A Dog with a Bone

Author © Scott D. Zachary

       Yep, that’s me. Rigorous. Determined. Tenacious. Meticulous. Relentless. Persistent. As Nelson Schroth says, “You’re like a dog with a bone, Scott.” I worked for Nelson as a Senior Systems Analyst and Programmer at Gardens Alive in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, from April 2013 to May 2016.

       Nelson, the Software Development Manager, was so over-the-top impressed with my intuitive logic that he awarded Mr. Wizzle (my subconscious mind) an honorary doctorate. And thus, we have Dr. Wizzle. When my extraordinary persistence subsides on any given project, Dr. Wizzle continues to percolate fresh perspectives.  On countless occasions, Dr. Wizzle revealed major software considerations, pitfalls, and brilliant enhancements, most often when I wasn’t even consciously thinking about anything that pertained to Dr. Wizzle’s revelations. That denotes the multi-processing nature of our minds.

       Did you catch the implication of that expression, “multi-processing”? Yes, our brains are computers. In fact, they are such powerful computers that tens of thousands of the most brilliant humans on Earth have endeavored for about 75 years to copy the brain’s capabilities with marginal success. Think about it. Our grandest attempts at creating artificial intelligence over the past several decades pitifully mimic the human brain, which is amazingly self-teaching right out of the box. It didn’t need any programming. Or did it?

       And we human computer developers have hardly even thought about making our computers self-maintaining. I’ve been told that drinking alcohol to excess kills millions of brain cells. Let’s calculate. On average, I got drunk at least two hundred times a year from the time I was 16 until I was 53. That’s 7,400 times that I slaughtered millions of my brain cells. Yet, my thought processes today are sharper than ever. Do you know of any computers that replace their own failed circuits and reprogram their corrupted logic? Our brains do. It boggles my mind to think that this capability in the supercomputers on our shoulders might have been developed by random mutations over a multitude of millenniums. No way.

       And now let’s throw self-replication into the string of improbable fortuitous accidents over 4.5 billion years, and we have you and me—the most awesome computers on the planet.

       And finally, if mankind ever manages to concoct a computer that contemplates its own creation, we’re in big trouble! I don’t even want to consider programming a philosophical computer. No bones about it.

       Okay, now that we’ve toasted the Wizard, let’s get on with my story about the three years during which I designed and wrote computer programs for Gardens Alive, one of the largest catalog mailing companies in the world. Dozens of brands are managed under the Gardens Alive umbrella, including Bits and Pieces, Springhill, Michigan Bulb, Breck’s, Henry Field’s, and many more. Rather than bore you with a lot of technical details of the many software projects that I created for Gardens Alive, I will start off with the below letter of recommendation that my boss, Nelson Schroth, wrote at the end of my employment at Gardens Alive. Following that, I’ll highlight a few fun anecdotal stories that occurred during these three years.

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July 26, 2016

To Whom It May Concern:

Scott Zachary is one of the finest systems analysts whom I’ve had the privilege to work with in my 30+ years of software development. Scott has worked for Gardens Alive since April 2013 through July 2016 as a Senior Systems Analyst/Programmer developing UniVerse order processing, accounting, and distribution software on AIX Unix.

Scott is meticulous in all aspects of software development. His logical design approach, his structured programming methodology, and his rigorous testing always result in superlative software. He strives for perfection, and it didn’t take me long to realize that every time I assigned a software development project to Scott, he would make it a success.

Scott’s thoroughly organized approach to software design leaves nothing to chance. He programs, always keeping in mind those who will maintain his code in the future, and he precisely follows software standards. Scott often devises utilities to simplify and speed software development for the entire team. Whether he is training other analysts or users, Scott’s presentations are eloquent and easy to grasp. His software specifications and documentation are logical, concise, and easy to read.

During his three years working for me, Scott significantly improved all of the many functional areas of our system, as well as having designed and implemented extensive new capabilities to better enable Gardens Alive to serve our millions of customers. Following are a few of his many outstanding accomplishments:

o Scott’s first project was to substantially modify all of our core order processing programs as he implemented PayPal functionality. He installed 37 extensively modified programs simultaneously without a single glitch.

o  Scott streamlined all aspects of our mail order processing by developing a package of new programs that automated the import of hundreds of thousands of optically scanned orders into production.

o Scott’s relentless initiative has often inadvertently revealed countless logic errors in our system to the extent that I nicknamed him “Pandora.” Unlike Pandora, though, Scott solved every single challenge. In one instance, he completely and successfully revamped—on his own initiative—our highly manual process for managing thousands of personalized products, slashing customer service handling time by 75%.

o Scott successfully renovated all validation logic for the millions of orders placed through our many websites, ensuring that customers’ orders are promptly and correctly fulfilled.

Scott is dependable, conscientious, determined, and fun to work with. It was a sad day when he tendered his resignation. I told Scott “You will be hard to replace,” and “You will be missed.”

Respectfully,

  Nelson Schroth

Nelson Schroth

Software Development Manager

Gardens Alive

Lawrenceburg, Indiana

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       I walked into Nelson’s office and resigned as a Gardens Alive employee in mid-March 2016 and offered six weeks’ notice to give Nelson a smooth transition period. I didn’t expect my announcement to make big waves, but it quickly became clear that I was rocking the boat big time. Nelson was devastated. A little while later that morning, Nelson’s boss, Chris, called me from the conference room and asked me to come join him and Nelson for a discussion about my impending departure. In our meeting, Chris asked if there was any way that I could be persuaded to stay. I said, “No, I want to take a year off and focus on writing my memoirs and doing Christian missions.”

       Later that morning, I could hear Nelson and Chris verbally jostling in Nelson’s office about how they would recover from the loss of my skills. I walked down the hall into Nelson’s office and said, “I have an idea to toss onto the table for your consideration.”

       Nelson anxiously said, “Please do.”

       “If it would help the situation, I’d be willing to work as a contractor three days a week remotely from my house in Lewisport. That would give me four-day weekends to focus on writing. It’s your call.”

       A few days later, Nelson and Chris accepted my offer. I would now be working three days a week from my home and making nearly as much as I’d been earning as a full-time employee! Can it get any better than that?

       In summary, it was a joy working with Nelson Schroth. He is the best analyst with whom I’ve worked in my forty years as a systems analyst. It was pure fun brainstorming with him. Between the three of us (including Dr. Wizzle), we rarely overlooked a clue or missed a potential enhancement to the software.

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       During the three years that I worked at Gardens Alive, I volunteered to serve meals to the homeless and disadvantaged at the Mary Rose Mission, and I spent time with the elderly and disabled residents at the local nursing home. I went to Honduras once and Nicaragua three times on one-week Christian medical missions, where I served as Team Lead for the Optical Clinic. Oh yeah, and I was having fun across the board, too!

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       Some of my most delightful memories from that era were the times when Bobbie and Remi came to visit me, where I maintained a second home in Florence, Kentucky. Bobbie would pick up our granddaughter, Remi, in Louisville along her route on Friday evenings.

       We usually had fun activities planned for the weekend, such as participating in the Greendale Fourth of July 5K race in 2014. The first time we took part in that race, Remi was nearly five years old. Reflecting on Remi’s exuberant wonderment puts a big smile on my face every time. I suggested to Remi that she might be able to ride with the police officer in his escort golf cart, but she wanted no part of that; she was going to run with everybody else.

       And run she did! Remi’s arms flailed wildly as she raced to keep up with the hoard of runners. She amazed me! I could barely keep up with her. I encouraged her to pace herself so she wouldn’t tire out, but there was no throttle on Remi’s excitement. Remi must’ve sprinted nearly a mile before she stopped and panted, “I’m tired, Papaw.”

       I reached down, slid my hands under Remi’s arms, and tossed her onto my shoulders. We walked for a while like that, and then Remi hollered, “Run, Papaw, run!”

       I had carried Remi on my shoulders many times before, but I had never run while carrying her fifty-plus pounds on my shoulders. Her weight was jolting me into the ground, and I soon realized that I had to crouch down as I ran. What a workout! Remi delighted in hearing the onlookers cheer her on.

       With a quarter of a mile or so to go, I was barely even walking as Bobbie walked past us. About fifty yards from the finish line, I set Remi down and egged her on, “Go get her, Remi, GO!”

       Now well-rested, our precious granddaughter burst into action. Remi’s arms again flailing in all directions, she passed Grandma and crossed the finish line with a couple of strides to spare! You might say we won. Remi certainly thought so!

       Bobbie, Remi, and I participated in the July 4^th Greendale 5K again in 2015. It was basically a replay of the previous year, except that Remi now weighed about sixty pounds, which meant that I had to rely on Remi’s kick even more so than the year before. She came through like a champ!

       In November of 2015, I had signed up for the Honor Flight Half Marathon in Florence. We didn’t get up in time for me to run the half marathon, but we did get Remi to the one-mile race that took place afterward. I ran with her, or tried to, that is. She took off with her pink teddy bear snug under her arm and left me in her wake as she and another girl spurred each other onward to the finish line.

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       Bobbie and I rode the choo-choo train in the Florence Mall with Remi. It was all that Bobbie and I could do to fit through the doorway of the little children’s train that chugged throughout the Mall. Afterward, Remi and I rode the two-story carousel over and over, until Remi rode nearly every animal. Such precious moments!

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       My desk in the townhouse where I lived in Florence consisted of a large oak dining table, which was in the dining nook directly below the balcony. One morning while I was trying to get a little work done before Bobbie and Remi woke up, a fishing line with a plastic hook appeared over my right shoulder. This was the start of many fun fishing expeditions. That first morning, Remi caught various “fish,” such as a paper clip, a rubber band, and a sheet of paper that read, “I love you!”

       Each time that Remi came to visit after that, the fish seemed to get bigger and bigger. I surprised Remi one weekend by hooking a five-foot-tall Raggedy Ann doll to her line. I had to run upstairs to help Remi reel in her whopper of a catch.

       Those were some of the most delightful times of my life.

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       Tina, the IT Administrative Assistant at Gardens Alive, was invaluable to our software development operation. She showed a lot of initiative, and it was fun teaching her how to perform technical tasks to help our team. I also had a lot of fun entertaining Tina with practical jokes. For example, I attached two paperclips to a rubber band and twisted them into a spring-loaded ball. Then I sealed the contraption in an envelope labeled “Rattlesnake Fangs” and laid the envelope on Tina’s keyboard. I wish I could’ve seen Tina’s reaction when she opened the envelope and the rubber band released its tension fluttering the paperclips!

       Tina got me back, though. Just before I ended my three-year stint as a fulltime employee at Gardens Alive, Tina set me up good. She knew how much I like brownies, so she made a whole pie plate full of brownies just for me. I got what I deserved! I peeled back the aluminum foil and discovered dozens of brown E’s. Tina had cut out lots of cardboard E’s and painted them brown, thus “brown E’s”! There were brown capital E’s and brown lowercase e’s of all sorts. Yum.

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       On a whim, just before I began packing all my belongings in my townhouse in Florence to move back in with Bobbie, I looked around and asked myself, “What things are important to me? What possessions, souvenirs, and mementos would I hate to lose?” I gathered them all up and took them to the church yard sale. So much for materialism.

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       It seems that we have traversed the Yellow Brick Road, and we’ve arrived back in the Land of Oz.

       For those of you who scoffed at my inclination toward intelligent design at the start of this story, consider this. I’ve spent most of my 63 years on this planet hungrily gobbling up information and stamping it into my brain. I think I’d be giving myself a lot of credit if I say I know 1/10,000^th of all that mankind knows. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, considering that there are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world. I know one language well and can barely get my point across in two more. I know a smattering of all the sciences. Memorizing most of the 1,501-page EMT manual put me on a first-grade level in the medical fields—before I forgot much of it. Yes, one ten-thousandth is a good shot in the dark.

       Beyond that, how much does mankind know out of everything there is to know? There’s no way to be sure, but again, I’d take a wild guess and say that mankind knows 1/10,000^th of all there is to know in the universe. And still, I think I’m being generous to mankind, especially considering that the European Space Agency estimates there are 100,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way). Furthermore, www.physics.org says, “According to the best estimates of astronomers, there are at least one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. They’ve counted the galaxies in a particular region and multiplied this up to estimate the number for the whole universe.” Wikipedia states: “IC 1101 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster and is one of the largest known galaxies. Its halo extends about 600 kiloparsecs from its core, and it has a mass of about 100 trillion stars.” That’s just one galaxy out of the known hundred billion galaxies!

       You did catch that word “known,” didn’t you? And we know next to nothing about those billions of galaxies. Some would say that we don’t even have a good clue how the Big Bang exploded nothing into becoming everything.

       I have a clue.

       Okay, let’s calculate. If I know 1/10,000^th of all that mankind knows and mankind knows 1/10,000^th of everything there is to know, then I know 1/10,000^th of 1/10,000^th of all there is to know. Therefore, even though I’ve spent most of my life learning at a voracious pace, I know roughly 1/100,000,000^th of everything there is to know.

       Why would I with so little knowledge of the universe definitively declare that there is no God? Not me. I’m pushing all my chips onto hope. I’m all-in for something that lifts my spirit and gives me joy in my life—serving God. I’m betting my blip of time here on Earth that I will spend all of eternity with my Creator. That is what puts the sparkle in my eye!