And that's how you start down the slippery slope of being the local email admin. You were stupid enough to volunteer and to care that things worked. Bell Labs was also the job that got me into Information Security. Fun times!

I jobbed around quite a bit, and eventually ended up working at NASA Ames in the early 1990s. As part of the Network Operations group, I managed the DNS and also managed to melt down the entire network when my automation scripts produced broken zone files. That was a Bad Day.

Back in that era the root name servers were actual physical machines. Our NASA project ran the root name server at the "Federal Internet eXchange West Coast" (FIX West) inside a secure building at Ames. In those days you could run a root name server on a Sun Sparcstation.

After NASA I went to work for QMS (they made laser printers) at the old Imagen facility-- it was my first solo Sys Admin gig. Our site had the Internet feed for the whole company but we were using the domain "AQM" (stock ticker) because "QMS" was taken.

"QMS" was was Quantum Medical Systems of Issaquah, WA. I figured I'd call and see if they still needed the domain. When I dialed their main number, the receptionist answered, "HP Medical Imaging" and I knew this was going to work!

I talked to their network admin and he said "Oh sure! We just got done transitioning off that domain. Here let me transfer it to you." I got the transfer authorization in my mailbox in seconds. He didn't even want the free laser printer I was prepared to offer.

This was mid-1993 and probably the last time a reasonably valuable domain name was transferred for free because it was the right thing to do.

Anyway, I became the tech contact for qms.com and at the time I was HP3 in WHOIS, right behind hp.com and their netblock allocation. That's a pretty cool vanity flex from the end of the early Internet era.

Eventually I started my own consulting firm in 1997 and I did a lot of consulting around email in DNS in those heady dot-com years. And of course I ran my own email and DNS services for my business and personal stuff, as well as for friends and family.

And from that day until today I never stopped running email and DNS (and web) services. It was a fair amount of work, but I always learned a lot.