This is an image I took at the Cheesecake Factory the day before Thanksgiving of some very special people and some very dear friends. We are geographically dispersed around the Atlanta area and Martin has been living in Oregon for a few years now. From left to right, Martin Tromblee, Angela and Billy Furlong and Shane Stewart.
Martin and I met during the summer of 1997 in a systems design course when we were both finishing our under graduate degrees. Martin was managing a SWAT team (special software development projects) for the VP of The Home Depot's Logistics Department. He is unequivocally the most intelligent, honorable and truly gifted person that I have had the good fortune to meet. If my memory serves me correctly, he sold, not wrote, sold his first software application when he was 12 years old. I could brag about Martin's technical acumen for many paragraphs, but it is his character and leadership that have always most impressed me.
Billy and Angela are married and approaching their 17th anniversary. Billy is a very talented enterprise systems person, database guru and a very smart and multi-talented technologist. Billy and I met in 1997 when I joined he and Martin's team at The Home Depot. Billy is an avid hunter and he shares this passion with Angela. This year Angela shot her first deer and she was so excited telling us all about how it happened. Angela is a treasure and Billy knows he is the luckiest guy in the world.
Shane and I met in a C++ class and he has been a riot since day one. Super intelligent, witty, playful, irreverent, he once asked me, and I quote, "Did they have cars when you were in high school?" We have a real history, we both worked for a Financial Services company together before we worked together at The Home Depot as software developers. Shane, like everyone else in our small group, is a person who has interests. He has continued his career as a software developer, is involved in another enterprise that is a blossoming fitness business. I think Shane is the 'fastest learn' that I have ever known and he has consistently amazed me with his ability to distill complex problems or concepts into very manageable, bite sized chunks. He's a good friend that I don't have an opportunity to see often enough; that applies to Martin, Billy and Angela as well.
There was another member of our group that could not make it this year, Chilinda Willis. She is another geek, like the rest of us, and had just started a new gig the week of our meeting. We all missed her and next year we're going to get the whole group together, "God willing and the creek don't rise..."
I have read many times, and heard from people I respect, that you can judge a person by their friends (or the company that they keep). Assuming there is truth in those words, and I think there is, I feel very blessed indeed to have such extraordinary friends. It was great to see you all and hope the next time we meet will be sooner rather than later.
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