About Marty Skinner

So you want to know something about me? You’ve come to the right place.

Where in the world?

I was born and raised in (East) Tennessee, but despite the location growing up I’m not a hillbilly. I currently reside in the Charlotte, North Carolina area — it’s the second time I’ve been able to live here and I really like it.

VAX ⇒ AlphaServers ⇒ Itanium, DEC ⇒ Compaq ⇒ HP, and all things VMS

Even before it was released to the public, I was introduced to the VMS operating system on the VAX hardware platform. I quickly fell in love and have been involved with the hardware and software ever since. VMS was renamed OpenVMS, VAXes gave way to AlphaServers which have now given way to Itanium-based servers, and first DEC, then Compaq and most recently HP sold and serviced the hardware and OS… I’ve been through all these transitions.

There’s not very much about OpenVMS that I don’t know or haven’t experienced and mastered.

Macintosh

When I was sent by my employer to work at a remote location, my wife had to move into a temporary apartment before I could arrive there. When I got to the apartment for the first time, there on the dining room table was an Apple Lisa computer. I became hooked on the whole “personal computer” concept. I bought an Apple SE computer when they came out and paid $300 per MB (yes, MegaByte) for memory. Two years later I bought 2 PowerTower Pro “clone” computers from a company called Power Computing, just before they got absorbed by Apple and all clone products were discontinued. Those PowerTower Pros have been subplanted by Apple laptops, but one of them still is used from time to time (not long ago I had to boot it up to read an old floppy!).

I believe…

All things are possible…not all things are probable. Marty Skinner