About Me
Almost six years ago my most common thought was, "I don't have time!". I was just finishing a three year tour as the Finance Chairman at my church, working hard to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and starting a four year tour as an officer with the Home Builders Association of Greater Savannah. On top of this, my business (The Lindadan Corporation) was going so well that I had to act as referee in meetings between my sales people and my production people. Our major problem was that we couldn't produce enough homes fast enough to keep up with sales!!!
Fast forward five years and to say that things have changed would be the understatement of all time. The "Housing Crisis" (really the Housing-Finance Crisis) has plunged our national economy into a recession and my industry into a depression. My company now has three employees (one being part-time). We used to have 15-18. I'm still struggling with production not keeping up with sales, but now it's because there are no sales! My year as President of Home Builders is over. That position kept me busy dealing with an organization of over 600 members, politicians, bureaucrats, the media, public speaking, and meetings, meetings, and more meetings. My time is now spent managing the real estate we still own, dealing with bankers and doing things I used to pay people to do. I'm suffering from massive "I don't have time!" withdrawal.
About the time my tour with Home Builders ended, I saw a story about Georgia Southern University starting a Master of Computer Science online program. Over the years, I've gained an interest in "computers" mainly because I never could find anything that would really work. I always had the impression that programmers created software without ever really meeting an end user. First, I learned to write macros in Visual Basic to make my spreadsheets more usable. Then, I had to learn a new form of Basic when I switched to OpenOffice after having to upgrade to a newer version of Excel when a computer fatally crashed. This led to teaching myself Java so I didn't have to use a spreadsheet. I then had to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and SQL when I wasn't satisfied with what was out there for getting our company on the internet. I guess you could say it's the builder in me. I seem to have this need to understand how things are put together and how to make them better.
I contacted the program director, Professor Li, to find out if I might be able to take a few courses simply because I had grown to like "computers" and now had some spare time on my hands. She first tried to point me to the MBA program. That made sense because it was more in line with my undergraduate degree and my experience. Unfortunately, I had no interest in an MBA program. In fact, I really wasn't interested in any "program". I just wanted to learn some more about computers and validate what I had taught myself. I was a little adamant in explaining this and the next thing I know, I'm taking the GRE and have received provisional admission. To this day, I think the thought was that maybe I'd realize the error of my ways and drop the whole matter.
It was a disaster at the start. I signed up for two classes about a week late, and then it took about a week to get in the online system. Thanks to some good tech support and an understanding professor, I did finally get to start my courses, Data Structures and Systems Software. Data Structures dealt with Java so I was able to jump in and catch up fairly quickly. Systems Software was another story. We used C and C++ for that course. The problem was that I had NEVER even seen C or C++. I took the nickname "Ol Dawg" back when I was a Motor Dawg in the Army. One of the things I learned in the Army was that if I put my mind to something, anything is possible! So, I buckled down and started learning. Whining wouldn't have helped anyway. After a lot of hard work I not only caught up, I aced both courses.
I gained regular admission and am currently taking Parallel Algorithm Design this summer and will be on program starting this fall. I plan to use this blog to chronicle my trip through the program. Hopefully, this will be the longest post of the blog.
Why?
The most common question I get now is, "Why are you doing this? Are you getting out of home building?" My answer is "Hopefully not!" I hope to look back and call this my "mid-life crisis". I want the home finance market to come back and I want to help people buy their first homes. If this happens, I'll have learned a lot about something I like. I might even be able to create software that will help people in my business be more productive. I'll have a Masters Degree that I could use in retirement to teach.
But if the market doesn't come back or someone looking for an Accountant-Home Building-Computer Programmer were to come along and make me an offer I couldn't refuse, who knows?
Almost six years ago my most common thought was, "I don't have time!". I was just finishing a three year tour as the Finance Chairman at my church, working hard to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and starting a four year tour as an officer with the Home Builders Association of Greater Savannah. On top of this, my business (The Lindadan Corporation) was going so well that I had to act as referee in meetings between my sales people and my production people. Our major problem was that we couldn't produce enough homes fast enough to keep up with sales!!!
Fast forward five years and to say that things have changed would be the understatement of all time. The "Housing Crisis" (really the Housing-Finance Crisis) has plunged our national economy into a recession and my industry into a depression. My company now has three employees (one being part-time). We used to have 15-18. I'm still struggling with production not keeping up with sales, but now it's because there are no sales! My year as President of Home Builders is over. That position kept me busy dealing with an organization of over 600 members, politicians, bureaucrats, the media, public speaking, and meetings, meetings, and more meetings. My time is now spent managing the real estate we still own, dealing with bankers and doing things I used to pay people to do. I'm suffering from massive "I don't have time!" withdrawal.
About the time my tour with Home Builders ended, I saw a story about Georgia Southern University starting a Master of Computer Science online program. Over the years, I've gained an interest in "computers" mainly because I never could find anything that would really work. I always had the impression that programmers created software without ever really meeting an end user. First, I learned to write macros in Visual Basic to make my spreadsheets more usable. Then, I had to learn a new form of Basic when I switched to OpenOffice after having to upgrade to a newer version of Excel when a computer fatally crashed. This led to teaching myself Java so I didn't have to use a spreadsheet. I then had to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and SQL when I wasn't satisfied with what was out there for getting our company on the internet. I guess you could say it's the builder in me. I seem to have this need to understand how things are put together and how to make them better.
I contacted the program director, Professor Li, to find out if I might be able to take a few courses simply because I had grown to like "computers" and now had some spare time on my hands. She first tried to point me to the MBA program. That made sense because it was more in line with my undergraduate degree and my experience. Unfortunately, I had no interest in an MBA program. In fact, I really wasn't interested in any "program". I just wanted to learn some more about computers and validate what I had taught myself. I was a little adamant in explaining this and the next thing I know, I'm taking the GRE and have received provisional admission. To this day, I think the thought was that maybe I'd realize the error of my ways and drop the whole matter.
It was a disaster at the start. I signed up for two classes about a week late, and then it took about a week to get in the online system. Thanks to some good tech support and an understanding professor, I did finally get to start my courses, Data Structures and Systems Software. Data Structures dealt with Java so I was able to jump in and catch up fairly quickly. Systems Software was another story. We used C and C++ for that course. The problem was that I had NEVER even seen C or C++. I took the nickname "Ol Dawg" back when I was a Motor Dawg in the Army. One of the things I learned in the Army was that if I put my mind to something, anything is possible! So, I buckled down and started learning. Whining wouldn't have helped anyway. After a lot of hard work I not only caught up, I aced both courses.
I gained regular admission and am currently taking Parallel Algorithm Design this summer and will be on program starting this fall. I plan to use this blog to chronicle my trip through the program. Hopefully, this will be the longest post of the blog.
Why?
The most common question I get now is, "Why are you doing this? Are you getting out of home building?" My answer is "Hopefully not!" I hope to look back and call this my "mid-life crisis". I want the home finance market to come back and I want to help people buy their first homes. If this happens, I'll have learned a lot about something I like. I might even be able to create software that will help people in my business be more productive. I'll have a Masters Degree that I could use in retirement to teach.
But if the market doesn't come back or someone looking for an Accountant-Home Building-Computer Programmer were to come along and make me an offer I couldn't refuse, who knows?
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