University of Denver Startup Weekend 2015 Winner
May 2015Once again participated in the 57-hour Entrepreneurial sprint to build and prototype a company. On Friday Andrew and I pitched an idea for an intelligent application that could help to get a new range of people outside. Over the weekend that idea turned into NexTrek a platform designed for easy access to social trail information, safety features, and a focus on helping beginners to the wilderness! For our efforts we were awarded first place and resources to continue working on our idea,
Performance Issues with Reporting Systems
Aug 2014It's been an interesting week at work. For the last couple of weeks we've been noticing issues with our schedulers randomly dropping reports or backing up and not finishing their daily report runs until late in the day (A problem when clients are expecting the reports to inform their work day).
After a morning of poking and prodding we finally figured out what was going on. The Pentaho reporting engine that we use to schedule our reports is notorious for high memory usage during reporting runs as it clones data that it queries. Because of the volume of reports that we run, the server for the scheduler was allocated 50Gb of RAM however we discovered that only 20Gb of that was being given to the Java VM. As we added memory we were still thrashing on our memory, when Java attempted to garbage collect the Pentaho processes refused to let go of their memory so the servers were ending up in a horrible garbage collection/swap cycle that was maxing the boxes and taking them down.
In the end we had to give close to 80Gb of RAM to the boxes while limiting the throughput at any given time. But that solution is only a temporary fix, I've now been given the task of redesigning our scheduling system and moving it to a more reliable architecture backed in a database system to allow for failover tolerance and scalability.
University of Denver Startup Weekend 2014
May 2014Participated in the University of Denver Startup Weekend a 57-hour Entrepreneurial sprint! Starting Friday night we pitched our idea for tablet based bar ordering system. We were 'green lit' by our peers in attendance and formed a team of 5 to get started. After market research we pivoted the idea to a POS and ordering system used in 'fast casual' dining experiences. We completed a basic prototype of the project and presented in front of a panel of judges. Although we did not win the competition we all learned and incredible amount about startup culture and taking an idea and turning it into a reality.
Player on the Colorado Rush Rugby Team
Feb 2014 - Nov 2014Started playing as a forward position player for the Colorado Rush Rugby Football Club based in Denver, CO. The Rush is a multicultural mens recreational rugby team that competes against other teams in the Denver area.
Following my first season with the Rush I was voted by my teammates as the Rookie Forward of the Year for 2014.
I was forced to quit rugby in order to focus on finishing up school while working but hope to return soon!
VP of University of Denver Mock Trial Team
Oct 2011 - Jun 2013Started participating on the DU Mock Trial as an attorney during my Freshman year. That year our team participated at the San Diego Regional Tournament where I was awarded with an Outstanding Attorney Award.
At the conclusion of my first year I was elected to the position of Vice-President. During my time as VP the executive board of the team moved into a separate division of the school, ended the year with a budget surplus, and participated in the Organizational Tournament, a first for the DU team.