GrabPERF — Performance Measurement
GrabIT2 — HTTP(S) File Download Tool
GrabIP — IP-to-Country Mapping
IP Address to IP Number Converter
Hit Tracking with PHP and MySQL
©2000-2008 Stephen Pierzchala
Stephen Pierzchala[1] is currently the Senior Technical Performance Analyst at Gomez, Inc, as well as the Chief Performance Evangelist for WebPerformance, and the primary developer for the GrabPERF Performance Monitoring System. He has been actively been working with, supporting and analyzing data from Internet technologies since 1994.
At both Gomez, Inc and Keynote Systems, Stephen has analyzed and documented a large number of interesting Internet performance issues, with a focus on forensic and real-time analysis of the root causes of the problem.
Stephen has written a number of articles on aspects of Web Performance. Many of these have been published online, while others have actually appeared in dead-tree format. A complete list of published article locations is available here.
Stephen is well-versed with the Linux operating system, although other versions do not phase him (except Gentoo which is for true masochists). He has found ways to use Linux as a workstation replacement in an environment that is 99.99% dominated by the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. However, he is well-versed with Microsoft Operating systems; he simply prefers not to run them as they are not challenging, an issue most desktop users do not run up against.
Born in Calgary, Alberta in 1968, Stephen has worked on computers since the days of the Apple II and Commodore PET. He has also had the perverse pleasure of connecting a KayPro Portable to the Internet over a dial-up connection.
After a ten-year detour through the liberal arts — BA in Canadian History from the University of Victoria and some Graduate Studies in History at the University of Alberta — he returned to his geek nature in 1995 when he took a position at Islandnet as a tech support analyst.
From July 1998 until June 1999, Stephen participated in the Applications and Management of Information Technology (AMIT) program at the University of Victoria, where he was exposed to many aspects of IT management and system administration. He obtained a Windows NT 4.0 MCSE in October 1998, and has never bothered to maintain it.
Stephen relocated to Waltham, MA from San Mateo, CA in October 2003, and to Marlborough, MA in April 2004. His wife, Samantha Ewing, and their two sons, Cameron Ewing and Kinnear ("The Terror") Pierzchala, tolerate his extended absences (both physical and mental) because of his excellent lawn-mowing, garden-watering, and snow-shovelling skills, as well as his willingness to crawl into odd spaces to run network, phone and television cabling. He has recently discovered the joys of crimping his own CAT5 network cables and creating database indexes.
The Canadian Consulate in Marlborough opened in May, 2004. Donations of perennials for the grounds are always appreciated.
[1] "Pierzchala" can be pronounce one of two ways: