Meet Ray Powell, Jr., Data Center Engineer

 

Ray Powell, Jr. is a Data Center Engineer at FastServers.Net. Ray spent the last six years working on his Bachelor of Science and Master's degrees in Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology (ITT). Upon graduation he worked briefly for a company that developed document imaging, processing, and archival software. Now he works the night shift in the Chicago, IL data center.

"I really enjoy scifi/fantasy. There are a lot of power metal lyrics that have scifi/fantasy themes." One of his favorite groups, Blind Guardian, released two albums Ray enjoys listening to often. These albums include "A Night At The Opera" and "Nightfall In Middle Earth." Another one of his favorite groups is Masterplan, and their album "Aeronautics." He said the lyrics are usually understandable, meaning that you can actually hear and understand the words unlike some metal music where someone just screams at the top of their lungs, and then growls really loud. "Of course the lyrics don't always make sense, but I still think they are humorous and entertaining."

Ray claims the biggest reason he got into like power metal music was that a lot of the stuff he was first exposed to had the habit of just blending into the background and helped him zone out. "Combine that with the fast paced nature of power metal music, it makes the perfect working and driving music." He said he can start up a play list and several hours go by without him knowing it

Several FastServers.Net employees have been or still are, in to RPGs (Role-Playing Games). Back in high school and most of his college days, Ray claims he was a "RPG Nerd." Of course we asked him about his favorite games. "My favorite RPGs were Mage: The Ascension, Werewolf: The Apocalypse (these two games were part of the same meta game so you could intermix mages and werewolves and vampires), and Deadlands." He said the first two games were modern day horror RPGs. "You could be a reality bending mage fighting a shadow war against some evil oppressive technocracy out to destroy you."

Ray explained that the game Werewolf was a bunch of shape shifting creatures that fought living embodiments of corruption (demon type things). "I found it rather entertaining being an unstoppable fighting machine or rending human reality with the power to smite your enemies. He continued to describe Deadlands. "The RPG Deadlands was cool because it was set in the wild west, but with zombies and demons." Ray told us that playing games was a great excuse to hang with friends and do silly stuff. The closest Ray comes to playing games these days happens to be a sports game or two on his Wii system.

Ray is not a sports fan like most FastServers.Net employees. He said he would much rather watch something else on television than see a game or even go to a game. "I like cartoons so I mainly watch Adult Swim. I think it's funny." A few of his favorite television shows featured on Adult Swim include Futurama, ATHF, Sealab2021, and Robot Chicken. He also includes what he considers a bizarre show, "12oz mouse." Ray thinks the show no longer airs on television. Often times Ray had much rather listen to music than watch television or any sports games. "I listen to just about any kind of music. If you play it enough, it kind of grows on me." The closest music genre to being his favorite is by far any type of power metal music. "I have more CDs and MP3s of power metal than anything else, so I consider that the closest to being my favorite type of music."

Some of Ray's favorite hobbies include reading, growing a vegetable and herb garden, cooking, grilling, and baking. "Usually I go through one or two books a week. I try to get all my books from www.half.com." One of his obsessions is eating. "I grow a little vegetable and herb garden mostly so I can eat the stuff later in the year. And I like to grill and bake so I can enjoy it afterwards. Ray claims he had rather be at home cooking and read rather than out traveling. "One hotel wall looks pretty much like another regardless of its location or how long it took to get there." He said he made the obligatory trips to Disney land when he was a child. "The farthest I travel now is to Northern Indiana to visit my parents' cottage, which is located near a lake."

Ray's daily duties at FastServers.Net includes the customization and installation of operating systems on new servers, getting them racked, cabled, and ready for technical support to take over. "George has instilled in me an appreciation for neat cabling so everything from Cat5 to power cables have Velcro and are tied down and bundled together. This makes everything look neat and easier to deal with when it comes to maintaining the hardware." Some of Ray's other duties include installing APCs in new cabinets, making patches of short loop cabling to connect switches to patch panels, and maintaining inventory. "I also get to diagnose and fix problems with existing servers, but since the Chicago NOC is so new, there hasn't been as much of a need for it just yet."