Hello! My name is Mark Foster and this is my blog (as you might have guessed). I am a former network/system administrator turned software engineer so I tend to ramble on about various tech bits. Over the years I have benefited from many others that have posted explanations of obscure error messages on blogs and forums and so I wanted to give back.

I am currently a software engineer a Pictometry. It is a cool company to work for and I have the opportunity to play with a wide variety of programming languages, databases, and other technologies. As a result of my network/system administration background I have a particular interest in web application performance, scalability, and high availability.

I haven’t really committed myself to a particular language or operating system although currently I am really enjoying my current work with PHP. I think that there are many right solutions to the same problem and different programming languages and operating systems work well in different worlds.

Outside of work I enjoy fiddling with electronics, RC flying/crashing, photography, hiking, etc. I grew up and now live in the Rochester area with my wife Jen who is also a techie. I graduated from RIT with a BS degree in Information Technology and concentrations in Web and Application programming. Well, that ought to be good enough for an about section.