to move to San Diego, California to help out on a new account. I probably said yes before he finished his sentence.

In mid-2000, I relocated to sunny San Diego and began work on writing a little client/server billing system to help CSC provide a detailed bill to its new IT outsourcing client, the County of San Diego. That little billing system lasted longer than CSC did on this contract, about 13 years, which is a pretty decent run for a VB6/SQL Server solution.  🙂

At the end of 2006, CSC had lost the County of San Diego contract to Northrop Grumman (NG). CSC’s staff was divided among NG and an IT consulting firm, BearingPoint. We didn’t get to choose, other than to accept the offer or not. So, another new badge. I guess it was time for a new picture anyway.

Just a couple of years in working for BearingPoint, they decided to sell the majority of their public services consulting business to Deloitte. Except our little piece supporting the County of San Diego was spun off to a new consulting firm, Éclat Consulting (no link for them since they folded some time ago. Here’s what the name means though). Éclat didn’t last too long, and we were shuffled to another new consulting firm, Attain. Still supporting the County of San Diego, just changing badges like bad fashion trends.

NG decided to walk away from the County of San Diego contract before their time was up, and passed it on to Hewlett Packard (HP). This time, everyone (that wanted to stay) was moved to HP (yet another new badge). All one big happy family again. At least for a couple of years.

Late into the year 2015, HP announced that it was going to split into two companies. HP would be handling consumer computers and printers, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) would be handling enterprise products and services. The change this time for us from HP to HPE wasn’t too disruptive, and we didn’t even get new badges! Well, we did get a new overlay that got glued to the face of the badge, with the new company name (same old photo though).

The stability of being at HPE would only last until May of the following year, when HPE announced that it would be spinning off the enterprise services component to a new company. This new company would be a merger of sorts between HPE and CSC (see the article at the very beginning of this post). This merger is supposed to be completed early in 2017.

Maybe I can locate my old CSC badge and wear it next to my current HPE badge? Ah, back to the beginning I go…

p.s. – I’m glad I wrote this post because I was getting a bit fuzzy on the details. It might come in handy if I need to update my resume. Although, I might have to create a chart of some kind as well.

Kevin Gilbert – 20 Years Gone

Gone 20 years today. RIP Kevin.

I first heard Kevin while listening to the Mark & Brian show on KLOS (Los Angeles) back in the early 90s (when Toy Matinee was released). Kevin and Marc Bonilla were often guests on the radio show and played various songs in the studio and during their special Christmas shows. At the time, I was more interested in Marc Bonilla’s guitar work and sought out his albums first (EE Ticket, American Matador). I did get the Toy Matinee album, but didn’t fully appreciate Kevin until 95 when Thud was released. An expertly crafted, intelligent, pop-rock album that really showcased Kevin’s genius.

It is sad to ponder the incredible music that he would have surely created in the past 20 years.

kevingilbert.com