About Dan Renner ITdiaries.com

I was a typical kid; I liked to tear apart and rebuild electronic devices, radios, TVs, etc. At one point in my youth I strung 22-gauge wire in my bedroom in a crisscross pattern as an antenna for my short-wave radio -- upon seeing it, my mother started screaming something about electrocuting myself ...

I served in the U.S. Navy during the tail-end of the Vietnam War and learned many trades during those years.

In 1983, my wife at the time was into computers due to her being an accountant. We had a Radio Shack TRS-80 running CP/M at home and she was busy trying to build a program, but kept getting stuck, and I would point out a logarithm or whatever and it would usually work -- so I suppose my interest in computers is somewhat due to her programming problems.

I ended up working as a researcher for one organization where one day we had to build a large glossary-type document, on some sort of mainframe computer with dumb terminals, and I figured out how to have three teams of two guys feeding me buffers of data, which I'd insert into an organized document. The computer administrator never did figure out how I managed that one.

In early 1990 my wife-to-be gave me a present of a brand new IBM-compatible computer on which I ended up learning how to program an old DOS database, run a BBS, and of course tweak the computer so it would run faster -- in other words, a PC utility junkie was born.

I started my computer repair business in mid-1990 after helping out many of my friends with their computers. Having my days free while working at night left me time to build my business during the daylight hours with my employer's consent.

I eventually was good enough with DOS commands, that at one point I was accused of violating a client's warranty by using third-party programs in the computer's startup configuration files. The command I used? "MODE.COM" This was originally a DOS command that allowed you to modify the keyboard's delay and repeat rates for faster or slower than normal typists. The warranty was reactivated for my client after I had the tech support guys locate the command on their own computers. :-)

I obtained my first computer network client in 1992 after giving a business card to the secretary, leaving and then being literally dragged back into the office to start immediately. I recall the users were ALL logging into their workstations as the user "User" with no password, and this username had supervisor privileges on the Novell v2.xx server. The computers were running MS-DOS v5 and Windows v3.11 and only had around 412KB (out of 1024KB) RAM left after booting which caused many problems when running programs. These and other problems I easily handled using only DOS commands and configuration files.

Later that year I installed a new Novell v3.12 server for them and to my knowledge as of November 2002, this computer is still running as a Lotus Notes mail-server.

A mid- to late-1990s pride and joy was a Windows 95/98 peer-to-peer network, running stabley with a tweaked Windows 95B computer as the main "server" and 32 workstations all pulling data and writing to it. (I recall Microsoft stating that the limit for this configuration was 10 workstations at the time.)

Since its beginnings, my company, Los Angeles Computerhelp, has serviced over 2200 clients in the Southern California area, encompassing Ventura to Glendora and Lancaster to San Diego, plus multiple national companies for whom we have done outsourcing work for locally. Last, but not least are those we have supported around the world, in countries such as Great Britain, South Africa, Jerusalem, etc.

Our jobs have varied from servicing home office clients to designing and maintaining the computer network for the fifth-largest cable content provider in the United States during it's heyday with three associated companies and over 250 employees under our umbrella.

I became interested in security around 1995 when I start using and setting up Internet proxy servers and then discovering how widely these proxies were being used by others from anywhere on the Internet.

I recall setting up one such network in Burbank, California in 1997 (after having warned the owner that he needed a firewall and being advised that "No one would want our data!"). The receptionist paged me urgently two weeks later, and I was barraged with "Help!! There are windows opening and closing and files are being deleted!!!" I had her pull the plug and off I went.

I've been doing what I could to protect my clients ever since. We've put in locked-down proxies, firewalls, secured web-servers and more. Our VPNs span the globe. One runs from the main office to three points in Los Angeles as well as to Australia and Czechoslovakia.

We've cut down on Operating System services and browser capabilities so that our clients' computers can survive the daily onslaught of "viruses, trojans and worms, oh my!" (Sorry, Dorothy.)

I've also wet my feet in Linux due to its stability factor. I've used it as a desktop for about two years now, and as a server for around 5 years. As a server I've had wonderful success; as a desktop I've had satisfaction and more success as the years go by.

So now that I've held you captive this long, I'll suffer you with my thoughts on computers:

I like computers. They are excellent tools that are exceedingly underutilized in today's world.

(Hm. I should do a post on that one ...)

Cheers,
Dan Renner
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