User:Jmckinstry

ISoft History

Justin was hired in March of 2009, where he began by learning the ins and outs of ITrack Pro and AX.

Currently, he's the main developer for ITrack AX, Replikwando, and a wide swath of tools both internal and external. He also does development work on random projects as they come up, guides with tech support in their endeavors, and does his best to keep interdepartmental communications flowing smoothly. Hats are changed frequently!

Education and Experience

Justin graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science (minor in Mathematics) in December of 2008. He's been doing technical support for computers, printers, network connections and infrastructure, televisions, telephones, and server administration for four years, with another two years of programming.

During his time at ISoft, Justin has:

• Written code for AX, Pro, Enterprise, and Presage
• Written web code for LX Warehouse, Presage Scanner, an auction lotting tool (and evaluated/debugged/made suggestions for other large production sites and tools)
• Written scripts for database updating, timed program checks, massive directory manipulation, bidirectional public key file exchanges
• Developed/Maintained internal tools (including Replikwando, a mysql tokenizer, a harebrained symmetrical encryption scheme, and a call tracker)
• Developed external GPL code that ISoft made use of (and made sure the code changes were public, of course):
  • mysql-replication-listener: Fixed a few bugs, added support for writing binlog statements out (so you can inline edit them!)
• Participated in the deployment, maintenance, and upkeep of more than a dozen production databases:
  • CPU and Memory utilization
  • Errand program debugging and correction
  • Establishing, maintaining, and debugging networks on both ends of the performance spectrum (servers using erroring T1 lines is interesting)
• Enjoyed tons of (almost exclusively MySQL and sqlite) database shenanigans:
  • Installing and configuring the servers and related programs
  • Writing, debugging, optimizing, and tracking queries, stored procedures, functions, views
  • Creating and implementing archiving and backup solutions
  • Recovering 'lost' data and restoring 'lost' databases
• Created script files for nightly export of large (not terabyte-scale) data sets
• Learned Javascript from scratch well enough to do group project work within 48 hours
• Helped Support streamline and correct processes in an effort to keep things running smoothly (bless our Support staff!)
• Reviewed weekly error logs and reports, distilling recurring issues and relaying the problems and potential causes & solutions to the project managers
• Assisted in the execution of bi-monthly auction days by clerking, helping maintain data consistency and reporting, proving outcomes to customers, and providing post-auction statistics
• Created an inventory appraisal tool that (for auctions at least) has had a 5% margin of error for the past two years running
• Acted as backup System Administrator (mini-Brian, if you will), assisting in recovery from power and network outages, suffering HDD setups, poor network/hardware performance, and making tool recommendations on occasion

And some other stuff. You know. ;)

Public Keys

• Keybase.io: A817266B53CD3F9AB144416C9ABC91ED61DE9BE0 (https://keybase.io/jmckinstry/key.asc)
• pgp.mit.edu: 9ABC91ED61DE9BE0 (https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x9ABC91ED61DE9BE0)

About Justin

While not being an extreme outdoorsman, Justin does like to hunt and fish. Occasional hiking and biking also occur. During the rest of his spare time he enjoys reading, drumming, and playing Rock Band and other video games. He also likes to write small programs using C/C++/javascript/python just for fun.

He once fixed a mangled barcode with a pen and a steady hand.