Steven
de Mena
Steven
de Mena
I was born 44 years ago in Los Angeles. (Yes, a native Los Angeleno!)
For about 15 years I have been involved in the online world. Well, we called
them plain 'ole BBS's back then. I started out as the programmer for the popular
Star*Chat BBS around 1987. It ran DLX software and at that time it was
considered a very large system (32 lines).
A year or so later Carl ("Captain Kirk", Star*Chat's owner) and I
started the ground-breaking Star*Games BBS, using the then-new MajorBBS
software. It was a lot of hard work but we ended up being pretty successful
at it. In those days there were not many BBS's that had multi-player realtime
games, powerful global commands and fancy ANSI graphics - features that were
taken for granted a few years later. I was unemployed at the time and had the
luxury of playing with the "C" source code to the BBS software and
adding many custom features, including special commands in the games only I
knew of and guaranteed I was the most powerful. :)
I met a friend on Star*Games, Vance, and eventually we decided to start our
own BBS. We were probably about a year too late, but eventually THE CASTLE
bbs drew a large following, growing to 98 lines. I will never forget the
sight of all the equipment stuffed into a spare bedroom at Vance's house. Vance
also got me a great job at Nestlé Food Company, for which I will always be very
appreciative. The little wizard at the top of this page was another logo we
used at THE CASTLE a lot, and will have to do until I can get a photo of myself
scanned. :)
I had admired the work of Gregory Gooden (Rorschach Grey on annex .com) since the days he ran Stonewall West and I was at Star*Chat. After running THE CASTLE bbs for a couple of years Vance and I felt it really made sense for us to merge with The Annex BBS. This happened in early 1995 and now annex .com is one of the premier web development and hosting companies around. I'm very proud of the team we have, led up by Greg and Randy. It was a real challenge for all of us as we transformed from primarily being a dial-up (modem) service to being a presence on the Internet. Our web hosting/design, ISP, and software development (focusing heavily on Cold Fusion powered dynamic web sites) businesses are becoming very successful. Much credit goes to Greg's vision and 16-20 hour days.
These days I mostly provide consulting services to Annex in the areas of Windows
NT/2000 servers, and BackOffice applications like SQL Server and Exchange. Originally
Annex consisted of UNIX and Netware servers, and a lone NT server or two, and
I would like to think I was able to contribute a lot as I am able to move between
all three environments. Now that we are totally NT, and the annex staff has
mastered NT, I am involved less in day-to-day operation.
Some other highlights of my life - I worked in Classical Radio (KFAC,
KKGO) for many years, starting at age 12 (part-time) and continuing for
16 years. At KFAC I eventually became Assistant Music Director and chose about
50% the music heard on the station. I was also a broadcast engineer (I got my
FCC 3rd class license at age 15), producer, editor...a real jack-of-all-trades.
I got my first computer experience at KFAC, setting up their first (Novell)
network. I also co-wrote a database application called Bravo (using "Magic
PC," largely unknown these days) to assist music programmers. It is still
in use today at most of the major classical music stations in the United States.
Around 1989 my radio career ended (KFAC became KKBT, now one of the highest
rated stations in LA). I found a job at a small computer store in Glendale.
I worked there for a couple of years (through two name changes/bankruptcies
- RDP Associates and Diamond Computers). Although
the pay was not great, and not always ON TIME (!) the experience was great as
I got to do a little of everything from installing small Novell and UNIX networks
to building PC's.
I eventually quit the retail computer business to work full-time as a programmer for one of our clients, Anwright Precision Screw Manufacturers. There I heavily modifed their SBT accounting software (running under SCO UNIX/FoxBase), including writing a Job Costing module from scratch. Boy, I hated that accounting programming but it paid the bills.
My most recent was as an IT Manager at Nestlé USA, supporting their Windows 2000 servers in North and South America. I was there from 1992 until 2005. Nestlé is located in Glendale. I have been fortunate to be able to travel to some nice places for my job, including many trips to Europe.
Nestlé is the largest food company in the world, and despite being known primarily for Chocolate we also make Petfood (Friskies, Alpo), Ice Cream and Milk (Carnation), Italian Food (Contadina), Beverages (Nestea, Libby's Juicy Juice), Water (Perrier, Arrowhead), Contact Lens supplies (Alcon), Women's Cosmetics (part owners of L'Oreal and Lancomme) and MUCH more!
Hobbies (besides computers!) include Formula 1 Racing, Electronic Music (I have a home studio), Classical music, Photography, cars in general, stereo and electronic equipment , Watches, Model Cars and music CD's.
| steve at stevedemena.com |