One of my favorite songs says, “I guess not every little thing works out the way you dream. You can take a couple of wrong turns - still end up where you’re supposed to be.” (“Up Again”, Dan Bremmnes) I was a good student all through grade and high school. In 1978, I earned placement in the “Science and Technology Center” program at the newly built Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland. My plan was to pursue a career in architecture, and I spent a summer during high school attending a special architecture program at Catholic University. I graduated in 1982 and was accepted at the University of Maryland, College Park campus. But not everything worked out the way I planned. My relationship with my parents was strained at the time and I moved out just before I began college. They had not saved much money for my education, so my first semester was all that I completed.
I got married in 1983 and found a full-time job as a membership clerk at the American Correctional Association (ACA). My husband was in college and my salary paid most of the bills. My passion for tech began when ACA purchased their first IBM personal computer around 1984. I saw it sitting on an empty desk, never being used. I was very curious. I asked around and found out it was intended for our research and statistics department, but no one knew how to use it. When I learned there was an opening in that department, I applied and got the job. I read the user manual for that PC cover to cover and purchased current computing books and magazines. One of the main tasks of the research department was to compile statistics about prison, detention center (jail) and probation systems and publish them in a series of directories. I learned to use database software on the personal computer to make that process easier.
I was still working on my degree part-time and thought I might pursue computer science, but soon realized that the college programs were still teaching classes based on old main frame computers. This would not prepare me for the developing world of personal computing. I stopped taking classes and focused on participating in user groups and reading books on programming. I became the company “PC Guru” which meant I was the resident expert who trained staff and made software and purchasing decisions. Then the American Correctional Association launched ACAnet. I took on the role of trying to convince correctional professionals the value of sharing information on this new thing called the Internet. I loaded content to the system and promoted its use among the membership. It was dramatically different that what we think of as the internet today. Information scrolled on a plain screen. There was no graphical interface.
In 1988, I had my first child and continued to work part-time at ACA. In 1990, I had my second child and we moved to Lorton, Virginia. I worked remotely as a part-time consultant on ACA projects for a while. At the same time, I worked part-time in a computer repair shop as the service scheduler. I learned a few things about computer repair. I also took on work as a contract programmer and trainer closer to my new home. I taught classes on office productivity software like Lotus 1-2-3(spreadsheet), WordPerfect, and dBase III. In addition, I began homeschooling child number one. I worked with a large church to write a software application for them to automate the scheduling of their children’s program volunteers. It worked so well for them that I began selling it to other churches across the country.
In 1995, my husband finished his education with a doctorate. Our third child was born soon after. She had a heart defect that required emergency surgery. Working took a bit of a backseat to taking care of the family, but I did continue to support and sell my volunteer software. During this time my older children performed in children’s theater and I created a database system to track the box office functions. In 1997 we moved to Manassas, Virginia. My fourth child was born in 1999, making our family complete. During this time, I continued to take on miscellaneous programming and web projects. I also volunteered in a homeschool co-op where I taught supplemental classes in Physical Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.
Around 2010 my younger children started competing in Irish dance. The costumes for this type of dance require elaborate embroidery. The embroidery process had also been affected by technology and that interested me. Since the costumes were extremely expensive to purchase, I decided to try making them myself. Digital files from a PC could be transferred with a card or 3.5 inch computer disk into a special sewing/embroidery machine. I purchased software for my PC that allowed every stitch of the machine to be mapped out in intricate designs. A file could be created on the PC, loaded into the embroidery machine and then the design stitched out onto fabric. I made some costumes and also offered the digital design files for sale on my website. To assist in my website development, I purchased Microsoft’s Visual Studio which is a tool for developers to write code in a variety of languages. I used the opportunity to update my programming knowledge to the most recent languages and design patterns.
While outwardly our family looked happy, my marriage was not turning out the way I dreamed. After hiding it for so many years, I reached out for help with the domestic violence that had plagued our family for a long time. Because my husband was unwilling to get the help that he needed, I knew he was in danger of losing his job and we would lose our health insurance and benefits. I began applying for full-time jobs. I was surprised to see an advertisement for a job working with an older database programming language I had learned at ACA. In May 2014, I started working full-time at the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) headquarters office in Washington, DC. It seemed like several experiences in my life prepared me to ultimately end up in this job. The database application they were running (Visual Foxpro) was so old it was no longer supported by Microsoft and desperately needed to be replaced. My experience at ACA allowed me to interpret the old code and my new experience with Visual Studio had given me some ideas for moving the application to a new platform. NALC allowed me to take a week-long training conference in 2015 called Visual Studio LIVE! where I gained additional knowledge about programming with Visual Studio as a tool.
NALC was technologically behind in many of their business practices when I started working there. They hold a convention to conduct union business biennially. I worked in the registration booth in July 2014. Delegates to the convention were registered by computer at the headquarters office, but not PCs. Their membership system ran on an IBM iSeries, which is a large computer more like a mainframe, so it could not be brought on-site. For years the staff had printed the approximately 7,000 delegate names and placed it in binders by state. They carried the binders to convention and then staff checked off names off the paper lists. Once the registration booth closed for the evening, the number of delegates check-in was counted by hand. It was an extremely time-consuming process. The executive vice president had suggested the idea of checking in delegates with bar-code scanning to confirm their credentials, but it had not been implemented. When we began preparing for the 2016 National Convention, it was brought up to the IT staff again to try to implement a scanning solution. I volunteered that I thought I could program an application if the network admin staff could set up a web server for me to use because I didn’t know much about hardware or networks. The network staff committed to building a web server for the project. But as the convention got closer and closer, my application was finished but I began to realize that maybe the network guys did not know how to set up a web server either. I asked them to give me the admin password to the new server they had purchased and did some extensive Google searching on how to set up IIS. I got the webserver up and running and the network guys cabled a network of bar code scanners. We used some empty office space to test the scanning operation. I loaded a copy of the delegate registration data from the IBM iSeries to the new server. Testing went perfectly, but still the overwhelming opinion of many staff members was, “That will never work.” We shipped 2 identical servers, 15 laptops and barcode scanners to Los Angeles to arrive in time for the convention. Nervous staff still printed out the paper registration list as a contingency plan.
Even though I had planned for every possible glitch, I spent several uneasy weeks worried about whether this plan would work. I had done most of the work and knew that if it all went wrong there would be no one to blame but me. We set up the booth in LA with 14 scanning stations and I trained about 30 staff on how to use the new barcode scanning system. The executive vice president has a serious discussion with me about dumping the computer system if there are any amount of backed up lines at registration and going back to the paper system.
The moment of truth arrived, and a long line formed in front of the registration booth as we got ready to open. The line dissolved in a minute. The scanning system was a huge success. Staff jokingly complained that it was too easy, and they did not have enough to do. When registration closed for the day, there were no tick marks to count in binders. The computer spit out a detailed list of registration numbers in less than 30 seconds. The staff who previously would have been locked in a room counting were free to join the rest of the delegates at convention activities. The three days of registration went by without a glitch, although we did make notes of new features that could make the system even better for the next convention. The success of this project gave me credibility with staff at NALC and confidence in myself to take on new things. I felt like I had earned my place there.
Another part of my job was administering SQL Server instances at NALC which meant I helped with Optimum, the payroll and HR system that our finance department used. In 2016 I was sent for several days of training on the system in Nashville, TN. I learned several things that would allow me to maintain the back-end running of the system. I also moved to Woodbridge in 2016 after selling the family home due to my divorce.
The Information Technology Department at NALC was going through some changes in 2017. Management changed and staff were reorganized. My main responsibilities had been a PC-based database system, but I was asked to learn a different programming language (RPG) that ran on the IBM iSeries system. Learning to program on an older system with “green screen” interfaces was a bit challenging since I had not worked on that type of system since the 1980s. It seemed slow and laborious. However, all programming languages contain basically the same core concepts, and I was able to pick it up quickly. After doing some research, I learned that IBM systems were able to use more modern languages and web browser interfaces running on PCs. It was just that we were still using old software. NALC soon purchased some “modernization tools” that let us participate in rapid application development on IBM iSeries. In 2017 I attended the “Profound Logic PLUS” conference in Columbus, Ohio for four days. There I learned how to use their tools to write applications for our IBM iSeries to run in a modern-looking browser interface. I also learned about open-source packages like node.js that can be installed on an IBM iSeries.
Some of the applications that existed on the old Visual Foxpro system that I was hired to maintain were moved over the IBM iSeries. I designed a system for travel approvals using the IBM iSeries. The new application replaced many manual steps and made most of the process digital, greatly reducing processing times between headquarters and our regional offices.
The NALC 2018 National Convention took place in Detroit, Michigan in August 2018. Since I had switched mainly to programming on IBM iSeries, I handed off much of the programming for the convention scanning software to a newly hired staff member. I managed the specifications, and he wrote an updated application. We made upgrades that I had noted from the first convention. We also added a new module that recorded guests and printed out visitor badges. Bar-code scanning of badges had gone so well at the last convention that other departments were asking for us to implement scanning at their booths as well. We developed a system for our legislative booth to read information from the badges and use it to record donations to our political action fund. The community service department used badge scanning to record charitable donations they were collecting for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I was still the on-site contact for registration during the convention, and all the new features were well received.
Over the next few years I attended several off -site training sessions. I expanded my IBM knowledge by attending the IBM Technical University for a week in Orlando, Florida in 2018. There I learned more details about maintaining an IBM system, querying their DB2 database, and using programming and administration tools. I attended the 2019 Profound Logic PLUS conference in Orlando, Florida for four days. The information in the 2019 PLUS conference had much more emphasis on open source languages and using cloud services. Also, in 2019 I attended the DSLUG Microsoft Dynamics Training in Los Angeles, CA for 4 days. Here I learned information to support the Finance department with the general ledger software that runs on SQL Server.
The year 2020 saw the disruption on in-person conferences and training. The NALC Convention in Hawaii was cancelled and there were no training conferences to attend. I did attend my first completely virtual conference in 2020, the COMMON PowerUp. This training was for IBM programmers. I enjoyed the virtual format and have attended several “lunch and learn” type virtual sessions since then.
My work continues today to replace old, outdated systems with new streamlined applications and business processes. I am thankful for the exceptional experience I have gained at NALC, but the IT department is small. There is not much room for me to advance in my career. The IBM platform is a viable business option, but there are many more jobs in the Microsoft/PC portion of the market. I would like to find a new job that uses PC rather than IBM systems. As I search for jobs, it seems I am limited by the fact that I do not have a college degree. I am confident that I already possess the skills I need to manage complicated projects, but do not receive consideration because I do not have a degree. I feel that my experiences have brought me to a good place in life and career. Obtaining a college degree would validate the skills I have already learned and increase my opportunities.