John Beck <john+www@beck.org>
Contacting me
My e-mail address is above. But because of spam, I have every major ISP and
hundreds of minor ones blocked. So if you cannot reach me via e-mail, please
try this web form, which
though a bit tedious, should allow you to reach me so I can add you to my
white list.
What I do
In late Fall 2017, I started a new job at
IBM working on developing the next
generation of IBM Cloud.
Background: Work & Education
I worked for 
Sun (now part of Oracle)
for almost 21 years, the last 10 of which I was the technical lead for the
ON and Userland consolidations of Solaris. I served two years as a member
of the OpenSolaris Governing Board. For 2½ years before that I
led a network configuration management project; earlier I also worked
on server virtualization. I was also involved with the
IETF e-mail related working groups.
Early in my time at Sun, I ported Sun's old version of
sendmail forward,
then was heavily involved in Solaris 9.
I joined Sun,
specifically the Internet Engineering group in the Solaris
Software division (formerly SunSoft), in December 1996. For a while prior
to that I was at a now-defunct start-up where I was the co-developer of
a now-defunct Usenet news search service. Before that, I had been at
HP for over 6
years, developing and supporting various e-mail and other Internet-related
applications, including sendmail. Just prior to joining HP, I completed my
MS in Computer Science at 
UCSB
after obtaining a BS in Engineering &
Applied Science from 
Caltech in 1987.
Interests
- Sports
- I started running cross-country & track in high school and continued
thru college.
- I also enjoy
hiking.
Several friends & I climbed
Half-Dome
in September 1994.
- In college, I discovered
ultimate frisbee,
which I loved playing for 20+ years (until my knees gave out)...
- In 2005, my knees started to give out and I had to back off on running and
ultimate frisbee, and start cycling, which I quickly found I love, and have
done with increasing enthusiasm ever since.
- Although I'm not much for sleeping on the ground, I otherwise enjoy camping
& backpacking. I did a 72-mile trek at
Philmont with my son
and his Boy Scout troop in 2016.
- Travel
- I have a collage of
photos of Yosemite, my favorite place on earth.
- I enjoy my car,
mostly taking my bike somewhere for a ride, although we have taken many
family road trips to various places in the western US.
- My wife and I (pre-kids) spent most of
August 1997 in Europe,
which we partly reprised (with kids) for our 20th anniversary in
July 2012.
- We also had an 8-day trip to Israel
& Egypt in February 1996.
- Politics & Current Events
- I follow the news very closely, especially US politics; see → for a
link to my Twitter account:
- Faith
- I served as an usher for our
church for over 11 years.
- Family
- Most of all, I enjoy relaxing at home with my
wife Peggy and our
daughter Charis (when she is home from
college), our
son Luke, and our dog
Skipper.
We live in San Jose, California (USA).