I just moved to San Francisco from the midwest.  I've previously lived in Indiana, Kansas, Wisconsin, and the Carolina's.  I'm excited to be out in the Bay Area now.

I recently joined Yelp as a network engineer.  I previously worked for Apparatus, a technology services and consulting firm in downtown Indianapolis, where I work at a Fortune 500 client site. In the workplace, I love learning new technologies, appreciate the sense of accomplishment that follows challenges, and dislike extensively repetitive or monotonous tasks.

Interests

Technology

My primary passion is technology, specifically with networking-related technologies: routing, load balancing, and security / firewall / VPN. I enjoy working with network design and architecture. I've found that the best way to truly understand how many network and application technologies work is through packet captures, to see how they are actually communicating over the wire. In 2011, I moved into a network project focused role within Apparatus, giving me a chance to dig deep into data center networks, primarily with Cisco and F5 products. I also enjoy an occasional programming or scripting project. I've worked a bit with C#, PHP, Perl, and more recently Python / Django. I also like working with and managing Linux systems for web related services, email, etc. Particularly with application focused aspects of networking like load balancing, it is critical to understand the servers and applications themselves.

Aviation

I've been interested in aviation since I was a kid. When I was little, I wanted to be a pilot when I "grew up". My career interest shifted towards technology when I was in middle school, but my casual interest in flying has remained. I'm hoping to start working on my private pilot's license soon.

Contact

If you would like to contact me, you can use my email address which is listed at the bottom of the page. I'm @olivergarraux on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn as well.