About Me (Robert French)

A bit of history (I can sure ramble) ;-)

I began programming in 1983 at the age of 9 when my parents got my sister and I a computer for Christmas. The Radio Shack TRS-80 had a whopping 16k of memory and was my first real exposure to personal computers. I remember typing out hundreds of lines of basic code from magazines on the green TV screen.

By age 13 or 14 we had upgraded to the Tandy 1000 TX (an IBM XT Clone) and I was fluent with DOS 1.x, but more interested in Ultima V, the Sierra Quest games, and Rogue with the tasty slime molds then actual programming. It was around this time that I discovered what I could do with that screaming fast 300 baud modem, the Data Pac network was alive and well, but my mom (who worked for Bell Canada) was convinced that I shouldn't be able to connect to anything in California (Like Xerox PARC), and she would loose her job if they found out, so I was forbidden to hook the computer up to the phone line.

As a result, I wasn't all that interested in computers during my later teen years. I was more into hanging out with friends, and wreaking havoc on the Toronto streets at 3am. Although it was pretty aparent that I had a 'natural talent' with computers, phones, and technology in general. None of my peers were interested in computers, and aside from being able to make free phone calls by grounding out the earpiece of the old 'fortress' public payphones, there wasn't a lot of interest. I had tried to take a computer class in High School, but the teacher didn't seem to know as much as I thought he should so that only lasted about 20 minutes.

It wasn't until I was 19 that my curiosity was peeked again. My girlfriend at the time, had moved to Kingston to go to Queens and being the sappy romantic I am, I dropped what I had going on (working as a stock boy for No-Frills) to go out there for a while (I think I stayed in her co-ed dorm room for about a month) during that time, the geek in the next room who had a BBS set up, introduced me to the wonders of Telix and computer porn (What do you mean I can download pictures of Christina Applegate naked???) The ability to connect to remote systems and the game Lemmings re-kindled my interest in technology.

I was more into the meaning of life and the quest for knowledge, sitting on rocks and talking to trees at that point in my life. The simple things took a much 'high'-er priority then technology. * cough * hippy * cough * I ended up meeting some pretty cool people in Oshawa (of all places unholy) that were just getting into computers and they were shocked to find out that this 20yr old long haired freaky hippy guy that had visions of a pillow room and ranted frequently about the subjectiveness of reality, knew not only what a computer was I could use one, and apparently wasn't too bad at it... Awww .. WOW Man, you don't wanna do that.

Education

In the summer of 1996, I finally decided to get a formal education in Computer Sciences (just for now I told myself). I wandered through Oshawa and stopped in at every computer related office and store I could find, from EDS to Motor City computers. This was my idea of field research, wander in off the street and ask where they did their hiring from. Funny thing, it actually worked, and the vast majority response was CDI College of Business and Technology.

I showed up at CDI with no appointment, and a woman name Yvonne agreed to talk with me, she showed me the campus and answered all of my questions but I could tell that she had formed an opinion of me based on my goatee and long hair, the bare feet and Birkenstocks wouldn't have helped either. Because I never bothered to finish High School I was given an aptitude test and shown to a testing room, told I had two hours to complete the test that would among other things, let them know what courses I was best suited for.

I honestly didn't understand why I was given 2 hours to do this test, 45 minutes had passed and I had gone over it twice. I left the little testing room and Yvonne thought that I had a problem of some kind. I don't think she believed me when I told her I was done and had answered everything. I asked when I could get my results or enroll, and she politely explained that they would mark the test before end of day, and 'let me know'.

About an hour later I returned home to discover I had a voice mail from Yvonne telling me that not only did I pass their test, I had scored higher then anyone she ever recalled and CDI would be honored to have me as a student. I signed up the next day for the Programmer/Analyst course, and started that September.

I graduated 'summa cum laude' (with highest honors) from the Programmer/Analyst course in May of 1998. In that time, I also graduated with the Network Administration diploma, was the recipient of the CDI College Certificate of Excellence, helped pilot a new courses for them, was a student tutor, was honored with an award for Outstanding Performance in the Fish Bowl (1 of only 7 students in the history of the college), and during my last week, I performed a complete network security audit for Yvonne, who had been promoted to the Director of the Campus. (This would leave the biggest rippling impact).

Just as thoughtless words are waisted...
Any man who tries to feed an albino gerbil mustard sauce, is very strange and should be left well alone. - my graduation speech

A Wizard was born

About 3/4 of the way through my education, I decided (as did many of the students) that I wanted to open my own business. Wizards Realm was launched in 1997 as a sole proprietorship, and I was a business owner. Of corse I didn't do much of anything with it until after graduation, but I felt like I was making progress...

Following graduation, I spent about 6 months, doing some custom site design work for local companies, spec'ing out computer systems for the people I knew, put together a contract management database for a local printing company and never getting paid, did an installer and smtp software configuration for a BIG Toronto ISP (now gone the way of the [dot] bust), and other 'odd and ends' types of jobs, basically I tried my feet out in a vast array of IT areas... Did I mention that during that time I was still living like a student? Broke and starving ;-p

Well as it turns out, shortly after graduating, all of the CDI Campuses had a 3rd party company (to remain nameless) come through and perform internal security audits, Yvonne discovered that the formal report presented by this 3rd party company was .. shall we say .. .lacking in some details when compared to the 'pro-bono' audit I had performed, to top the cake, just as I was loosing steam and faith in the freelance world, one of the Programming Instructors in the Oshawa campus submitted her resignation. I was Yvonne's First (and Only) call.

Due to company policy, they posted the Job and did the mandatory 3 interviews (I was the first interview), I started the following month, and I took over the Night School Instruction as well, using my company as the contract. Having seen the other side of the college gave me a unique edge as far as the instruction went. At that time, CDI was self directed education, in laymen's terms that means show up, do it yourself and only ask for help when you get stuck. I let the students know that my philosophy was a little different, and I believe (to this day) "the dumb question is the one you didn't ask"... I never (or rarely) just gave the student the answer, I preferred to direct them with open ended questions so they would not only learn the material but how to find the answers the needed (the bigger picture).

My approach paid off, and within 4 months I was promoted to the Head of the Programming Faculty for the Oshawa Campus. I took the employment rate in the first 12 months from 87% employed to 96% employed (in the field). In 1999 I was awarded the Campus Instructor of the year, and was the Instructional head for the ISO 9002 certification process (what a mess THAT system is). I also designed a student tracking system to manage my students (which was adopted by the rest of the teaching faculty), and helped re-design the Network.

I stayed with CDI for just under 2 years, but ultimately resigned after I was expected to do the work of 2 instructors and the ONA (Onsite Network Administrator) without any increase in salary. Honestly though, it wasn't about the money, it was the unrealistic amount of work I was doing. At any time I could be asked any question from any one of the 32 original courses I taught, but the college had also switched to a more directed format, utilizing a cohort structure so students always had a buddy or two in the same course, the curriculum had been updated and there was an additional 15 courses to teach formally with lectures, and they decided to let of one of Networking Instructors go. Naturally they wanted me to take on all of the additional workload...

more to come...