My name is Aaron Cupp. I have been on the internet for WAY too long…
I started my journey down the rabbit hole that is internet technology when I was about 11 years old. The internet was still GOPHER and ARCHIE access via BBS systems. I got lucky and had access to the local college internet via my mother, who was one of the SYSOPs at the college.
I am mostly self-taught when it comes to my computer education. I learned BASIC and COBOL on my own from books. Self taught linux from breaking systems I built in my bedroom. My first Linux OS was Slackware…floppy install. There was about 50 of them for the OS and X-windows :) I got into IRC and MUDs not long after getting online. Both of these got me more involved in programming and systems. I picked up LPC (a C-like language for game development) from MUD gaming. I picked up tcl from playing with eggdrop bots in IRC.
I got my official education from Modesto Junior College, earning an A.S. in Computer Science as well as a Computer Programming Certificate.
In my spare time while working for a K-12 in Northern California I was involved in running a number of irc networks and internet radio stations. From 2007-2008 I developed the station for techno-dnb.com and in 2009 I launched my own project and operated it till about 2014 as an online radio platform. I used these personal projects as a basis for my professional advancement and moved out of the public sector and into the private world of the Bay Area Tech Bubble.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had the opportunity to start working on my personal projects again. I relaunched my Tech-Noid Systems project as a Bass Music Collective. This project will be releasing a podcast and will start throwing shows in the future.
Over the past few years I was given a great opportunity to grow professionally and have migrated into Technology Leadership. My most recent role was Manager of Site Reliability Engineering. In this role I was responsible for hiring, onboarding, mentoring and fostering growth for a geographically distributed team of 5 FTE SREs and two offshore remote teams of SRE and DevOps Engineers for a SaaS Data Analytics platform.