Before the Internet became a household word, Eric Brady became intrigued by its potential in the workaday world. Brady later turned his passionate interest in the Web into his life’s work and became a data-processing analyst at the University of Illinois. When Brady’s not developing computer applications for the Housing Division, he enjoys puttering in his garden, camping at nearby parks and brewing ales.
Tell me about your career at the university.
I’ve been at the university for a little over nine years. I started out as extra help in telecommunications and then came over to Housing as sort of a computer hardware support person. From there, I’ve kind of moved up in Housing to be one of the lead Web developers for the applications here in Housing.
We develop predominately applications that support our business. We buy very few vendor-based products. We’ve written a really nice system for the students to reassign their rooms. It’s all Web-based and integrates with our contracting system.
Right now the big project that we’re working on is the second version of an application that handles the meal plans at the dining facilities. We work in a team environment, so there are many people who are doing a part of this project.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Bringing everybody together and having them feel good about everybody else on the project – being the person who’s making sure that this piece is getting done, that piece is getting done, that these people are working together and that this person has the information that they need to proceed. That’s been a new step for me in terms of the work that I do here. It’s really been fun. I’ve really enjoyed it.
What’s your favorite part of what you do?
I like the challenges, the problem-solving, the let’s-put-it-together- and-make-it-work. We really have some good leadership here in Housing, and it allows us to have some freedom to be creative in our development and our solutions.
Every project has new challenges that come with it. It gives me an opportunity to reach, to strive, to learn from the mistakes of the past, to really put forth a good effort and feel that I’ve accomplished something when I’m done.
What’s the most difficult aspect?
Keeping up with technology and making good decisions based on what technology is coming and what is in place. It changes very fast, and it’s a real chore to keep up with it and continue to build applications that meet today’s real-world business standards. I do a lot of reading and spend a lot of time on the Web along with [subscribing to] a number of listserves.
Tell me a little about your educational background.
Actually, I’m sort of a self-taught person, believe it or not. I’ve probably got three semesters in at the community college level. The rest of the stuff I’ve just had the desire and the drive to learn, to go out and buy the books and spend late nights in front of the computer and figure it out. I started out doing hardware support and playing around with the Web about a year before the Internet went commercial, so it was still very much in its infancy. I kind of got hooked on it. I saw a real opportunity to develop business applications; it was more than just pretty, flashing, animated pictures. It was a way to really disseminate information and write some applications that would make the jobs here more efficient and cause less headaches for the people that are doing them.
It’s been a real boon to me in terms of the leadership that we’ve had, being able to say, 'Here’s something that I can do, I think we can use this in this environment,' and to have the leadership say, 'Hey, you’re right. There is a place for this. Let’s make it fit our needs.'
The first thing that I put together was an application for the I.D. card, where you could do a search and get a return of the person’s picture and some other information, depending on the search. That was put together as a Housing project but got used by other departments. Then we built another version for the police department.
What kinds of things do you do when you’re not working?
I do a lot of gardening: perennials, hostas and landscaping. I’ve been doing some camping too. We went to Kickapoo State Park this year and to Shades State Park in Indiana.
I’ve also started brewing my own ales here lately. I make five gallons at a time. I’m on my second batch. It’s in its fermentation stage, which could go anywhere from 10 days to three weeks. It’s an interesting process: You boil it up and you add some sugar and some yeast, then let it sit in an airtight fermentation bucket and ferment.
Then you bottle it and let it sit in the bottle for at least a week. It actually goes through a fermentation process in the bottle too. You add a little corn sugar to your liquid, and it’s making carbon dioxide while it’s sitting in the bottle. That’s where the bubbles come from.
I use pre-made malt extract that comes in a 3-pound can. It’s like molasses but thicker and comes from the grains that were ground and boiled down. You can add your own flavors to it. The last batch I did was honey-vanilla flavored, and I used a wheat malt, so it should be a light beer. I’m kind of excited. It’s a little something different; you don’t run across that every day.