Windows Tips & Tricks Consulting Service

Contracting & Consulting

Harold Nolte • (801) 928-9283 • mr_nolte@yahoo.com

I have many years of experience in the computer industry. I am a senior software engineer with development, management and project leadership skills and a solid knowledge of all levels of computer systems gained through many years of hardware and software experience. My knowledge, skills and experience are summarized below.

Management/Leadership	I have been a department manager, project leader, technical leader and mentor.
Software Life Cycle	I am familiar with the entire software life cycle and then some (conception, architecture, requirements, design, implementation, deployment, documentation, training, testing, technical support, end of life).
Software	I have many years of system level, application level, driver level and firmware/embedded programming experience.
Hardware	I understand hardware circuits, chipsets, logic analyzers, debuggers, bus analyzers, software to communicate directly with hardware, etc.
Training	I have developed training courses for a corporation and taught those courses many times.
Communication/Presentation	I have presented new software concepts before they were implemented. I have demonstrated features of systems to customers, engineers and management.

Two of the projects I developed and led are listed below. I have been successful starting projects from scratch and leading teams from an idea to a completed project.

Flying J Incorporated

As manager of the POS (Point of Sale) development department I was responsible for the software that runs at all Flying J truck stops and restaurants. In 1994, the truck stop software was getting old and was hard to maintain. It slowed to a crawl when the truck stops were busy. The largest truck stops pumped over a million gallons of diesel fuel per month.

I was asked to rewrite the entire truck stop POS system. There are about a dozen programs running in the Unix operating system, each with a specific task, that communicate with each other to operate the truck stop. To add to the complexity, new hardware and new technology was used for the first time with this new system. I created an overall architecture and wrote design documents for each program. I gave each software developer assignments to write each of these programs. I oversaw the project and made sure all design rules were being followed. The new system was up and running in 14 months.

The software was completed in 1995 and is still running today at all Flying J truck stops nationwide. When it was completed, Flying J's revenues were around $1 billion. Today they are a $10 billion company and the software has grown with them, still providing the support required to keep the truck stops running.

Iomega Corporation

I started with Iomega Corporation shortly after the extremely successful Zip drive was launched. My responsibility was to develop a new software system to interface the Zip drive. This new system was to replace two older programs that were being used. Up to that time, all of Iomega's products used the SCSI drive interface but Iomega needed flexibility with this new software because new drive interfaces were being used.

I architected the new software system, wrote design documents for each level of the system and led a team of software developers and technicians to develop it. During this time the two older systems were phased out, but were supported by the department until their end of life.

The new software was far more flexible and powerful that either of the two programs it replaced. It had a modular structure that made it possible to easily add new drive interfaces (in as little as two days). The structure made it portable to other operating systems. It was developed in DOS and ported to Windows, Macintosh and Windows CE.

This software is still being used by Iomega and their customers, partners and manufacturers worldwide.