Welcome to the official website and blog of Chris Umbel, database administrator
and software developer.
Back in '99 I began my career as a programmer for Indianer Computer Corporation (ICC), a small custom software shop in Pittsburgh, PA. We worked on projects ranging from small websites to wearable computers to large enterprise software. Our customer base included small start-ups (and there were many in those days) and Ford motor company. While we were primarily a Microsoft shop employing the typical Microsoft tools like ASP, VB, SQL Server and Access we also dabbled in Java and Oracle.
Within a year I was promoted to senior programmer at the ripe old age of 21. At that point I began to work on architectural design, advanced development and perform a little bit of project management.
In 2001 we spun of Unicentric which developed systems intended for health and human services oriented non-profits. Gradually Unicentric assumed our entire focus and absorbed ICC. My primary responsibility was building an extensible platform based on ASP.Net and SQL Server that would accommodate the case documentation needs of nearly any client without the need for writing code.
Over the years my interest in databases (and large amounts of data in general) grew and I became interested in a position as a DBA. I was hired in 2007 by DVD Empire as their loan DBA (the position which I currently hold) and have become responsible for the majority of the data of the company. My duties include T-SQL development, disaster recovery, optimization, database design, data warehousing, business intelligence, performance tuning, and a bit of architecture design. I also squeeze in some linux system administration and a little desktop and web application work in there as well.
I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA and still reside there. I'm married, and have two kids, eight and four years old. I enjoy tennis, stock trading, and of course, computing.
