Donald W. Hall

Welcome to my Web site. My name is Donald Hall and I am primarily seeking permanent employment in the Jacksonville, Florida metro area but I will consider relocating for a temporary/contract job lasting several months. I am an A+ Certified IT Technician and have spent 25 years involved in the installation, maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair of computers. I have also worked with databases and software related to Web Design and Information Technology.

I have a Certificate of Proficiency in Electronics Technology from Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. While there I tutored other electronics students and English as a Second Language. I was also the coffee maker at monthly meetings for the Hoodview Amateur Radio Club.

In my previous full-time job as a Bench Technician for Scientific Games I primarily carried out maintenance on computers that were brought in by Field Technicians. I also offered technical / service advice to Field Technicians, maintained parts inventory, and performed installation and maintenance in the field when extra help was needed.

My actual day-to-day job went far beyond these duties. I have never limited myself to a job description. Everyone, including my immediate supervisor, worked on the road most of the time. Being in the office by myself I became a knowledgeable resource for my supervisor, employees, upper management, customers, and our dispatchers. I could easily answer questions concerning computer problems, tell where people were working, and could find needed information in the office and warehouse. I was also the shipping clerk, driving the forklift, checking in supplies, and faxing the packing slip to whoever needed it. Sometimes I would organize weekly reports, check email, and sit in on conference calls when my supervisor was gone.

I not only managed some of the filing systems in our office I created them. I created and managed a hard copy filing system for all computer equipment we serviced in the field and for each customer site we had a computer set up. At another past employee, Portland Radio Supply in Portland, Oregon, I created and maintained a central filing system for product literature; making it easy for sales people and customers to find the information they wanted.

To further enhance my jobs I taught myself MS Access, Excel, Word, and VBA. After learning Access I used it to create a database from the computer and customer filing system I created so I could easily look up where computer equipment was located, how long it had been at a given location, what upgrades had been done, and when we last visited each location. I used Excel to help my supervisor design and implement forms for Field Technicians to record their daily activities. Occasionally, I had to learn about new equipment and procedures when they came out. Part of my job was to teach this information to other employees. Using Word I wrote simplified instructions and provided hands on training.

One talent I have, and one my last supervisor really appreciated, is an ability to see problems when they come up and to see potential problems before they happen. I also have an ability to create and implement solutions to those problems. For example, in my Bench Technician job I had a time when equipment was coming across the bench with problems that could have easily been repaired at customer sites. I documented this pattern. After gathering this data I created a troubleshooting guide for the Field Technicians to use. As soon as this was implemented I rarely saw those problems anymore.

Another problem I saw was the possibility that my company’s contract could end. To prepare for this, and to upgrade my technical knowledge, I enrolled at Florida Community College at Jacksonville (now Florida State College at Jacksonville) and majored in Webmaster/Web Development. I found a lot of what I learned not only applied to Web site Design and Development but also to the hardware and software technology that makes it possible.

One Web project tied in my hobby of genealogy. I created a Web site that traces all of the descendents of one set of my great grandparents. I have both a text version and a graphics version. I saw this as a Web site that would grow as my knowledge of Web design and development grew. I am currently organizing material I have so I can include all the known ancestors of my great grandparents and the known ancestors of those that have married into the family.

One project I am currently researching is a soccer web site. This will be a tribute to the Portland Timbers that played in the North American Soccer League from 1975 to 1982. I grew up near Portland and have fond memories of attending many games during that time. My biggest challenge is gathering information on the 90+ players that played for the Timbers. I want to include career-wide information; where they played before joining the Timbers, where they played after leaving the Timbers, or where they went when the team ceased operation, where are they now and what are they doing. I have found a lot of information on the Web. I know more research will involve going through newspaper archives in Portland and wherever members of the team played. That may include a trip to England.

It turned out Scientific Games did lose its contract in Florida to a competitor and, statewide, all of us lost our jobs. Since this job ended I have had a number of temporary jobs, mostly involving installation and imaging of new PCs in a call center environment. From April, 2007 to December 2008 I worked at CitiCards Call Center doing the same work, plus carrying out unscheduled services calls at customer cubicals. See my résumé for details.

I also have a number of activities outside work and computers. One such activity is being involved with a booster club at my son's school. Through my involvement with technology, my son has shown an interest in obtaining an amateur radio license. I looked around for study material suitable for his age, including a number of web searches, and found absolutely nothing. The American Radio Relay League, an organization that supports amateur radio in this country, publishes study guides that seem to be aimed more at adults but have nothing for children of elementary or middle school age. Even though these study guides have helped many people obtain their amateur radio licenses over the years (including me) I have never liked the way they are written or the way they are organized. To me they are written in a way that assumes people have some technical knowledge; and they seem to jump from topic to topic without any logic. When I studied electronics in college my text books were organized in a way that one topic built on the next. It made learning easy. With all this in mind I decided to take up the challenge and write my own study guide. I am currently working on the first draft.

As an offshoot of this I am also working on two fictional stories. One is a coming-of-age story based on my own life; exaggerating some details, fantasizing others, and sometimes changing the outcome by asking “what if”. Another is a combination science fiction and social justice. The idea came partly from a dream I had. The main character is based on a friend of mine who has a number of health problems, and how he has had to deal with not being able to work, being in debt, not being able to pay for his medical treatments, and dealing with the politics and bureaucracy around all this. Some ideas also came from the British sci-fi show Blakes 7.

This leads into another part of my life; my interest in social justice. I was part of the Social Justice Committee at church for about two years. My family and I participate in the St. Johns River Clean Up in March.

I look forward to speaking to anyone interested in my work. Click on the link to my résumé for my phone number and email address. You can also check out my LinkedIn page.

Donald Hall