Knowledge Partner
Kevin Boyle
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Birthday: June 26 |  |
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| Calgary, Alberta, Canada | ||||
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Kevin is a Senior IT Consultant with a background in hardware, software, and communications. At age sixteen he got his amateur radio license and immediately began teaching Morse code and radio theory to other students. In 1965 he got a job with an airline servicing computers used to fly the airline's flight simulators. These were analog computers whose amplifiers used vacuum tubes. The work was interesting but he had a lot more fun flying the simulators.
A couple of years later, Kevin was introduced to his first digital computer. This was a Ferranti-Packard computer with 64 KB of core memory and built with leaky germanium transistors so ones and zeros were never really ones and zeros but always something in-between. Sometimes, when a one or a zero wasn't what it was supposed to be, it wasn't the hardware... someone had made a coding error. This was Kevin's introduction to programming.
A few years later he transferred to the data processing department where he only lasted about a year as a programmer before he was promoted to the systems group as a junior systems programmer. Alas, that position only lasted about six months when his boss quit. Once again he was reassigned and at age twenty five found himself as the systems programming supervisor responsible for maintaining the airline's two IBM System/360 Model 50 computers.
In 1975 he left the airline and started his career as a consultant. Over the next fifteen years, primarily in large enterprises, Kevin undertook a series of engagements dealing with all aspects of application development and database design/support. In 1990 he began to focus more on small businesses becoming a reseller and Novell business partner. It was during this period that he gained experience with NetWare, GroupWise and BorderManager. He was introduced to Linux about the time that SLES 10 first appeared.
Kevin likes to read both fiction and non-fiction - including software documentation. He especially enjoys the Novell website because of its endless supply of systems and program documentation. Other interests include photography/Photoshop, classical music, theatre, and wine - the kind you drink rather than the one that runs on your computer.
Kevin lives in Calgary, Alberta with his wife, son, and daughter - both of whom are in their early twenties. Calgary is about an hour's drive from Banff, Alberta and, when time permits, he still enjoys a day of skiing in the Canadian Rockies.
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