History with VBA

Got started at 18 years old writing a data conversion script in Perl for my mother’s client in the manufacturing industry.

Clients have included small businesses, universities, staffing agencies (e.g. Robert Half Technology, ALTRES, & TekSystems) and large organizations (e.g. University of New Mexico Hospitals, Central New Mexico Community College, The Department of Veterans Affairs, Time Warner & Master Card) across industries (e.g. retail, marketing, health care, education, research, non-profit) in Connecticut, Hawaii and New Mexico. Have come to specialize in systems integration, business process management, and data-oriented programming.

• With minimal JavaScript experience at the time built JavaScript heavy dashboards and backend Java / JSP code for a multi-tier system that read sensors in heavy equipment, boats, yachts, and recreational vehicles.

• Without any Flash or ActionScript experience converted a Flash animation from the website of an aerospace company into a trade show display adding a ticker tape display whose message (which could be edited by a user) would transition between the ticker tape and the original Flash animation/video.

• Worked on a Java based VoIP heads up display system for a telecommunications company that they had implemented for their help desk staff. It was intermittently crashing without reporting errors. Adding logging, a test suite and cleaning up the code greatly reduced the crashing with errors being reported when it did.

• Implemented a health insurance integration for a college which involved creating complex SQL queries, creating a custom EDI 834 generator (had to quickly learn the EDI 834 standard over a weekend), and a scheduled upload to the insurance company.

• Helped an IT Services company move a stalled project forward by creating an integration for Microsoft Exchange, moving their code into source control, and getting them into a bi-weekly sprint cycle.

• Developed a logging system for a small software company that could handle thousands of requests per second and run on a hosted VPS taking inspiration from Kafka for the logging and using MySQL for permanent storage and querying based on Datalog and the EAV pattern.

Served as staff programmer on two NIH cancer studies (PLCO and NLST), developed custom data management, workflow and case management applications as well as many small scripts and programs for impromptu reporting and data analysis. I was laid off at the close of the studies (along with the rest of the staff) then re-hired a year later to work on the GRADE study.

• Developed custom data management, workflow and case management applications as well as many small scripts and programs for impromptu reporting and data analysis which allowed me to provide critical study statics and reports at a moments notice.

• Developed methods for dealing with some very complex logistical constraints imposed on the studies.

• Added a feature to Ruby’s “gem” command to install gems from a directory. This was necessary since the study’s computers were not allowed to connect to the Internet (see https://github.com/delonnewman/rubygems).

• Saved the institute thousands of dollars in software and hardware purchases

• Designed various workflow systems using Ruby on Rails and MySQL

• Developed micro services in Ruby & Sinatra that could be used by various of these workflow systems and desktop applications

• Developed desktop applications in Python and Qt.

• Integrated web applications into a standard Windows desktop configuration for staff of over 50 research assistants.

• Started my quest to understand the challenges involved with modeling healthcare, biological and other sparsely structured data.