Kwynn Buess, software engineer

Kwynn's home
Gainesville, Georgia
BuessResume@gmail.com (678) 341-0285 (Why do I still use gmail?)
web form to leave me a message
GitHub

Availability: immediate

(confirmed early February, 2024)

Objective:

night shift / third shift, second shift, or great flexibility with time-of-day working hours. I am quite the night owl.

EXPERIENCE

Note:

I omit or distort some technical terms and company names because I do not want to work with that tech again.

law office ERP project 2016 - present (2023, May, and beyond)

part-time freelance contract, 7 hours a week, so I have done 16 other freelance projects during this time
  • Wrote an API / web scraper to bill to a 3rd party site. $800,000 has been processed by my API with no complaints from the 3rd party (as of the end of April, 2023).
  • This is a literal digital assistant web application that has made a human assistant unnecessary by automating various processes.
  • One web form enters court dates in Goo calendar and reminds clients of court dates via email and SMS / text. ( AWS SNS )
  • Wrote a credit card processing gateway ( ecommerce / e-commerce )
  • The billing screen meets a very demanding specification--a nice piece of UI / UX , if I do say. Lots of client-side JavaScript .
  • Audio file processing of 911 and from-jail calls using ffmpeg / mp3 processing
  • 35,000 lines of PHP , 12,000 lines of JavaScript - mostly client-side, some Node.js / Nodejs . Originally used MySQL / SQL / MariaDB . Migrating to MongoDB . Hosted on AWS EC2 on Ubuntu Linux Apache LAMP Also uses AWS Cloudwatch AWS SNS AWS SES AWS S3 AWS IAM . Code in git / (private) GitHub . cURL HTTP POST commands to simulate a browser for billing API, DOM / XML processing on the HTTP / HTTPS responses.

experience overview

1993 - Wrote a Gopher client in C , using TCP IP and sockets ( TCP/IP ).
1997 - 2004 - I spent over half this time developing for 2,000-employee software companies. I fixed ~100 bugs in C and SQL in an ERP system used at a gold mine, power plant, copper smelter, etc. I was tuning 30 million row tables when that was a lot. I did data analytics and warehousing when those were new terms.
2005 - present: The freelancing era. I freelance so I can work at night. As a freelancer, I take what I can get, so I have done a dizzying range of projects, I often use tech I never have before, and I have shown over and over how fast I learn. I do not have the sales skills for freelancing, though, so it's time to find a team with effective salespeople.

highlighted freelance projects / tasks, 2005 - present

  • Python ERP project, 500 billable hours Python, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, and Ubuntu Linux. Created 11 modules / addons - built a sales commission feature, accounting mods, mailing list opt-in / opt-out, and a mail-send-later feature. Did full and incremental ( WAL / log file ) PostgreSQL backups. 2014
  • USB device driver The GameSkunk was a prototype scent generator for gaming (gunsmoke, flowers, pine trees, etc). I wrote the USB device driver, the API, and demo programs. The API was multi-threaded. The system was partially in C and Linux, but mostly using tech I don't want on my resume. My software was demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2011. I later consulted with one of the top gaming companies to try to help them migrate the system.
  • Wrote a Solidity NFT minting contract with a whitelist, free-mint list, and sales date limitations. MetaMask web buttons. Metadata processing script in PHP . Deployment with Hardhat and Alchemy ; validated code on the Rinkeby Ethereum blockchain with Etherscan Code in git / public GitHub (see repo link above) . Hardhat is Node.js / NodeJS / Nodejs Other keywords: Ether ETH Web3 crypto cryptocurrency ERC-721 . 2022, April.
  • Built / configured a Cardano Ada cryptocurrency stake pool / node. AWS EC2 Ubuntu Linux . Used AWS EBS for secondary storage to store the blockchain . crypto
  • VOIP / SIP voicemail - Created a arbitrary length voicemail system (tested to 42 minutes); 15 voicemail providers told my client their limit was 10 minutes. Compiled and configured Asterisk ( C language ) on AWS EC2 Ubuntu Linux . Used Amazon / AWS Chime to allocate a phone number and route it to the server.
  • Java Eight easy to very involved enhancements / bug fixes on a Java / J2EE / JSP / Tomcat application (SVN code storage)
  • Wrote a Firefox Add-on / browser extension to count characters of a major social media site's post while typing, so one doesn't exceed the 420 / 500 character limit (Object Oriented JavaScript)
  • Wrote a Goo Chrome browser extension to identify phone number and snail address information in email signatures and add it to contacts. Involving traversal and parsing of an HTML5 DOM tree, HTML5 local storage, OAUTH, XML / JSON I/O to / from Goo Data REST APIs, generating and handling events and inter-module messages. Written in Object Oriented JavaScript.
  • 17+ fixes on 3 different ecommerce LAMP systems ( Linux Apache MySQL ( SQL ) PHP ). Fixed Linux permission issues of JavaScript files. Fixed Stripe payment system. Implemented coupons / discounts. (Project codename Creative, late 2015, early 2016)
  • 15 easy to difficult enhancements / bug fixes on a LAMP application ( Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP ). Moved the LAMP app from shared hosting to a VM, configured Apache httpd.conf from scratch, sent a second domain to a different home page. (Codename Fashion, 2011, summer)
  • e-commerce system plugin - customization (extension) to show the customer different prices and store views based on their zip code ( HTML / CSS / JavaScript / AJAX / PHP / ecommerce / MySQL / SQL / Linux )
  • Built a Bible quiz web application - PHP MongoDB Linux VM VPS . Moved contact form email from sendmail to the PHPMailer SMTP class. Python Selenium library to use a third party login API . 2022, April.
  • CRM: Systems analysis, coding, and support of a LAMP CRM application to keep track of sales calls ( Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP )
  • Nearly safety-of-life-critical data processing: Rescued sensitive, irreplaceable data from a system that was at its end of life. I had to reverse-engineer several fields of an RDBMS ( SQL ), and then I extracted the data to desktop-searchable files and file names. The script was in PHP .
  • Android privacy project - installed LineageOS on Android phones . Used ADB to install apps. Ran MITMProxy ( proxy ) in Ubuntu Linux . Used tcpdump, WireShark ( Wireshark ) and PHP scripts to analyze packet traffic. The goal was to avoid Goo accounts and other Goo services, and to confirm that core Android did not "run back to momma Goo."
  • Configured an Ubuntu Linux server to record 8 broadcast television channels at once. I researched the video capture cards, antennas, and software needed to make it all work. Used ffmpeg to convert video from ts (video transport stream) format to mp4

freelance projects and tasks overflow: 2005 - present

  • Forem (sic) install on AWS EC2 Fedora Core . Used Ansible playbook . Accessed Podman containers and PostgreSQL to reset password . Set AWS SES email / SMTP . 2023, April
  • Created a web interaction to auto-populate county, city, state (region), area code, and country phone prefix from ZIP / postal code. The interaction used JavaScript, jQuery, HTML5, CSS, PHP, and MySQL / SQL (UI and some degree of UX). Enforced password strength requirements in PHP and JavaScript / jQuery . Modified a JavaScript spinner / hourglass. Used CSS and Sass for a number of changes. Dealt with apostrophe / MySQL / SQL escape-character issues.
  • Repairs, upgrades and administration of a Python site. Fixed email notifications. HTML change to contact form. Changed DNS CNAME A and AAAA settings. Upgraded code to Python 2.7 (2016 Jan). Created a local Ubuntu Linux dev environment to test, including Eclipse debugging / debugger / IDE .
  • created firewall rules ( ufw ), limited incoming traffic to an IP range / subnet ( security ) . Apache web server admin to improve security . Updated the system to Debian Linux 10 (Buster) (2021, Feb)
  • Wrote a proof of concept PHP web application to interact with the Skypicker API , Skyscanner API , TripAdvisor API , etc.
  • Changed DNS A records to comply with new hosting requirements.
  • Changed code for PHP 8.0 compliance (2021, Dec)
  • diagnosed a MariaDB ( MySQL / SQL ) insertion error while proverbially looking over the client's shoulder on a screen share. MariaDB was enforcing SQL NOT NULL for HTML form fields that were not present.
  • built up an AWS EC2 Ubuntu Linux system and installed Discourse
  • used AWS SES (Simple Email Service) SMTP for account activation emails
  • Solved a PHP / MySQL / SQL / MariaDB bug while proverbially looking over the client's shoulder on a screenshare. This is the second time I did this in a year, for different clients. Made 20 changes to PHP code to bring it from 5.x to 7.4 compliance (June, 2021). Create git / GitHub repositories for the code.
  • website mockup - some of the pickiest CSS I've ever done
  • Fixed a virtual host error in Apache on an AWS EC2 CentOS Linux instance. Used ffmpeg to convert 3gp video format. Demonstrated Apache-level user login security and HTML to PHP video file upload and post.
  • Another repair of a LAMP ( Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP ) ecommerce system. Reduced page load time from minutes to expected.
  • Set up a PostgreSQL / SQL system on Ubuntu Linux Linode VM. Wrote cron jobs and bash scripts to reproduce a 3rd party scheduler.
  • Installed phpMyAdmin ( PHP ) and created a MySQL backup script and cron job
  • LAMP system hack recovery ( Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP ).
  • Created a proof of concept QuickBooks API interaction in PHP with OAUTH . My web article is still #9 on Goo Search for "QuickBooks API PHP example" (without quotes) in May, 2023 even though the article was written in 2015.
  • Proof of concept of a system to find building contractors in a given area. Did map pins, distance calculations, and login management. LAMP Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP
  • Identified an inadequate 256MB Ubuntu Linux swap space as the performance issue with a Minecraft server; increased to 2GB (equal to RAM).
  • Created a MySQL zip code database based on open / crowdsourced data
  • Wrote REST API interactions / integrations between the ecommerce system and the client's custom system
  • Moved system from test site to permanent site ( Linux sysadmin system administration )
  • Upgraded PHP from 5.2 to 5.3 on CentOS Linux server. Adjusted Linux file permissions for the e-commerce system. Removed unnecessary MySQL users
  • Created a JavaScript / CSS lightbox / modal dialog from scratch--no libraries
  • Moved a LAMP-based online course product from procedural to OO ( Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP ). Numerous bug fixes and enhancements. A bit of Apache web admin (.htaccess) to prevent password files from being exposed ( security )
  • Coded an HTML-to-other-document-type feature--installed Debian packages for supporting software
  • Wrote an Intuit QBMS credit card payment module for the WebsiteBaker CMS in PHP, using Intuit's API calls (URL / GET calls, e-commerce keyword)
  • Configured an off-the-shelf LAMP application for online children's classes: Configured databases for forums and chat, installed and customized the php-BB forum system and a chat program; set up password protection (LAMP). Trained teachers to create new classes from the template I built. ( Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP )
Numerology projects - occasional work spanning 1996 - 2022, and probably ongoing.
  • Wrote a C program to do numerology calculations and page lookup calculation. I later rewrote this as a Java applet and then a JavaScript application, the latter of which is still in use.
  • Maintenance and several bug fixes on a very popular (preexisting) LAMP system ( Linux Apache MySQL SQL PHP ) . Fixed email process with AWS SES . Introduced the site author to the <pre> HTML5 / HTML tag, which saved him a lot of time.
  • Studied web server access logs to determine which hits were hack attempts. Took several measures to improve security.

Employee / Formal Contract Era 1997 - 2004

Object Alliance, database developer, contract, 2004

, June - July; Atlanta, GA 230 hours
  • Performed systems analysis and rewrote a CRM-data-driven analysis / data warehousing system after a CRM system upgrade. ( SQL )
  • Performance tuning - Reduced the RDBMS analysis calculation by 8 times

Hyperion Solutions, software engineer (employee), 2000, April - 2002, Feb

, Kennesaw, GA
  • CRM-data-driven analysis / data warehousing consulting and development that continued with Object Alliance in 2004 ( SQL )

Indus International, programmer / analyst, customer support 1997, August - 1999, April; Atlanta, GA

  • Worked all aspects of an industrial maintenance support system / ERP -- customer support, bug fixing, fix testing, and installation at client sites. The system was written in C and SQL and HP-UX UNIX
  • Took 80 - 120 bug calls, found the problem, fixed it, and installed the fixes by modem
  • Specialized in fixing resource locking issues / multi-threading / mutex
  • The system kept track of purchasing, receiving, and inventory of maintenance parts, and maintenance schedules for a power plant, gold mine, copper smelter, oil refineries, etc.

Univ of So Cal (USC) Information Sciences Institute, programmer, employee, Marina Del Rey, CA, 1993 (June - July)

  • Wrote a Gopher client in C using the Prospero distributed file system, used TCP/IP socket networking calls

Thompson Group, programmer, contract, 1991; Mableton, GA

  • Wrote a file backup program in PASCAL and ran it to backup files to 5-1/4" floppies

EDUCATION

page / resume history

  1. 2024/02/05 - Gainesville
  2. 2024/01/16 15:46+ - manufacturing cover letter (not posted, but in GitHub)
  3. 2023/11/27 - removed objective and avail. updates link
  4. 05/13 20:05 - approaching rc1 and first submitted version
  5. 05/10 02:37 - two lists of freelancing - highlights and overflow
  6. 2023/05/05 02:29 - shorter version; compressed freelancing points
  7. starting from web: 2022/06/11 23:36