About Me
![[portrait: Curtis Brown]](/images/cb_mug.gif)
Hello, my name is Curtis Brown. Thank you for this opportunity to tell you a little bit about myself:
I was lucky to have opportunities to learn the in's and out's of computers from a very young age; from the Apple ][ my parents purchased with which I learned Basic as well as some tricks in Assembly, to the time that I was able to buy my own PC (A 486 DX/2 that operated at a blazing 66 megahertz in "overdrive") I was preparing myself to find my own niche in the new world of computing technologies.
A fortunate promotion when I was 25 got me out of the proofing room at a pre-press business (Oakland National Engraving) and into a position where I was providing support for the company servers, network, and workstations, as well as taking over the design and programming (with the 4D - Fourth Dimension software) of the in-house databases.
Two years later, when I moved from the Bay Area in California to the Boston area in Massachusetts I began work as a Network Controller for BBN Planet (later GTEI then Genuity) and before a year was up I got a promotion into Server Administration, the group that supported the Unix servers that propped up the network and services that the customers relied on.
Fast-forward several years, and I was working for Predictive Systems and Global Integrity Services as an Ethical Hacker. While the work was rewarding in its own way, the odd hours and continuous travel were major downsides. One of my favorite aspects of working for BBN Planet was the fact that we were able to maintain a global infrastructure of servers with remote presence, but the demands of ethical hacking usually required me to do my work on-site for the clients.
My fascination with computers lies within the intricate depths of the technologies which tie them into functional bundles of hardware and software that allow us to accomplish astounding feats. Recently, I have begun to teach myself to build interactive websites with the aid of the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database engine. To preview some of my work, please check-out the samples on my Examples page.
I'm always on the lookout for new technologies that catch my interest, and spur my imagination!
Just for the record, I express many opinions in the pages of this website, and they are all my own -- I am not paid to promote any product or agenda.