Hey dudes, for what it's worth, here's a recommendation I wrote for our
club member, Brian Friday.
Roger
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I enthusiastically recommend Brian Friday as an advanced Linux lecturer.
A passionate implementer of open source technology, Mr. Friday would
undoubtedly be an invaluable asset to UCR's continuing education program.
I have known Mr. Friday for over fifteen years, which included a
significant period of service in the same IT department--at La Sierra
University. I have had ample opportunities to observe his conceptual,
technical, managerial, and interpersonal skills.
While still in undergraduate, Mr. Friday became La Sierra's systems
administrator and inherited the thankless and never-ending task of
wrangling the university's UNIX- and Linux-based systems. After
selection as the university's infrastructure manager, he oversaw a
number of impressive projects, including campus-wide LDAP integration,
layer 3 switching, and bandwidth throttling. His war stories of
integrating disparate technologies on a shoestring budget with open
source technology will no doubt add a healthy degree of realism to
discussions of topics that might otherwise sometimes prove dry and boring.
I am particularly impressed with ways in which Mr. Friday has shared his
knowledge, experience, and contacts with his counterparts on other
campuses. He clearly views systems administration as a kind of personal
mission. Open source values are extremely important to him; where other
administrators might simply reduce users' network access to make their
jobs easier, he works consistently to ensure that users have as much
free access as possible, given the overall need for a productive campus
computing environment. Where others are content with simply using open
source software, Mr. Friday conscientously gives back to the open-source
community that has provided him with so much. Because of this commitment
to values like service and gratitude, I am confident that Mr. Friday
would prove not only a capable lecturer but also a notable mentor
budding systems administrators enrolled in UCR's extension program.
I cannot say enough good things about Brian Friday. If you have any
questions about his qualifications as a university teacher, I would be
happy to answer them, and even to refer you to others who would also be
happy to extol his virtues. I can best be reached on my cell phone
([951] 317-7489) or by email ([email protected]).
Cordially,
Roger E. Rustad, Jr.
