Periodically under construction...
Periodically under construction...
I was born and raised in Parsippany, NJ, where I attended grade/middle/high school. I graduated from Rutgers University in 1991 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering.
In early 1992, I began work at AlliedSignal in Morristown, NJ. While at AlliedSignal, I was a research engineer in the Solid State Devices department, conducting a variety of materials research investigations and developing process control/data acquisition applications in MS Visual Basic 3.0. In a side role, I became involved in misc. help desk related activities for the department's PC users.
In July 1996, I took up work at Bluestone, supporting the licensing and installation of Bluestone's UIM/X, db-UIM/X and Deluxe GUI development tools, in addition to Adobe's Display Postscript (DPSNX) software. I gained a broad knowledge of the various flavors of Unix while in this position. I moved to the S.Jersey area shortly after signing on with Bluestone.
I started work at Prophet 21, Inc. as a Software Support Rep in July 1997, and in 1998, transitioned into the QA department as a QA Analyst. In 1999, I was promoted to QA System Specialist which, to most of my coworkers, is pronounced Q-ASS :)) I was recently promoted to Senior QA Analyst, which probably has more to do with my age (32) than my work experience. The software I work with, Prophet 21 Wholesale (now called CommerceCenter), is a robust NT-based client-server business system written in Powerbuilder 6.5 (recently migrated to PB 7) which runs primarily against MS SQL Server 6.5/7.0 databases. As Sr QA Analyst, I'm involved in leading projects that require intensive validation of major new features/3rd-party integrations, writing detailed testing specifications, and authoring custom/data repair SQL scripts (or serving as a 'consultant' to the DBAs for this purpose).
Until a few years ago, I actively played the clarinet and the piano, having started music lessons in the 4th grade. I continued with piano through high school, at which point my greater interest in the clarinet kicked in. In my senior year of HS I was the band's principal clarinetist, and competed and placed in the NJ Area, Region I and All State bands. At around that time, I took up private lessons with the lead clarinetist of the NJ Pops, Dennis Cianciosi, and continued playing the clarinet until midway through college. I've kinda been a slacker since then though :*(
'Tho I have a classical music training background, I like Jazz (mainly acid jazz), New Age (electronic and acoustic) and am definitely into Dance (Club, House, Trance and the like - anything with a great beat w/o too much 'noise'). Since I'm the type who likes to learn what goes on behind the scenes, I taught myself how to mix dance tracks with a pair of turntables and a multichannel mixer. I soon became a part-time/hobbyist DJ spinning 12" remixes while in college.
I still mix tapes once in a while for friends' parties, or upon request, or when I get tired of overplay on the radio, or...
As you can probably tell, I'm somewhat of a dance clubber, and one of the clubs I've frequented is NYC's Webster Hall.
I'm most into racquet sports, specifically tennis and table tennis. I played on the high school varsity tennis team, and helped form the high school's table tennis club. I continued playing tennis and table tennis while at Rutgers, and also took up cycling (road biking). Most recently, I've become involved in mountain biking. I need to take up sports that don't require such expensive equipment purchases :-O
At home, I run Windows 98 and Windows NT. I've completed coursework for the MCSE certification (3.51 track), and have taken and passed the certification exams for NT Server 3.51 and NT Workstation 3.51. Ancient stuff indeed. My home PC is a PII-350 with 64MB RAM, an IDE CD-RW drive, two 2.2GB + one 850MB IDE HD's. Access to the Net (I *am* NetMan, after all =8-) is accomplished through an internal 56K modem. I'm too cheap to go cable or DSL...
Drop me a line at work:
cfong@p21.com or at home:
cfong@voicenet.com