My Story: Life Before Tragedy (Part 6)

Years ago Christy bought me a trip to north Arkansas and a stay at a trout fishing resort up there called Gaston’s.  When we got there the river was high and flowing very fast.  I ended up not fishing.  My first morning I got up early to walk along the river and spotted a few eagles.  I had my camera with me and snapped a few photographs.  I love Eagle photography.  I continued walking down the river bank and came to the end of the trail so I turned back.  As I got back near the resort I ran into another photographer.  He pointed me to an Eagle nest across the river and we stopped to set up to take photographs.  After visiting with the photographer I found out he was a very well known Eagle photographer that I had been following his work for years.  I left and went to check on Christy.  She was going shopping in Branson, MO and I decided to stay and try to get some more Eagle photos.  I told her goodbye and be safe then walked back down to the nest.  My new photographer friend was still there.  We ended up staying right there and visiting all day.  This was a treat for me.  Eagles will pair up and take turns sitting on the eggs in the nest and only getting up off the eggs every so often to turn the eggs.  Every few hours the Eagle on the nest would get up to call its mate to switch.  The mate would bring back some food then they would switch places.   This time switching was the best time to get a photo plus the times they got up to turn the eggs.  Else there was little activity around the nest.  This led to a lot of time to visit.  When something would happen it would be all of a sudden then over, the waiting game would then start all over.

One day I was off work to keep my son.  He was a little guy at the time, only a few years old.  We decided to ride over to the Arkansas Post park so he could run around outside.  As we were driving into the park a vehicle coming out stopped us and said there was a large whitetail buck in the main area of the park if we wanted to go take a look.  Seeing deer in the Arkansas Post park is not unusual, some of my best whitetail deer pictures have been taken at the park but this buck was bigger than anything I’ve seen in the park and was in the wide open so off we went to see it and I was able to snap a few pictures.

Growing up gardening was a big part of our life.  Both of my grandpas grew a garden.  I remember sitting on one of my grandpas back porch shelling butter beans in the summer.  I do not know of anyone that really likes to shell or harvest butter beans.  My other grandpa loved growing fresh tomatoes.  The Bradley pink tomato was his favorite.   Fresh tomatoes are the main reason today that I grow a garden.  There is just something special about the flavor of a vine ripened fresh tomato.  I do not care at all for the taste of a store bought tomato.  I am a bit spoiled by fresh tomatoes.

When we were kids my family moved from town to the country.  We lived in my mom’s grandparent’s house.  It was very much a country house.  We were only a few miles from my grandparents – my mom’s parents.  We were very close with both sets of my grandparents.  We lived a few miles from my mom’s parents and had dinner nearly every Wednesday and Sunday lunch with my dad’s parents.  We were always doing things with them all.  I never have had to wonder if I was being prayed for because I knew my grandpa, my dad’s dad, was praying for me.  When we moved to the country my grandpa decided we needed a garden so he helped us plant a small garden with a few plants along the fence in our backyard.  I can still remember today harvesting fresh cherry tomatoes and just putting them in our outside refrigerator crisper drawer.  We would pass the refrigerator and get a handful of tomatoes.  Maybe that’s where I became spoiled by the flavor of fresh tomatoes.

Now I love to have a garden.  At each house my wife and I have lived at I plant a garden.  It’s not as good as my grandpa’s but I am working on it.  My daughter enjoys planting a flower garden and I get my son to come out and help work in it.  There’s the work part of gardening but then there is the reward – the harvest; and that is the part my wife enjoys.

After I moved out of the position of Production Manager I was placed in a position on the mapping system team as someone on the support team as Solution Analyst.  During this transition I was looking back at some of the troubles I had in my previous position.  Being out of the position and not in the daily struggles as Production Manager.  I started to create a new system for tracking our projects.  The system I first started to create was in Excel because I knew a lot about Excel and so did our team.  I did not want to build a completely new system for project tracking.  I learned as I got into the redesign of the spreadsheet that having someone else using the system at the same time would still be a problem.  My team did not want me to spend time on it but I knew I had to make a change for my team.  During this process and especially at my times of trouble I remembered the Python programming language.

During my time as Production Manager I had to do a bunch of maps with reports for one of our clients.  The maps/reports would be done periodically throughout the year.  When I would try to bring someone else on the project to help I found my process was too difficult so I knew I had to simplify the way we generated the maps and reports.  I started researching what was out there as tools of the process.  One tool was already programmed as an add-on in the mapping software we were using.  That tool was implemented and simplified the process.  I started to research how I could program my own add-ons.  During my research I found the Python programming language as a way to customize our software.  I had to teach myself to be a programmer of Python.  Thankfully during college at UAM my advisors would not let me take the standard type elective courses so I would take programming courses.    I remember towards the end of college I was visiting with one of my advisors.  He told me then I needed to learn Python as it was being customized for our mapping software.  These courses did not teach Python but I did learn the logic that goes along with programming.  Starting out I would write code just to say Hello.  Eventually I was able to code add-ons that would generate the reports.  So with the add-on that was found already written and my custom add-ons I was able to simplify the process and bring on some help on the process.  Since this first round of development others have worked on the projects and have developed additional add-ons that are used on project assignments.

Learning this programming language was the tool I ended up using to program a system to track our projects.  Programming the system proved to be much more difficult than I dreamed.  Nearly all levels of our team used the system.  Project managers used it to input information about new projects and business owners used it to generate reports on business/project activity.   Another system I built was to automate our workflows as much as possible on processes that we routinely do.  I built these systems with Python.  These tools are run in the morning at the beginning of the day then again at the end of the day.  If the processes were done manually it would take someone a whole day for one person but with the custom tools each one took 30 minutes to an hour most times.  Thankfully my team improved these systems while I was out.  Having these systems allowed me to focus on other needs of our business.  Now fast forward and I have completed many python projects at my new job.  Applying the code I learned years ago thinking it was for a job then that I learned the language.  Maybe it was for such a moment such as this that I learned how to do this programming. 

As I go through this story it is evident to me how much the Lord has done in directing my path.  There is no way I could ever make up this story and directions life has taken without God directing each step.  I have known many that have faith but then as life gets busy it is the first thing that is put on the back burner of life.  I am thankful my parents raised me in the church and faith in a risen savior has been such a key part of my life.

Looking back at this story I know there are other paragraphs I could put in but these are the key parts and the ones I remember the best.  So this path isn’t one I’d ever imagine but I fully believe God – El Roi has been leading the whole way.  Let me encourage you to do this activity where you list out things from your past that have led you to where you are today, I believe just like me you’ll be amazed.   Like I said I have known many others that have had a strong faith but did not do much in the busyness of life to build on their faith.   When life slows down they have gotten back to working on their relationship with God.  I know that if this was the route I took then my next chapter of life would not be what it is today.  Faith in God, relationship with friends, an amazing family, and time in the church have been key parts of my life and have helped me through this time.  Having spent years developing an automated system that takes care of part of my job allowed me to take this time away.  I thought when I was developing these systems they were more for the present but I would have never dreamed of the role they would serve in the future or how learning the technology would prepare me for the next task.  For the tragedy that you’re in or that’s coming, get prepared or lean on your past to get through it.

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