Ralph Hightower got his first experience programming computers on a DEC PDP-8 in a freshman engineering course at the University of South Carolina, 2010 NCAA College World Series Champions, in 1971. Later he switched his major to computer science. At USC, he developed applications using APL, FORTRAN, PL/1, PDP-8 assembler, IBM 370 assembler, PDP-11 assembler, Motorola 6800 assembler and SNOBOL. After graduation, he has developed applications in PL/1, IBM 370 assembler, Intel 8080 assembler, Motorola 68000 assembler, Visual Basic 6, C, C++ and Java in a variety of industries ranging working for one of the “BUNCH” computer manufacturers, to finance and banking, insurance and medical industries. Ralph has also worked for two “dot-bombs”. He currently works for state government developing applications in C#.
Ralph grew up with an interest in space exploration and science fiction. He enjoys water sports, swimming and waterskiing. He has water-skied on two rivers in the Midwest, the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the Mississippi River between the Quad Cities, and three South Carolina lakes, Greenwood, Clark Hill, and Murray.
The home network he shares with his wife of 31 years includes a Windows 2008 Server, Windows XP workstations, Windows Vista (Hey, it's better than Windows Millennium Edition), 2 Linux systems, and a Sun SPARCStation running Solaris. One of these days, he hopes to fire up his DEC MicroVax II/GPX, install BSD and hook it into the network.
Ralph joined Toastmasters in October 2003 when he found out that Toastmasters helps with “people skills” and presentations. In District 58, he served as Area 33 Governor from July 2006 to June 2007 and served as Division C Governor from July 2007 through June 2008. He was awarded Toastmasters Division Governor of the Year for 2007/2008.
Member since Tuesday, May 8, 2007
(5 years)
