I earned the CompTIA A+ Certification back around 2001, but it seems to still be valid as of May 2024. The logo is pretty, so I’m adding it here. Many of my other certifications from back then have been retired (Zend PHP5 Certified Engineer, Certified Novell Engineer 5, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer [NT4], and Linux Professional Institute Certified Level 1 [expired 2008]). For fun, I might take some new certification exams as time allows.

Other pieces of my history: (If I were an academic, I might entitle this section “Curriculum Vitae” however I am not so snobby as to use latin often). Where possible, i’ve attached “receipts”.

Memberships:

Member of the American Chemical Society (ACS)

Member of The Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)

Member of Adobe Creative Cloud (ACC)

-2023-present: Quicken Simplifi super user (support forum rank)

-August 2023: Certified by Coursera & Google for having completed a Crash Course on Python.

-May 2018: A letter to the editor I wrote in Communciation of the ACM (Magazine) was published FREE TO READ AT THIS LINK.

-Former Best Buy Tech Insider network member. User name “RobWLINY 2” . I was an influencer who reviewed products for Best Buy. After learning of deceptive Best Buy practices, I reported them to the FTC. I have deleted my account (not a member) as of June 8, 2025.

-Somewhere between (est.) 2015-2020, Attended Jimmy Buffet concert at Jones Beach Theater.

-July 2016: Certified as a Mentor on Coursera after completed a mentoring course.

-April 2016: Completed the Coursera Course: “Build Your First Android App” via Central Supelec, a French school. (where the instructor spoke understandable english)

-July 2015: Completed the Coursera Course from UC San Diego: Learning How to Learn (since renamed)

-March 2013: Took a Coursera Hosted Course from CalTech on Drugs and The Brain.

-November 2012: A letter to the editor of the Communication of the ACM was published and is free to read AT THIS LINK.

-June 2012: I wrote a letter to the editor to correct someone else’s letter to the editor that was published (free) at the LINK.

-August 2008: Attended a They Might be Giants performance and as well as other performers at the Disney Music Block Party at Nassau Colliseum (Uniondale, NY) https://www.concertarchives.org/concerts/disney-music-block-party-tour–2138943

-About 2007: Cracker Barrell Peg Jumping Game Puzzle Solver developed (text interface to enter the current state of the pegs on the game board, and it would output the jumps needed to get to an optimal solution). It used recursion techniques learned in Freshman Computer Science classes at Clemson in 1992.

-2007: Attended the Windows Vista Launch Party in NYC (“Nokia Theater”), featured presentations by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to a very small audience, and bands including Angels and Airwaves as well as (from memory) Stomp performed. Learned about Windows Media Center features (R.I.P.) which for over a decade we used to enable DVR via an X-Box (networkedff to a PC with a Hauppauge TV Tuner card) to get “FREE DVR SERVICE” at time the cable company wanted to charge over $10/month for.

-April 2007 (about the same time my first niece was born): Achieved the status of Zend PHP5 Certified Engineer.

-2006: Attended the ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition in Boston, NY. The exhibits were fun to see (neat visual demonstrations on screens and (memorably) in 3d-space (not on a computer display), also while in Boston we took a Duck Boat tour which may be the most memorable part of that trip. The Duck Boat Tour guide had a lot of fun stories about historic Boston, and important life lessons of the past/potential-future as well. Became a HASH Animation Master customer, which was 3d-animation software demo’d at the expo, the theme of the HASH presentation was “Anyone can animate”, and even if i wasn’t an artist, per se, I loved learning how the technical aspects of animating worked.

-January 2003: Certified : Linux Professional Institute Level 1

-2002 : Bally Total Fitness : Sales – Responsible for selling memberships to new members.

-2002 : Cineplex Odeon Theater, Glen Cove, NY. Sales (Concession Stand) – responsible for suggestive selling, upselling, and handling cash transactions.

-Circa 2002: Tattoo Ink Supply Shop on Long Island, NY (*do not remember name of business), filled “snot green” color ink from a large container into individual bottles.

-Late 2001: City Spec, Inc. – Queens, NY – Boiler Inspection Company, I wrote softwarea in Visual Basic that interfaced (via API) with Microsoft MapPoint, and read in (from database) a list of scheduled appointments for the boiler inspections, and optimized the routes so that the drivers had the shortest path from starting at the home office and finishing near the home office again.

-May-June 2001: Geo-Centers (now called SAIC I think), Title: “Senior Engineer II”, I was contracted to help build a biochemical weapons detection system. This involved C/Linux socket programming (utilizing TCP/IP to communicate with the sensor) along with GTK+ interfaces, as well as Apache HTTPD configuration and other related tasks.

-Decmber 2001: Achieved A+ Certification

-2001: Attended the ACM 1: Beyond Cyberspace conference. My notes are archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20010502070625/http://www.robwilkens.com/ACM1-Notes.html – Learned interesting concepts like Nanotechnology that was planned to be used in humans and to network people (and other technology togeteher).

~2001-2002: Attended a They Might Be Giants concert at The Vanderbilt (now called “OTB Race Palace” at last check).

~2000-2001: Attended a showing of Cirque Du Soleil : La Nouba. I had purchased a DVD of the performance and demonstrated to a Lawyer I worked with how a Laptop could also be used as a Portable DVD Player (2-in-1 concept, making the purchase of one more justifyable at the time).

~2000-2001: Wrote an internet Voice-Over-Internet application, to allow communication between two computers on the Internet (in the test case, on a local area network in a Judge’s Chambers). Think of this as an early way to make phone calls between two computers without using the PSTN (ancient telephone line system)

February 2001: Was interviewed for the Public Policy Column for the “Computer Graphics” publication by the ACM SIGGRAPH. Available (purchase or subscription may be required) at THIS LINK. The article section was entitled “Another Reader Comments.” One of the main points in the interview was where I identified that “if software is speech, and is protected by the constitution, can the same be considered of a hardware design” – which might be thought of as an early concept of the idea of “Open Source Hardware” which we see today with 3D-Printers and similar devices being more common.

~2001-2002 (Post-9/11): Attended “at least one” Late Show with David Letterman taping. Sometime around these dates, someone from the show (I believe it was Pat Farmer), a woman whose name escapes me, and I chatted on a Subway Car on the way back from a late night class (at “Global Knowledge Network”, located adjacent to Grand Central Station – back before the long island trains were available and I needed to take a Subway to get to Penn from there).

-October 2001: Completed Requirements to become A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE)

-May 1999: Became a Microsoft Certified Professional

-1998-2001: New York State Unified Court System (including Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, 2nd Department – primarily the Mental Hygiene Legal Services offices at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center and Pilgrim Psychiatric Center – and New York City Civil Court including Manhattan Civil Court and Bronx Housing Court): Local Area Network Administrator. I supported databases (Advanced DB Master), and ran cabling and did general tech support on Novell networks and Windows Peer-to-Peer networks. Rsn the network cabling (made ethernet cables with a box of cable from home depot, a crimper tool, and hid the cables in conduits ).

-1996-1998: Concurrent Computer Corporation (Formerly Harris Computer Systems Corporation, now I think they go by Concurrent Real Time which has the same logo when I google it). C/UNIX Systems Software Engineeer on the Quality and Reliability Engineering Team, I developed, debugged and tested UNIX Kernel and Library and Command Tools code for a custom Real-Time implementation (PowerMAX OS or PowerUX) of UNIX System V Release IV. Example Project(s) from memory include making PPP (Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet) work on our implementation of UNIX – to fix this, I detected an issue with Little-Endian vs. Big-Endian binary number format – as a result of our UNIX being translated from an Intel-like platform to our PowerPC Platform which used the opposite encoding of bits. I also was responsible for designing (writing specs) and implementing (coding) new kernel features to enable the Hardclock Timer Frequency to be set both a “tunable” boot time parameter or be set at run time dynamically. I solved an emergency post-release bug where the job control functions of the command shell were disabled. My first performance review in the company reported “Robert solve at least 2x as many problems and is the lowest paid member of the team”, which resulted in me getting a boost in salary (significantly above company average annual increases at the time) and a promotion from Lead Software Engineer (my hired title) to Senior Enigneer.

-1994-1996: Clemson University College of Engineering: Student Employee solely responsible for the PC Labs throughout the college (there were about 5 public access labs where students could use the PCs). I wrote software that at each start-up (and Netware Login Script) would replace all the windows configuration (.ini) files with fresh copies, inserting anything custom like the machine name, and it would also delete any user created files and restore any deleted files from the “image” i made of what each PC would have. This was on Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

1992-1996: Clemson University Student (earned Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree), Applications Emphasis was Psychology (I had enough courses and grade points, I believe, to call it a minor, it may not have been registered officially – though I regularly receive mailings from the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences indicating it may be noted on record). Participated in the Film and Video committee, and attended at least one College Republicans event.

-1991-1996: Professional Actor,. Sony Pictures Entertainment

~1994-1995 (est.): Attended Hootie and The Blowfish Concert at Clemson Littlejohn Colliseum.

-1995: Season Ticket holder for Carolina Panthers’ Inaugural Season, the season took place at the University I attended.

-1996: Graduated Clemson University with a degree in Computer Science, originally with an Applications emphasis in Geology (took at least one class in that), but found the subject Dull and switched that to Psychology which was in the same building (Brackett Hall at the time). In computer science, as an undergrad, I took graduate level classes (with other graduate students) in both Operating Systems Implementation (Linux, we did things like make a new disk scheduling algorithm), and also Programming Language Implementation (We designed and implemented a Pascal Compiler, using tools such as Lex (Lexical Analyzer) and YACC (Yet another compiler compiler).

-1996: Attended Van Halen concert at Jones Beach Theater (Long Island, NY) featuring Metallica as the starting act.

-1994-1996: Sysop (Systems Operator) Mocking Reality BBS system. A dial-up computer system that provided backups of software, allowing people who purchased commercial software to store remote back up copies in the event their copy/system was damaged. Handle: The Lone Viking. The BBS was also networked to message relay networks, allowing cross site communication for message boards prior to the general popularity of Internet browsers. Authored a voting tally system for PCBoard BBS to allow users to vote on topics of interest.

1992: Graduated Chaminade High School, an elite All Male Catholic school on Long Island’s Nassau County.

~1990-1992:Levittown Fire Department, cadet corps.

-1990: Video Game Discount Outlet. @ Nassau Mall – Nintendo and Sega game sales, mostly open-box video games, and, to my recollection, we also purchased used games there.

~1980-1984: Levittown West Little League. Left field.