About the IT Professional

About the IT Professional and Technologist (me)


I am a pas­sion­ate leader with 26+ years of mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary expe­ri­ence in the Tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor and my IT Pro­fes­sion­al career.

I am often described as a dri­ven pro­fes­sion­al empha­siz­ing per­pet­u­al pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment,  uncon­ven­tion­al think­ing, men­tor­ing and being visionary.

I’m high­ly adap­tive, strong­ly eth­i­cal and agile; my fast think­ing and abil­i­ty to see future trends and mit­i­gate risks are parts of my lead­er­ship style.

I have strong, soft skills and peo­ple skills, and while I demand a high lev­el of per­for­mance from my staff, I am always look­ing to earn their respect and loyalty.

While I am a strong pro­po­nent of Open Source Tech­nolo­gies in the Enter­prise, I am always look­ing for the best solu­tion to solve the issue, what­ev­er that may be.

Some quick facts:

  • 26 years of tech­nol­o­gy oper­a­tions, dis­as­ter recov­ery and infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty experience
  • 15+ years in Senior Tech­nol­o­gy Leadership
  • Strong Risk Man­age­ment back­ground with a focus on dis­as­ter recovery
  • Mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary Tech­nol­o­gy Skillset (Oper­a­tions, Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty, Data man­age­ment, Dis­as­ter Recov­ery, Archi­tec­tur­al Plan­ning, Sys­tem Inte­gra­tion, Strat­e­gy and Facilities)
  • Always look­ing to future trends bal­anc­ing and mit­i­gat­ing risks
  • Con­stant Pro­fes­sion­al Development
  • Glob­al Oper­a­tions expe­ri­ence, with a focus on glob­al Ecom­merce oper­a­tions and dis­as­ter recov­ery scenarios
  • Vision­ary
  • Pas­sion­ate
  • Uncon­ven­tion­al thinker
  • Strong Peo­ple / Strong, soft skills
  • Adap­tive / Agile
  • Eth­i­cal
  • Fast thinker and am at my best with tough challenges

A bit of history

I start­ed with sys­tems sup­port and moved on through Dis­as­ter Recov­ery Plan­ning, Risk Man­age­ment, DBA duties, Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty, and eCom­merce; even­tu­al­ly enter­ing the Man­age­ment Track near­ly 15 years ago.

You can find out more about my career at my LinkedIn pro­file; how­ev­er, I have always been pas­sion­ate and dri­ven in computing.

I am of the gen­er­a­tion that grew up with the first micro­com­put­ers (such as the Apple II and the C64) and watched the cur­rent design desk­tops, lap­tops and servers evolve as each new mod­el was at the fore­front of the lat­est technology.

With­out dat­ing myself, I have seen the pro­gres­sion of com­put­ing from BASIC on a C64 to plan­e­tary-scale cloud sys­tems and AI-dri­ven technologies.

Out­side of my pro­fes­sion­al career in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, being a wit­ness and par­tak­ing in this pro­gres­sion of tech­nol­o­gy has been a fan­tas­tic fun ride.

For me, it is “what is pos­si­ble”, “the poten­tial for inno­va­tion,” and the “near-end­less ways” that old and new tech­nolo­gies con­tin­ue to evolve that keep me inter­est­ed.  I have worked for com­pa­nies that range from start-ups to 300,000+ peo­ple, tra­di­tion­al big oil com­pa­nies with mono­lith­ic ERP sys­tems to glob­al media/e‑commerce com­pa­nies and man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies look­ing to evolve with grid-style net­works and Enter­prise open-source deployments.

With new­er tech­nolo­gies such as the Rasp­ber­ry Pi, and the pow­er­ful open-source tech­nolo­gies that are at any­one’s fingertips…

I am con­fi­dent that we are enter­ing yet anoth­er gold­en age of tech­nol­o­gy, and I am hap­py to con­sid­er myself a Tech­nol­o­gist, not just an IT professional.


Orig­i­nal­ly Post­ed: Sep­tem­ber 20, 2021
Updat­ed: Novem­ber 1, 2022


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About the Astronomy

Look up, way up


To con­fine our atten­tion to ter­res­tri­al mat­ters would be to lim­it the human spirit.

- Stephen Hawking.

For the longest time (it seems like since the dawn of the uni­verse, no pun intend­ed), I have been high­ly inter­est­ed in Astron­o­my. I remem­ber being six years old and hav­ing my father read me the “Our Uni­verse” book from Nation­al Geo­graph­ic as a bed­time sto­ry and being com­plete­ly engaged in the subject.

For me, the cos­mos is a metaphor for a vast expanse of pos­si­bil­i­ties; it is a place where one can look up, won­der and dream.

Over the past 30 years, oth­er inter­ests, respon­si­bil­i­ties, and dai­ly events in life have kept me occu­pied from pur­su­ing Astron­o­my & Astropho­tog­ra­phy with zeal and passion.

With the recent events of the past two years (the pan­dem­ic) and being old­er, I have had time to re-ignite my inter­est in this hobby.

With many of my oth­er goals, hob­bies, pas­sions hav­ing been ful­filled; now seems to be an appro­pri­ate time to get back on the path of this journey.

The ded­i­cat­ed Astron­o­my sec­tion on the web­site is part of that jour­ney. In this area, I can doc­u­ment my attempts at Astropho­tog­ra­phy and post-write-ups about my expe­ri­ences with gear or events.

The Astron­o­my sec­tion is one of the newest sec­tions of this site, and I have grand goals for it, albeit it will take time (with a dash of luck, over the Decem­ber 2021- Feb 2022 timeframe.


Orig­i­nal­ly Post­ed: July 31, 2011
Updat­ed: Octo­ber 20, 2021


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About the Photography

About my journey with photography

The journey

Pho­tog­ra­phy has long since been my pas­sion (sec­ond only to my love for astron­o­my, the culi­nary arts, and clas­si­cal music). My pas­sion for trav­el and specif­i­cal­ly to des­ti­na­tions with spec­tac­u­lar land­scapes, has fur­ther fueled my jour­ney with the camera.

I remem­ber start­ing my pho­to­graph­ic jour­ney with my par­en­t’s Canon AE‑1 cam­era and a roll of cheap gener­ic depart­ment store film. If my mem­o­ry serves, I believe I had noth­ing more than a 50mm “paper­weight lens” and a dual-ring 80–200/f4 man­u­al focus no-name gener­ic lens. Those were the days…

That was eon’s ago regard­ing equip­ment, skill, qual­i­ty, and ambition.

My enthu­si­asm for this hob­by has only ampli­fied over the years and has been tak­ing me in the direc­tion of Fine Art Printmaking.

I con­tin­ue to enjoy the art behind image-mak­ing and always enjoy the jour­neys that I embark on to find the “next” large-for­mat print; how­ev­er, I focus more and more on the art and tech­niques behind mak­ing phys­i­cal prints.

The pho­tographs through­out the site cov­er a great deal of sub­ject mat­ter and have been select­ed from a long list of cap­tured images in var­i­ous film for­mats (35 mm, 6 × 7, dig­i­tal full-frame 35 mm), brands (Fuji, Kodak, Agfa) and a wide range of lens­es and cam­era gear.

These pho­tographs rep­re­sent a com­pendi­um of cap­tured images over the past 30 years, for the most part hav­ing been cap­tured using Canon 35 mm Manual/Autofocus and dig­i­tal equip­ment, Mamiya RB67, and most recent­ly Sony Alpha.

While the dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of my images locat­ed on the site is the eas­i­est method to show my work to the largest audi­ence, I pre­fer to dis­play my works in terms of Fine Art prints rang­ing from small Art Card style prints to images as large as 44 × 132 inch­es (~4 × 11 ft).

There is some­thing about see­ing your work in “tan­gi­ble for­mat” on fine lus­tre paper, fine art paper and can­vas that presents vast­ly dif­fer­ent­ly from an LCD screen.

My works on this site have been orga­nized into gal­leries and should be self-explanatory.

How­ev­er, spe­cial col­lec­tions, image sequences, exper­i­men­tal forms of pho­tog­ra­phy, and time-lapse work are scat­tered through­out the main gal­leries. These col­lec­tions and oth­er pho­to­graph­ic essays are my attempts to tell a sto­ry of an adven­ture, place, or subject.

Enjoy the images.

Cheers,
Rob Dabisza


Orig­i­nal­ly Post­ed: Sep­tem­ber 15, 2010
Updat­ed: Decem­ber 7, 2022


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Display Recommendations

Display Recommendations, protecting the durability of the print


Introduction

We all have seen colour pho­tos that have fad­ed with time.  It’s an unfor­tu­nate fact that expo­sure to light fades colour photographs.

I find this quite iron­ic, con­sid­er­ing that expo­sure to the light cre­at­ed the pho­tographs in the first place how­ev­er, chem­istry and physics get the best of the inks and papers eventually.

Colour pho­tographs will fade pre­ma­ture­ly if they are not dis­played or stored cor­rect­ly and even with the advances in paper tech­nolo­gies and ink tech­nolo­gies over the past decade, there are still some guide­lines that should be fol­lowed to max­i­mize the lifes­pan of your prints.

The infor­ma­tion on this page is intend­ed to give you some guide­lines to help you extend the life of your prints for as long as is possible.

While all of my prints are pro­duced with mod­ern inks and papers and under nor­mal view­ing con­di­tions, these prints should have an archival life of 75 years or greater.

Guidelines

The fol­low­ing points apply, albeit can be fur­ther off­set by pro­tec­tive sprays and var­nish­es on canvas.

  • The low­er the ambi­ent light­ing lev­el of your room, the longer your print will last.  A print in a mod­er­ate­ly lit room will last much longer than one in a bright­ly lit room. Do not dis­play your print in direct sun­light — expo­sure to direct sun­light is the surest way to fade it.
  • Avoid dis­play­ing your print in areas of high heat or humid­i­ty. A cool, dry room is bet­ter than a hot one with loads of humid­i­ty in the air. An air-con­di­tioned room is best.  This is not pos­si­ble when you live in warmer cli­mates; how­ev­er, for those of you in envi­ron­ments such as the Rocky Moun­tains where the air is dry, try not to dis­play you prints direct­ly over your fur­nace heat vents.
  • Avoid dis­play­ing your print in a room where the air is pol­lut­ed. Pro­longed expo­sure to cig­a­rette smoke, cook­ing fumes, pes­ti­cide sprays and oth­er air­borne con­t­a­m­i­nants will reduce the life of your print.

Notes

  • Nor­mal View­ing Con­di­tions means that the pho­to is mat­ted and framed under glass and is dis­played under aver­age room light­ing conditions.
    Dark Stor­age Con­di­tions means the print is stored in the dark at 23° Cel­sius and 50% rel­a­tive humidity.

Orig­i­nal­ly Post­ed: Sep­tem­ber 15, 2010
Updat­ed: Octo­ber 20, 2021


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