I began my career in IT in 1981, as a programmer/analyst. This was a career change and a state agency hired me into a trainee position, where I learned COBOL, JCL, CICS, VSAM and system analysis skills. In three years I advanced from trainee to project lead.
Several years and a couple of employers later, and after working on some early client/server applications, I transitioned to the DBA role, supporting databases on DEC’s Rdb and Oracle. My first Oracle database was at version 7.3 and hosted on Windows 3.11. I have worked exclusively with Oracle since, supporting it on Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Linux.
Over the course of my career I have supported systems on IBM OS-MVS and its various descendants and derivatives, MS-DOS, Windows, OS/2, DEC VMS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Linux.
Ed Stevens, DBA 
So good to see your blog got started Ed 🙂 . Hope that you would keep it updated as much as possible.
Regards
Aman….
Hi Steve,
Nice to see that your are blogging…I was waiting on from long time..
finally you started….;-)
I am lucky that you career started on the year I was born, might be something in common..
All the best…
Hi Ed. Good to see you had started blogging.
Good Luck
I saw your posts in OTN, Specifically your TNS/protocol issues posts are amazing & marvelous
Keep blogging.
Ed,
I’m studying to take the OCP exams and I find that what you’ve written on this blog is not only superb in both content and presentation, because it finally clarified stuff that’s not very well covered on the textbook I’m reading, but it made me wonder (we should always wonder, Socrates said) that if you write the same way you speak, then you should be either teaching or publishing, or both, and not only as a career move, but as your legacy to those in the Oracle practice that may be starting out. I thought I had to say it.
Please keep it up. I truly appreciate what you’ve done here.
Angelo Corbo
Thank you for your kind words.
Ed,
I’m a new follower of your work. I encourage you to keep this blog going, and hope that you keep this site current, and thanks for all your hard work.
Thanks for the encouragement. I know I’ve not kept a steady flow as I had hoped. I have a few posts in draft stage but having a difficult time finding time to complete them.