Cynthia began her education with the intention of studying graphic design and ended up with a BA in Computer Science — all because a professor said typesetters and hot wax would soon be a thing of the past and everything would be done on computers (how right he was). She merged the two...

Cynthia began her education with the intention of studying graphic design and ended up with a BA in Computer Science — all because a professor said typesetters and hot wax would soon be a thing of the past and everything would be done on computers (how right he was). She merged the two interests when she began her career at Atex as a developer for electronic publishing software for the newspaper industry (which is how she met Laz). She spent the majority of her corporate life at "The Company Formerly Known As Marcam" (which at various times was part of Wonderware, Baan, Invensys, SSA, and now Infor), where she climbed the ladder to application architect for the next generation client/server ERP system. She was responsible for overseeing the design and development of the product, including production, scheduling, inventory, planning, COM, purchasing, quality management, accounting, and financials modules. But after 17 years in the corporate world, Cynthia needed a break and struck out on her own, doing web design/development and custom application work. Her career has come full circle, allowing her to get back in touch with her artistic side, while still keeping that technical edge.

Cynthia has been with Geekz since 2005, when she moved to the Chicago area from Massachusetts. In addition to her consulting projects, she handles the majority of phone calls, administrative work, and marketing for the company. While not as well versed as Laz at lower level hardware, operating system, and network issues, she specializes more in desktop applications and end-user support. She is an expert in Microsoft Office applications, and has created several highly customized templates and integrations with Word, Excel, Access, and Visio. Over the last couple of years doing the bookkeeping for Geekz she has become very proficient at Quickbooks, and has even dabbled in the QB SDK for doing integrations. She also has experience with image-processing and publishing applications such as Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, and Publisher, to name a few.

During her corporate career Cynthia gained extensive experience in all aspects of small and large-scale software development, including requirements analysis, database/UI/application design and implementation, customer support, project planning and management, documentation, and training. Her many years as an architect honed her writing, teaching, troubleshooting, multi-tasking, and presentation skills. She was also involved in several collaborative side projects, including development of standards and processes, building custom document templates, and developing and supporting an intranet web site, including module sub-sites, a document repository, and discussion groups.

Her specific technical experience includes programming in C, C++, and VB on the Windows platform (MFC), database design and implementation using SQL on MS SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, and Access, and web development using HTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, and Javascript. She also has some rusty Unix knowledge, including sh, csh, sed, and awk scripting, and XWindows/Motif.

Continuously trying to expand her skills, Cynthia is currently exploring Microsoft Sharepoint, Outlook customizations, and Windows Mobile development, in addition to all the new web technology she's trying to keep up with. And she is always picking up useful tidbits for general PC support. She's been a font junkie since interning at a graphic design studio in high school, and enjoys the detailed work of digitally restoring old photos.