Author: Tiara Rea

Have you noticed that something is missing in our LP Staff Interviews? I mean, they’ve been utterly amazing so far, filled with really great LP personalities, and apparently everyone is in love with our previous interviewees, but still, I feel like something is just not as it should be. There’s an element to these staff interviews that has been lacking, and I just haven’t been able to put my finger on it till now…

We have yet to interview a girl!! *gasp, shock, zomg!*

It’s the truth, so it’s about time we remedied that. Meet Danielle Wallace, one of the busiest ladies at LP.

Hi Danielle! I’m so glad you’re our interviewee this month. Did you ever think you’d be the first girl we interviewed for the Lunarpages Newsletter? Hasn’t it always been your dream?

I’ve been dreaming of getting this opportunity since Andrew mentioned his own interview with you, Tiara. He told me all the special, rockstar-like treatment he received with the limo rides, champagne and constant flowers from adoring fans afterwards. Sadly, I won’t be giving a picture of myself singing in front of a mike, but I can guarantee all my future screaming fanboys that I’m well worth accolades. Just send the candy to Tiara to forward onto me.

[Hooray - I'm famous! ]

So tell us, what is your official job title here at LP?

Administrator Training Manager (in the System Administrator section of the IT area)

Danielle, I know you’re always incredibly busy, but fill us in on your day to day tasks.

I basically handle a slew of activities from emergencies where a server crashes to taking dedicated and VPS calls whenever the call queue is behind to answering questions from our system admins, support supervisors, other managers, and developers. I also assign most the IPs that can’t be automatically assigned and fix those assigned improperly. I help to send the company announcements for migrations and upgrades. There are a bunch of other daily tasks that arise all of the time that I have to handle. Currently, I hold the dedicated administrator meetings each week, although I used to do the escalation meetings and have left those notes for the JSA supervisors to begin doing instead. I train administrators and supervisors on tasks whenever the need arises as well.

Have you worked in any other departments at Lunarpages?

I started out in support area as a remote CSR (called RSR back then) in November 2003 with Amy Armitage as my manager, then transferred to the Admin area in October 2004. I celebrated my 4th year with LP in November 2007.

[Congrats on 4 awesome years!!]

What did you do before Lunarpages? What made you decide to join our Family?

I worked at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa before working for Lunarpages and after as well. Initially, I had both jobs full time from November 2003 to May 2004, when I decided to focus just on Lunarpages. Originally, I decided to start with Lunarpages because I was already hosting here for my gardening site (bestgarden.net) and was active on Lunarforums. Another person on the forum, Hush, mentioned getting hired here, so I decided to apply as well.

Do you host any websites with Lunarpages? If so, pimp them out here.

I have a bunch of websites actually. I own over 60 domains and have about 5 semi-active sites. My oldest site is my gardening one at bestgarden.net and has been in existence since May 2003. It’s ranked #1 on Google for the keywords best garden.

Next, I have my Ruby on Rails site called rubyasylum.com where I provide some tips and tutorials on installing Ruby on Rails applications onto accounts with Lunarpages. This one is more work-related than my others, but I’m a big, big fan for Ruby on Rails.

I have a writing site at anythingeverything.org where I post my poems, short stories and some of my vampire novella called “Damned for Eternity”. In conjunction with that forum, I also have a movie review site that I really need to update at ratingbar.com as I haven’t added a review to it for about 2 years.

Finally, I have my online, interactive fantasy narrative at endar.org about the Endar series of stories. Unfortunately, the narratives are nowhere near finished.

You’re even busy in your free time! What do you like to do in any other spare time you find?

I like to play World of Warcraft or be at my computer incessantly. If I do decide to step away from it, I usually have a book in my hand to read.

If you weren’t working here, where do you think you’d be?

I have no clue really. I have to be at a job where I’m using a computer, so it would have had to involve a computer whatever it might have been.

You work at our Las Vegas Datacenter, which is our second datacenter we added some time ago. Tell us the truth – how many slot machines do you have at your desk?

Really, I don’t play the slots, but can I have some of the guys from Thunder Down Under at my desk instead bringing me sodas or just standing there for my every beck and whim?

[LOL yes but only if Amy can visit them]

Can you share some information about the LV Datacenter?

I could, but then I’d have to kill you.

Actually, the LV Datacenter and office are great places to work. Here’s just a slice of how nice the office looks with the artwork prints we each got to hang up:

Also, we have some zany people working there, from Chris Hart, the cage technician, who could have a comedy act of his own:

to Richard Dubois and Mark Armstrong, both JSA, who if you ask them to wear a pink shirt or their military uniform to work so you can snap pictures of them will gladly do so:

Are you a dork? What makes you one?

I am a dork, which it’s funny that you are asking if I’m a dork rather than a geek. I’ve have discussions with people claiming all us techy people are geeks, and frankly I’m not sexy or exciting enough to be a techno-geek: I’m definitely a dork. My definition of what a dork would be goes along the lines of someone who is maladroit in social situations and prefers technology but isn’t fascinating or cool in any way, shape, or form.

[Little does Danielle know, being cool and fascinating is a prerequisite to working at Lunarpages ;P]

Speaking of dorkdom, I hear you like Harry Potter. It’s beyond my favorite thing in the world (even one of my kitties is named after a character in the books…and my license plate has a character name too). Who’s your favorite HP Character and why?

This question is pretty easy. Severus Snape is my favorite character in the books and in the films (how could he not be when the yummy Alan Rickman plays him eh?). I tend to find darkly brooding, complex men to be very interesting characters and Snape fits that profile to a tee. We never understand his motivations in whole until the end of the series.

OMG Snape! *flails* Okay, because I can’t help but discuss HP if the opportunity presents itself…what did you think of the Final Book?

When the final book was released, the moment was bittersweet as I’ve followed the series since around 2001, so I was sad to see it end. I was also thrilled to be given the chance to experience the last Barnes and Noble Harry Potter midnight book release. Overall, the last book is good, but not the best of the seven. I found the very end to be a bit of a let down for the final chapter despite it ending well in most part. I can’t really go into much depth, since I don’t want to be sent angry emails from people who haven’t read it yet.

[hehe Agreed.]

If you were offered one million dollars or the ability to have one superpower for the rest of your life, what would you choose and why?

I’d choose a superpower and that superpower would be immortality. I did mention I’m writing a vampire novel earlier, so you might see that being immortal sounds a neat idea to me. It would be great to not have to suck blood to be able to do that either. As for why, erm, not sure why I’d want to be immortal, but I think a lot of things closed off to me now that I worry about for money or safety reasons wouldn’t be obstacles if I didn’t have to worry about if I had no timelimit on my lifetime.

You work closely with all of our technology at the datacenter and get to see the behind-the-scenes of the equipment and machines we run. What do you see as the future of hosting technology in 2008 and beyond?

I think the future of hosting technology will be involved with security and security-related systems. I closely follow the progression of IBM in what areas it’s involved (IBM is my favorite technology company) and they are pushing into security in a big way by acquiring security related firms. As the internet continues to open up to more and more levels of people in more countries, securing our data and sites becomes a highly important concern.

Next, I believe Ruby on Rails will continue to grow as a framework for the Ruby language. As it does, we will have more customers asking to utilize it on our servers. We were already ahead of the trend on this by offering it over 2 years ago and providing training to our admins to learn to troubleshoot it.

Another interesting trend might be the ability for the younger generation to learn programming itself. One of the biggest proponents of Ruby, a guy called why the lucky stiff or _why for short, recently opened a site at HacketyHack that provides an easily installable, gui-based program to teach programming to anyone. You can read his Manifesto about the reasoning behind this project here.

And now for some usual LP Fun, what (or who) is your favorite and why…

Animal? Cats, because they are independent and don’t need us to be happy or be not happy

Superhero? If _why were a superhero, he’d be my favorite superhero, but since he isn’t, let’s just pretend he is anyway. His superpower would be creating chunky bacon and giving it out to people who learn to program Ruby.

Place to live? Books, because I can live anywhere when I read them. If I don’t like where I’m living in one particular book, I can put that book down and get another one.

Place to vacation? A cruise ship solving a murder mystery because that would be pretty dang cool. Maybe there’s been a bit too many Agatha Christie books for me in the past?

Season of the year? Autumn because it isn’t too hot, isn’t too cold and the trees are gorgeous. It also has a tinge of sadness because soon winter will arrive.

Website? Wikipedia, since I can find anything on there.

Book? Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Mikhail Dostoevsky, which is a brilliant book to understand human psychology for madness.

Movie? Strange Days with Ralph Fiennes: It has great acting and an intriguing plot along with technological geekiness that’s incredibly cool. Fiennes’ Lenny Nero character is a study on human imperfection, he’s shady and slick but still honorable and will do anything for a friend.

Celebrity? Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor. As for why, he’s been in about 4-5 of the top 100 movies listed on IMDb of all time, so I really shouldn’t have to explain how well he can act anyway.

Hobby? Writing is my favorite hobby and the one I need to work more at doing. Not sure why I enjoy writing, especially poems, but I do.

Video game? World of Warcraft is my current favorite video game. I was a bit addicted to it for awhile, but I’m getting better. I have cut down playing it to only once a week for a few hours nowadays. I wish I could do the same for Mt. Dew (my current and long-term major addiction).

Also, you might as well ask my favorite band, since you didn’t and I’m going to share it anyway Depeche Mode is my favorite music group. I love their songs from “Music for the Masses” and “Songs of Faith and Devotion” the most. If someone hasn’t heard of this group, youtube.com has a load of free to view videos of theirs, so go check them out

I love Depeche Mode as well, so you’re preaching to the choir! Thanks so much for the awesome interview, Danielle. Hopefully this will be the first of many women in technology interviews for us here at the Lunarpages Newsletter. I hope you all enjoyed!

Related Hosting Newsletter Articles:

• A Chat With Kaanon
• May 2009 – Spring Hosting Fling
• One on One with the Lunarpages Trainer

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 10:34 am and is filed under Interviews, Issue 5 - December 2007, Issue 6 - January 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed . Both comments and pings are currently closed.