Mark Whitcher

It turns out, this is the month that both of my grandfathers have left this earth to join their Savior, Jesus Christ, in heaven.

My mother’s dad, Don Harper, passed away last night.

I have been thinking about this post ever since I wrote the last one and there are two stories I would like to share with you that really kind of summarize Grandpa.

Several years back, my family on my Mom’s side had Christmas all together at my aunt’s house in Michigan. Growing up, Grandma and Grandpa’s house is where we would always spend Christmas, so it was kind of neat to have the grandkids and the growing number of great grandkids there for Christmas together again. When we were all gathered together getting ready to open gifts, Grandpa made us wait and told us the story of how he and Grandma had come to know God as the result of someone coming and knocking on their door and inviting them to church. He challenged all of us to know the importance of going and “knocking on doors”. Because someone had the courage to go and knock on their door, this clan of people (there were almost 20 of us at the time) were all together, saved, and most were serving the Lord in some sort of ministry.

I will never forget that night. The Lord has used that memory many times to remind me of what I should be doing.

The second story is simple, and is from when my wife and I were newly engaged. We were at my Grandpa’s house visiting him one summer. We were getting ready to leave and doing our hugs and “love you”’s on our way out the door, when he looked at Ingrid and said, “I love you.” He paused for a bit and said, “I mean that. You are my family and I love you.” Grandpa loved his family hugely. As his grandkids got married and his family grew, he loved us all and showed that love all the time. Much of the time that love made him worry more than any of us thought was good, but it was all about his love for his family. The way he welcomed my wife into his family, and made sure she knew it, made me love him even more.

The last thing I’ll say, and no mention of Grandpa’s life would be complete without it, is how much he loved and missed his own wife, Mary. She died more than twenty years ago and Grandpa had been missing her deeply ever since. I am not sure how many years it took before Grandpa was at peace with “Mama” not being with him, but even when he accepted it, he still missed her deeply. Well, he and Grandma are now both sitting at the feet of their Savior. Grandpa’s been looking forward to this day for a very, very long time.

As I said not too long ago, life is short and I will see Grandpa again soon in heaven. I smile knowing he’s probably not missing us as much as we are and will miss having him here with us.

I’ve got to say something and put it down in writing. My grandfather, Page Whitcher, died during the night last Friday night. He was a Christian and I will see him again one day when we are together in heaven. He died at the age of eighty-eight, being, as the Bible puts it, old and full of days. Death is the way of all life, and Grandpa lived a good, full life.

There is no way I could sum up his life for you to read. There is not much about him that I know except the memories that I have of which he was a part. I didn’t see him very much when I was growing up because of the distance between us, maybe every two or three years.

Many of my memories of Grandpa involve him building something. One summer — I must have been around ten years old — my dad helped him with some work he had to do building his a-frame cabin in the mountains north of Phoenix. I can see an image in my mind of Grandpa and Dad raising up the giant upside-down v that was to be one of the rafters for the roof. It was a beautiful cabin. I would love to someday go to the owner and buy the place back into the family.

Another summer, when I was fifteen, I spent some time with him helping out with another building project he had building an apartment for him and Grandma to live in behind the insurance business that Grandma was involved with. I got to drive him around in his brand new Chevy pickup truck that had a fuel injected 350 engine. I loved driving that truck. I remember he was surprised that I was using my right foot for both the gas and the break pedals (I guess he thought I was used to driving a standard transmission, but I never had). I did some painting for him and generally was a second pair of hands when he needed it. We really enjoyed the time together.

I remember him reading Louis Lamour and telling me how he didn’t have to buy new books anymore. He was getting old enough that he couldn’t remember a book by the time he got back to it in his collection so it was just as good as reading a new one. He sat in the camper he and Grandma were living in (while the apartment got built) eating his daily breakfast of toast and coffee while reading Louis Lamour.

The only time I remember seeing him after that (though there were probably other times I just can’t remember) are at weddings. He came to mine, and then I saw him again at my sister’s and then again at my brother’s. I haven’t seen him since then (that was ten years ago).

It’s hard to imagine all the ways that Grandpa had a profound impact on me, and I probably don’t even realize it. He was a Christian, which lead to my father becoming one, which lead to me becoming one. Now I try to live every day building a personal relationship with the God who created the universe, and Grandpa played a part in that. He also gave my father a love of the mechanical, which rubbed off on me. I am not nearly as adept at it, but I am sure it had something to do with my love of computers and programming (it’s all about figuring out how things work) which is now my source of income as I work from home and take care of my kids.

Of course, I am sorry to see him go, but as Paul said, I don’t sorrow as those with no hope. Life goes by so quickly; it won’t be too long before I see him again.

See you later, Grandpa.

UPDATE—I found this postcard that grandpa gave to me back in 1993. It seems like I remember meeting him at an airshow, but I can remember where. I want to say Wisconsin, but I can remember why we would have been there.

I came in to work this morning (which happens to be a workstation at a FedEx Kinkos, at least for a couple hours or so until I move on to a cafe) and there was only one other person at one of the workstations.

I had seen this person before, but I am still not quite sure where. I think he was on the side of the road. His dress, his hair, and the bag of belongings he was carrying make it pretty obvious that he is a transient/homeless individual.

I am guessing that he was in here checking an email account or something like that. You never know what the background of people in this situation is. It is entirely possible that he had a full-blown tech job at one point and only has one gmail account left from those days. Maybe that is how he keeps in touch with a grown child that lives far away. Maybe he is job hunting.

Whatever his situation is or was, it is good to remember that our situation, whatever it may be, is a gift from God. We really don’t have much control. We could just as easily end up in a situation similar to the guy I saw this morning in FedEx Kinkos.

Also, as the title of this post suggests, when you are in a position to do something to help someone in that situation, make sure that you do. I don’t mean throw money at the person on the corner who is asking for it (not necessarily). In all likelihood, doing so is only providing the means to go to the convenience store and buy alcohol later in the day. That does that person absolutely no good. There are more ways than financial to invest in someone else’s life, and the financial isn’t even the most important way.

The project that I am currently working on requires that I a calculate shipping for international addresses. This is pretty straight-forward for UPS, but that can get kind of pricy, so I have been integrating the USPS rates api from the United States Postal Service.

Let me just say that the USPS is a pain. The array of options is dizzying and getting something back useful from the api is pretty hard.

It is working, but it sure feels dirty.

The nice FedEx man delivered my third iPhone this morning.

No, I am not upgrading. It’s exactly the same as my last one. My newest one, which was a warranty replacement for my original 3G, started thinking that the headphones were plugged in, even when they weren’t. So any sound that was supposed to be coming out of the speaker, was actually being sent to an imaginary set of headphones.

This would happen when you were taking a call, so that you would try to talk to the person, but you couldn’t hear any sound (it was going to the imaginary headphones).

Not good.

So I called Apple, and they sent me a new phone. I am just finishing up installing iPhone OS 3.0 now. Then I will sync it up and restore it from backup.

I did ask the stupid question to see if I could pay the difference and upgrade to the 3GS. I am sure you already know the answer.

For the last several months I have been building a plug-in architecture for net-at-hand.

The reason that I did this was to be able to add custom website functionality to client websites without having to make changes to the core functions of Net-at-hand. Originally I used a branch of the Net-at-hand code (I called it Net-at-hand Pro) that I could add functionality to. My thought was that changes I made in Net-at-hand Pro could be rolled into Net-at-hand if I decided it would provide enough benefit to the Net-at-hand users.

It turned out that Net-at-hand and Net-at-hand Pro drifted too far apart to help each other, and Net-at-hand Pro was quickly becoming a mess that I didn’t want to mess with anymore.

So the plugin architecture for Net-at-hand lets me add dynamic functions to a site without affecting anything else. Of course, if a plugin is useful, I have only to add it to other sites as necessary.

Right now, plugins for Net-at-hand are only available from me and through me. I have to build them and I have to install them. In the near future, plugins will be available for all Net-at-hand users to use and enjoy. In the distant future, I will have the plugin environment sufficiently sandboxed that third-party developers will be able to develop their own plugins for their own clients.

Dear spammers,

This is just a quick note to thank you for the overwhelming response to my request for some spam email.

You have gone above-and-beyond the call of duty in providing me so much material to use in testing my spam filter! I never dreamed that I would go from no spam at all, to over 150 per day in just ten days.

You guys are awesome! Thanks again.

In your debt,
emailtest@anideaweb.com