Hi my name is Dan Miller….. but of course you know that….My interest in communications and technology started in the early 70’s. Although not as active as I once was, some may remember my Amateur radio (HAM) call sign N9DOP, I was heavily involved in packet radio at that time. A few enthusiasts and I established N9DOP2 and 3 which were the 1st “digipeaters” north of Indianapolis in the state of Indiana. The group along with the support of ECRA, Elkhart County Radio Association, and IDEA (Indiana Digital Experimenters Association), placed the stations at the Heritage Cablevision tower in Dunlap Indiana which was used for several years assisting local emergency services during times of need.
I was a graduate of NRI, and Devry Tech at that time and built most of my equipment including my first computer. I was employed by a local plastics company at the time, and continued my education in electronics through NRI, and attending specialized training schools on PLC controllers and DC drives.
When personal computers became more common place in mid 80’s, I became interested in applying my programming skills to solving common business problems such as order entry, scheduling, accounting, invoicing, and inventory control utilizing lotus and dbase on the IBM PC platform. I continued my education, attending evening classes over the next few years at IU and Ivy Tech to obtain an additional degree in information systems.
Some of you may remember when Radio Shack had their Tandy Line of PC’s. There was no Dell, and Compaq, only IBM and TANDY. I spent so much time in Radio Shack picking up parts for my next amateur radio project, Joe the local store manager, offered me a part time job in the evenings in Sales. I knew PC’s and Deskmate, (The predecessor to Microsoft Office), inside and out so selling Tandy’s was a piece of cake. To this day, I don’t believe Tandy had any idea what they gave up when they made the decision to stop manufacturing their own line of PC’s. One month I was top Salesman in Indiana only working a few hours a week. Really not that hard to do…. at that time a consumer only had 2 choices, a Tandy with Tandy DOS and Deskmate included or an IBM that even the operating system was optional.
In 1996 I made the decision to move from Manufacturing to full time IT and went to work for a company called ServNet. ServNet specialized in providing IT services to the Health Care Industry. I was on the road and only home 3 days a week, with children at home that was not working out too well. In May of 1998 I accepted an IT director position at one of the larger RV companies in the area. In August of 2008, I was the last of the original IT staff to be laid off due to downsizing. We all know this story all to well in Elkhart County. This has given some time bring my Microsoft and CompTIA certs up to date. I also am a contract trainer for Maplenet training in Goshen and have been developing Business web sites providing web design, hosting and domain registration services. If you are looking for these services and want to keep your businesses hard earned income in the local economy check out djmiller.net Services.
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GodBless,
Dan Miller
View my MCP Certifications