such as Michigan Natural Resources Magazine and National Geographic Traveler. Don also enjoys traveling and keeping fit. Don lives in Burlington, Ontario, with his wife, Terry.
Randy Bellet After establishing himself as a retailer in Richmond, Virginia, curiosity about the fledgling small computer industry brought Randy Bellet into the IT field in 1981. Beginning with the TRS-DOS operating system on a Radio Shack Model III and "sneaker-net," he automated his and other businesses, initially programming spreadsheets using one of the original versions of VisiCalc. Hardware consisted of 32K of RAM, monochrome monitors, and no hard drives. Data was stored on floppy disks that really flopped. After the PC-XT and its clones arrived, he followed the market and extended his skills into the networking of PCs and XENIX servers and wrote applications for the retail and pager industries. As PCs became commonplace and their connectivity a necessity, Randy configured Windows client-server networks for small and medium-sized businesses, and wrote n-tier applications on various Windows platforms ranging from Windows 3.1 through Windows 2008 Server for the medical, insurance, food, and leisure industries. As organizations expanded and scaled their uses of PCs, extracting data from mainframes for use in Windows applications became a specialty. Since 1999, Mr. Bellet has been on the faculty of ECPI University, delivering and developing courses in Network Security and Programming, and writing ancillary instructor materials. Certifications include CompTIA Network +, MCSE, MCSD, and MCDBA. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics and marketing from New York University, and a master's degree in IT from Virginia Tech.
Harry Holt started his career in the early 1980s while working in trust accounting, where he discovered the advantages of Lotus 123 over paper spreadsheets, and how much better D:Base was at tracking transactions than a cabinet full of 3x5 index cards. That prompted a career change, and Harry took advantage of the burgeoning IT program at Virginia Commonwealth University's prestigious School of Business to hone his knowledge. Harry gained experience over the years in most technical roles in the industry-from computer operator, programmer, LAN administrator, to network engineer, DBA, and project manager, among others. He has used his skills to improve efficiencies in a range of organizations including Fortune 500 companies, financial institutions, government agencies, and even small partnerships and sole proprietorships. Exploring aspects of the computer industry both professionally, as a hobby, and as a volunteer for various non-profit organizations, Harry gained a working knowledge of many types of systems from large IBM z/OS mainframes, VAX systems, and Unix platforms, to Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems. He can program in a variety of development languages and platforms, and enjoys collaborating in open source projects. Harry has a bachelor's degree in IT with a PMP certification, and is currently working as a Cyber Applications Manager in Richmond, Virginia.