About Brackin Technical
My name is Paul Brackin, Independent Software Engineer.
Brackin Technical is my company. I have been an engineering professional since 1995. Brackin Technical is where I make my problem solving skills available to those who may need them. Let me tell you a bit about myself.
I was the classic curious boy who loved to take things apart. I had a huge HO-scale train set that took up half the garage. I still have my first computer, a Commodore 64 with a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive, Fast Load, and an immense library of games! Yes, I was using & programming computers before there was an internet. We did have dial-up BBSs though! I was also into music and played alto saxophone in a number of high school bands. Although I was a full blown nerd, I was back then, and remain to this day, an athlete.
After high school, I made my way to Florida State University and ultimately graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I completed subsequent graduate studies in Software Engineering at the University of Texas in Arlington.
I worked 9 years in wireless telecommunications. At Motorola, we deployed the world’s first live CDMA cellular system in Hong Kong. Later, I did embedded software development for the base stations (C, VrTX RTOS). At Nokia, I designed & built the original TOTEM – a Tool for Origination TErmination & Maintenance ( a Java Tool built specifically for cell phone testing) as well as worked in middleware embedded software integrating BREW into the Nokia handset OS.
In 2004 I switched to more system and web software. I worked at a number of smaller companies developing SMS SMPP gateway services ( C++ & Python ) for text-based gaming and notifications, interactive-gaming websites and kiosks (PHP, Javascript, SQL), SOAP and RESTful APIs (Python, C#), high-availability database design (OO, SQL), and much more. I also worked for Cicsco on their cloud-security team developing Marshal, a key-management tool for the OpenStack platform (Python).
I have made numerous contributions to open source projects including Alembic (Python), Gitea (Golang), and MusicBrainz Picard (Python).
Current projects include a custom Python & SQL Server back-end loan-management software for a private lending company, custom YouTube video websites, and WordPress.org site customizations, deployment & security. I also run a growing YouTube channel AND associated blog called The Grok Shop where I produce technical how-to videos & blog posts. Check it out!
I have 2 young and beautiful daughters that keep me running. When I get time to break free, I usually head to the beach to surf some waves or grab my mountain bike and hit the trails.
Enough about me, though! What about you? If you are looking for some technical help, let me know what you need in on my Contact page. I doesn’t cost anything to inquire! If I don’t have all the knowledge, I will find it on my dime. I am usually able to solve most problems on my own, but if the project calls for it, I can bring in additional help as well.