A senior research programmer with Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES), G. David Frye develops tools for large computer system operations and Web applications. Frye earned a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Illinois and joined the university’s staff as a full-time academic professional in 1980. A licensed pilot and flight instructor, Frye also is active with the American Red Cross disaster operations unit.
Tell me about your job.
I worked for the CERL (PLATO) for about 15 years both as a student and then full time until they closed it. Then I came over here to CCSO, which is now called CITES. The kind of work that I do seems to change every two or three years. I see myself as kind of a generalist. I work in a lot of different areas. For the past several years I’ve been developing Web applications and other tools to support our operations group and the managers of our systems, services and networks. My primary focus is our ticketing system, ARS, which tracks problems, projects and change requests. I also wrote some more widely used applications such as CCSO Status and Contact Manager.
What kinds of projects are you working on now?
I’m putting in a feature in ARS so we can have multiple dispatching groups and can process the
e-mail delivered to our numerous campus-level
e-mail addresses such as net-trouble, consult and security.
We’re also integrating our ticket system with the university’s new system, Clarify, which is being used in a number of units around campus and the university for problem management. We want our ticket system and Clarify to be compatible.
What is your favorite part of what you do?
The challenge. A large part of the development work that I’m doing is deciding how a product is going to work or proposing a possible solution to a problem then showing it to people and getting them excited about it. Then I have to turn the idea into a real service or product. I enjoy that very much. It makes for some sleepless nights. When I start to feel that I’m sleeping really well again, it’s a sign that things are slowing down, and I need to find a new project to work on.
Do you have any particular projects that you have felt especially proud of or felt were particularly challenging?
Status turns out to be one that I am very proud of because it was an obvious need at the time. I had an idea for it and pushed it through. I’m also really proud of my contributions to the old PLATO system. We broke a lot of new ground in the design of timesharing operating systems and making limited resources work for hundreds, and later thousands, of concurrent users.
What’s the most challenging part of what you do?
Building interest and support for new ideas, getting agreement to do the work sometimes and getting the resources. You have to be something of an evangelist and promote your ideas. CITES is organizing away from this kind of individual contribution, but our history, our expertise and our greatest successes are very much the result of talented individuals with great ideas.
I’m learning that Web applications need frequent attention. Lately, it seems we’re redesigning our Web site every few months, so I have to go back to my publicly visible applications and try to make them match the look and feel of the new Web site. They are database-driven CGI scripts, not static pages, so I can’t just run them through some kind of Dreamweaver wash-and-rinse cycle.
Tell me about your leisure interests.
I’m Cubmaster for Cub Scouts Pack 11. It’s one way to spend some quality time with my three boys, who are ages 4 to 9. I enjoy the aspect of scouting that’s about raising kids to do the right things. With Cub Scouts, it’s very much parents and children engaging in activities one-on-one.
I’ve also got a commercial pilot’s license and an instructor’s certificate, so I’m a certified flight instructor. Our family flies places occasionally but our boys are getting big, and they don’t fit in the back seat of an airplane anymore. I’m in a couple of flying clubs. One is called the Enginaires, and there are quite a few people with engineering backgrounds in the club. I’m also in the Flying Illini.
And you are a Red Cross volunteer too?
I spent many years as the Disaster Chair for the Red Cross, but I’m just a worker bee now in the disaster operations unit. The Red Cross called me recently to do damage assessment for the flooding in Sidney.
I think that many people don’t realize that the Red Cross is not only working on highly publicized, large-scale disasters but also is working year-round on disasters that only affect a few people or a single family — such as family house fires. We were called out recently to open a shelter when they evacuated an apartment complex on the north side of Champaign-Urbana because of a gas leak.