Updated 4/28/2025
Business and Management | Information Technology | Cybersecurity

Park B. Romney (aka Brannock) — Emergent Systems Architect

Versatility. Innovation. Wisdom.

From building relational database applications before "the cloud" had a name to pioneering AI-augmented system design in today's dynamic ecosystem, my programming journey has been one of continuous evolution, creativity, and strategic foresight.

Core Foundations

- Custom LAMP Stack Architectures (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python)
- Secure Linux Server Management (Firewalls, DNS, Apache, OpenSSH)
- Full-Stack Development (PHP, MySQL, Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS)
- Microsoft Power Platform Development (PowerApps, Power Automate, PowerX expertise)
- Android App Development (Java, Android Studio)
- .NET Windows Application Development
- Powershell, Bash, and Batch Scripting for system automation
- Network Configuration (CISCO Labs and advanced custom server configurations)
- Early MIVA technology expertise for large-scale eCommerce


I operate comfortably at the Command Line Interface (CLI) level, custom-coding middleware, firewalls, Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), security monitoring, and SIEM systems. I favor hand-crafted system control over GUI dependence, ensuring customized, efficient, and secure environments.

Evolution and Expansion

As technology evolved, so did I. Recognizing the strategic potential of AI, I integrated advanced AI models into my development workflows, becoming highly proficient in AI-augmented software engineering and prompt engineering. This symbiosis between human intuition and machine insight supercharges my ability to architect sophisticated, adaptable solutions.

Recent advancements include:

- AI-Integrated Client Intake System:
- Developed a fully audible/oral CRM data intake process using live interviews, automatic transcription, and AI-driven data extraction feeding SharePoint and Redtail CRM.
- Reduced administrative friction and eliminated redundant manual entry for financial services operations.

- Dynamic Power Platform Solutions:
- Engineered custom Microsoft PowerApps integrated with Power Automate workflows.
- Built modular client intake and client check-in forms synchronized with CRM data in real-time.

- Confidential National Database Systems:
- Architected and continue to manage a proprietary national research database with over 43,000 U.S. zip codes, designed for survey analysis, educational presentation tracking, and secure data management.

Cybersecurity Specialization

Driven by an increasing focus on cybersecurity, I completed an intensive Cybersecurity Boot Camp through UNLV, earning certifications in:
- Microsoft Security
- Computer Networking
- Cloud Security
- Linux Security
- Network Security
- Cyber Infrastructure & Technology
- Python Programming for Security
- Offensive Security & Ethical Hacking
- Digital Forensics & Threat Hunting

This training complements decades of hands-on security experience, including custom-coded WAFs, automated DOS response systems, and hardened remote Linux servers.

Historical Milestones

- Developed modular eCommerce storefronts capable of "auto-branding" multiple corporate identities through a single backend, supporting Fortune 500 clients.

- Custom-coded scalable affiliate marketing systems, including a reverse affiliate model, integrating direct and external merchant relationships.

- Designed and maintained load balancing, session control, and anti-DOS attack mitigation systems from scratch before mainstream solutions were widely available.

- Built a fully custom content management and project tracking system capable of handling mass client communications with integrated project history and response tracking.

Personal Philosophy

Programming is not just writing code—it's weaving elegant, scalable solutions from the fabric of human need and technological possibility. My approach is grounded in curiosity, relentless innovation, and a fierce commitment to security, performance, and integrity.

I am not limited by any one language, platform, or trend. I adapt. I solve. I create.

And I love it.

Closing Note

If you work with me, you don’t just get a developer—you gain a partner who brings the art and science of emergent system design, fortified by decades of wisdom and supercharged by the most powerful AI augmentation tools available.

The journey continues. And it keeps getting better.

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(*Historical archives available upon request, including detailed case studies on early SaaS and eCommerce innovations.*)



================================

Prior historical sketch, now updated above....

While my team of subcontractors have a wider range of experience and expertise, I am most comfortable in a modified LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python) environment only because I have been (and still am) running proprietary (built entirely from scratch by me) integrated SAAS systems in the cloud for clients for years in the LAMP platform. By "modified" I mean I use a-typical (custom) configurations for security reasons. As a Full Stack programmer I consider myself proficient in PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python and Powershell, Bash, and Batch scripting. (I code in these languages from memory or by cutting and pasting from my own previous work).

I am sometimes asked what PHP Framework I use (ie. Laravel, Symphony, CodeIgniter, Phalcon, CakePHP, etc). I've been writing this code for a long time. Before there were such a frameworks. So, I have developed my own framework. I haven't given it a name and I don't share it for security reasons. I don't teach. (Although I'd be happy to.) I code. I code my own applications and then offer them as SAAS systems. If you want me to build something using Laravel or some other framework for you, I'd be happy to. If you want me to work with a team on a project and the team likes Laravel or some other framework, I'm fine with that. Completely flexible. But I don't need a framework. I get it all done from scratch... which, in my case means I copy, paste and edit my own stuff as needed. At this point, after years of writing this code, I haven't run into anything in quite a while that I haven't already done in some way, shape or form. So, most of what I build is just an adaption of things I've already built.

I have also done coding in ASP, Java and other languages but don't use them much currently so I'm not as fast and handy with them. (Exception: I'm building my own Android Security App) I have Eclipse and PyCharm IDEs but I do most of my coding from scratch, cutting and pasting from prior stuff I've done or using AI and then modifying it as needed. As a systems guy I personally manage advanced DNS, Apache, Nginx, Firewall, Mail Server, FTPS, OpenSSH, and all the necessary remote server configurations and patches by hand at the CLI. (I don't use GUIs. I'm faster by hand and have custom coded my own automations of this stuff.) I've planned and set up networks and done a number of CISCO configurations in lab environments but don't use this much in my current work which is mostly custom cloud based SAAS (Software as a Service) for relatively small clients.

I run my own custom coded firewall management system, custom coded WAF (Web Application Firewall) type middleware, and custom coded security and log monitoring and automated incident and event response systems (SIEM).

Increasingly, I am enjoying diving into Ruby on Rails, Java, and .NET development, but don't have any great projects rolled out in those languages to talk about yet. With AI I might as well be proficient in those languages because I am a very proficient "prompt engineer" (someone who crafts queries for AI to get the most relevant and useful response) and get exactly what I need in a hurry. It helps that I have been a small systems architect for years and know exactly what I'm trying to build and how I need it to fit together and integrate with other routines and systems. Wow! That's fun! I always wanted to have an expert with many multiples of my coding experience to turn to, freely, for tips and architectural design and coding guidance. With AI I now have that. For fun and business, I am building an AI integration and will demo that soon.

AI has quickly become my best friend. Great for my clients or employers. So, if you hire me, you get me and all the expertise of the rest of the world with my AI prompt engineering. Sure, anyone can use AI, but you gotta know the right questions to ask! :-) That takes knowledge and experience with programming, system integrations, and security considerations.

My background lends itself to being very versatile moving through and picking up new languages as needed along the way. From my point of view, programming is programming. The languages aren't that different, once you know a few. The basic concepts and sub-routines are all quite similar.

I got started, years ago, with an IBM computer that looked lik a sewing machine. Some of you might remember the COMPAQ. I taught myself basic and batch scripting at the cli. As Microsoft moved along, I moved with it with what I call "practical programming" (I coded what I needed to in whatever became available and was useful) moving to Visual Studio and such. Then I happened to get a DBASE system and started building integrated relational databases and related programs with DBASE. Great fun! I built a full-blown general ledger accounting system from scratch in DBASE. Then came the internet.

With the advent of the internet I learned HTML and Javascript, but quickly became anxious for the ability to develop full blown applications on the web (saving and retrieving data remotely). Turned out I happened upon a language called HtmlScript (later changed name to MIVA) that connected to dbase files in it's earlier versions. Perfect! I could port already existing custom coded DBASE systems to the web with custom coding in MIVA. Voila! Full blown web based applications! (We didn't even call it "the Cloud" back then.) I soon became an authorized MIVA Technology Partner, having acquired proficiency with the MIVA Language (The MIVA language shares similarities with XML, although it deviates in certain aspects. While it operates as an XML-type language, it isn't an exact match. The interpreter leverages XML functionality, and the language, to some extent, mirrors XML in specific features and functionalities) and their MIVA Merchant Shopping Cart System and took on quite a bit of eCommerce work.

In those days there were no PCI rules and we were doing our own custom payment gateway integrations. Fun (and serious) stuff.

Miva Merchant, in its day, was a leading eCommerce system used by small businesses. It featured an integrated online store and payment gateway interface. Those of us proficient with the API would design the look and feel of the store through the API, manage the products, displays, and inventories through the online console, and integrate the fulfillment steps with other client systems. At first it was open source. Then it went to a compiled version. Miva developers such as myself were proficient in the API and armed with a compiler and an offline desktop development environment. Most of the Developers (like most webmasters) just used the existing console and out of the box API options. In my case, that was never enough. I developed custom modules that plugged in through the API and also did some "jailbreaking" type stuff. (Custom scripts that would interact directly with the core Miva Merchant data directly without going through the API.) Standard developers couldn't figure out why I would want to do such a thing. But my clients got the point very quickly. 

The Miva Merchant system came with a single store license. I was approached by a small merchandising company in New York with an engagement to set up a Miva Merchant store to make Swiss Army products available to the employees of corporate clients with exclusive pricing for employees. (He had a very well placed family connection at Victorinox) The merchandising company was small, but the clients were major corporations. Upon successfully completing the first store setup and customization to his satisfaction he announced he had 4 more he wanted me to build selling the same products but to the employees of different corporate clients. That would be 4 more unique Miva Merchant stores with 4 more Miva Merchant licenses. Boy did I have a surprise for him!

He had no idea (till I told him) that I had custom coded my own shopping cart display system in the Miva programming language that was integrated with the Miva Merchant storefront system for checkout. My store used my own proprietary "auto branding" interface that allowed me to alternate between different design sets depending on session settings triggered either with initial access codes, folders, or sub domains. It was all the same storefront running on one server that could appear to be an unlimited number of unique storefronts each with it's own look and feel. At checkout, it would process the transactions through a shared Miva Merchant shopping cart and checkout system. Obviously this involved advanced programming with some proprietary session control systems that were necessary for the checkout baskets to be recognized and differentiated between the various custom storefronts. So this client (and numerous others that I did this for) could run his entire enterprise out of one Miva Merchant shopping cart system, accommodating over 120 (as I recall) Fortune 500 corporate clients including Credit Suisse, Hospital Corporation of America, and the 50 million members of AAA.

Over time the system grew and grew with the growth of his enterprise, pushing the limits of the Miva Merchant system. Unfortunately, the interpreted nature of the Miva Merchant system, requiring an 'engine' process for each script, posed limitations unlike PHP and other languages that run in resident memory. Later versions of the MIVA shopping cart system switched to MySQL databases instead of the DB3 (DBASE) database system, so that pushed me into proficiency with MySQL. But this was not enough to make it sufficiently efficient to accommodate growing enterprise volume, given its architecture. On the front lines of these efficiency issues we had to do the best we could to make it work, so we got robust dedicated servers to handle the increasing volume of traffic. I became a system engineer out of necessity learning to spin up bare metal Linux boxes with lots (a relative term) of RAM and big (another relative term) RAID drives. I managed them remotely.

I also developed custom load management and monitoring software for automated responses to high traffic volume that pushed the limits of the system. A session controller I developed would monitor incoming sessions and route traffic to a "polite" messsage page inviting a guest to try back in a few minutes when traffic volume got to a certain point so the system wouldn't just crash. With the added visibility this gave me I noticed DOS attacks coming in and custom coded an automated response system to deal with that. My system would monitor incoming hits to the server with custom coding I put together for that. When a serious abuser (DOS attacks) was identified it would reverse the incoming hit with a redirect back to the same IP number. LOL.... needless to say, that stopped them in a hurry, but was obviously a very "unconventional" approach. At the time I didn't know how to black hole the DOS traffic and didn't have time to figure it out. Serious business was at risk and a solution had to be engineered on the fly by a guy (me) who was just figuring it out in real time on the firing line with creativity, limited knowledge (but increasing rapidly), and tenacity.

Over time the fun continued, and I developed quite a conversational relationship with this and a number of other clients. We would brainstorm, sometimes for hours, about how to take advantage of technology tricks to develop more business. At the time a company called Linkshare was the big affiliate marketing broker. I had become an affiliate and taught my clients how they could add affiliate marketing to their storefronts to increase revenue. We took that to the next level. I adapted a full blown custom coded storefront to feature pages and pages of products of other companies that my clients would get a commission on. Soon they were making as much on affiliate marketing as they were on their own retail merchandising. We integrated the affiliate marketing right into their storefronts so it would seem seamless to the customers until checkout. If it was their product it would go to the shopping cart basket. If it was an affiliate marketing product they would click through to the seller's page for checkout. We used custom affiliate codes to track which virtual storefonts were the most successful and for revenue sharing where that applied.

Having custom coded my own storefront system that accommodated affiliate marketing and session-controlled checkout systems it occurred to me that I really had all I needed to manage affiliate marketing in reverse. I set up a tracking and sales reporting system that enabled my clients to offer commissions to others who referred hits to their store for purchase of their products. We implemented this in a big way for a client of mine who ran an online duty free tobacco store.

The tobacco client recruited me to help him populate the various brands of tobacco in his store and otherwise manage it. It blew his mind when I explained that he could contact the owners of other websites and offer them a few bucks a carton on referred sales (pass through clicks) coming in to storefronts that looked like their own store. My auto-branding system was set up so we could adapt each virtual storefront to take on the look and feel of the referring affiliate's website. With this technology in place my tobacco client began signing up affiliates as fast as they could set them up. I built a custom interface and taught them how to set up and manage the look and feel of the virtual storefronts themselves without having to pay me to do it all the time. Soon they were doing over $500,000 per month in sales. Not bad for a small business that took 3 guys to run.

Finding new affiliates became a fun project, so for that and other reasons I custom coded a full-blown web crawler (a bot) that would run on its own and collect new websites based on content filters. This became their prospecting list for new affiliates. I've used my own custom coded web crawlers (bots) over the years for a number of marketing and research projects.

Naturally, clients using these (my systems) want their clients and customers to register accounts with them and opt in to follow-up marketing and other informational emails. In the case of the Corporate Shopping Clubs those lists ran into many thousands of accounts. A user account and contact management system was needed to control accounts, logins, and send emails. I built one from scratch with such features and to facilitate monthly graphical news emails. I still run a version of that contact management system today, and run it on behalf of a law firm for a class action lawsuit with thousands of interested parties. It was originally developed in the MIVA language, but I have rebuilt it in PHP. The system has evolved into a project management system as well, and accommodates the assignment of subscriber accounts to project lists to facilitate a wide variety of project tracking requirements. For example, everyone included in one particular client update email is added to a project list for that advisory notice. When we look up the name in the contact management system we can see what notices they have received. We also add, on occasion, response tracking systems. In some versions of the system we added specialized coding and embeds to track and report delivery and opening of the emails, even where no response came it. This has all been custom coded, developed, and managed by myself.

I have run various versions and adaptations of this software for numerous clients over the years, including a Women's Vintage Clothing Store; An insurance adjuster's claims management system; A sports nutrition company's complex franchise distribution system requiring custom coding to handle full integration with their fulfillment system, each distributor's range of order discount qualifications, multiple mixed payment processing, a variety of other custom coded features, and to add to the fun, they decided they wanted it to include a private communication system between corporate headquarters and the distributors through which both broadcast and private (one distributor only) messages could be sent and received. All custom coded by myself.

There's more. Those are just the highlights.

Over time the Miva Merchant system and the Miva programming language proved to be inadequate for growing enterprise level business; the recession of 2008 ravaged the business of many of my clients; the legal loopholes that kept my tobacco client in business got closed, and much of what I had built left me with the Maytag Washing Machine repair man marketing campaign problem. (Some of you older folks will understand that reference... The Maytag repair man is seen leaning against a machine in his shop, bored and lonely, because Maytag washing machines never break down. So goes the ad.) Once all set up, my clients didn't have enough further need for me to keep me busy and I went through a major faith crisis at that point in my life (long story) and stopped looking for work.... for years.

Times change, software gets outdated and I didn't keep up on an enterprise level. I just kept up on a personal level, quietly overhauling all of my systems by re-developing them in PHP and MySQL so they would run very fast and efficiently. I took a number of years off for this and quiet reflection. I studied philosophy and sociology for my own reasons, wrote a book, and quite a number of articles, studied law, and did a lot of volunteer and other work on high profile legal cases. As of more recently, I have been engaged doing confidential public policy research and ghost writing for a number of years and have built and manage a confidential national research database for a private client that currently accommodates over 43,000 zip codes with their respective cities, providing a complete survey and educational presentations system along with a number of other features. (Custom coded by me, from scratch)

That has been quite fulfilling, but I have been taken again with the overwhelming "itch" to get back into the IT game on a more dedicated level... so I've spent the last 2 years updating my systems (rebuilding and upgrading them) and updating my skills. I just completed an intense Cybersecurity Boot Camp that took the better part of the last year to complete. More on that subject here.

I now hold UNLV Certificates in Microsoft Security, Computer Networking, Cloud Security, Linux Security, Network Security, Cyber Infrastructure and Technology, Python Programming (with a security focus), Offensive Security and Ethical Hacking, and Digital Forensics and Threat Hunting. I have designed, configured, and/or hardened Cisco Networks, Linux Servers, Windows Servers, and Endpoint Devices. I have multiple cloud accounts, including AWS and continue to run my own SAAS systems (my own proprietary content management, project management, security, and other systems) in the cloud, but now with significantly increasing security as I implement my more recent training.

So now I'm looking for new friends and projects to continue the fun. Why not give me a test drive?! Give me a call. Let's chat! Or, click here to request a pdf resume.

Thanks for reading my story. Do you enjoy great music? Please enjoy one of my favorite tunes from one of my custom curated play lists in my custom video roller (a bit of JavaScripting going on here)...

This is Barton Hallow by Civil Wars in a custom curated Blues playlist. If you love Blues, you'll like this. Otherwise there is a Classic Rock, Boomer Tunes, and a growing number of other play lists.

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Resource Link:

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