Getting to know Stephen Opal

I was the first born in a family of seven.  Being the lead dog meant that most of the mistakes of parenting were applied to me.  Hey, babies bounce!

I grew up in a crowded home, but I stood against the wind, blazing the permission trail for my younger siblings.  I found and exceeded my borders, in the process I expanded those parental limits; a challenge my brothers and sisters have yet to thank me for.

As I grew, I came to respect and admire the morality of my Father, a man of stern conviction and equally strong ethics.  As a business man, there are few who would challenge his fairness or his charity.  My Mother was a kind soul who gives everyone a second chance to do right.  Her primary skill has been her nurturing.

I'm blessed to say they are both in my life.  For a great deal of my adult life we had been joined by family and business.  We owned and managed a Pest Control service (yes, exterminator) which was founded by my Mother's Father.  I worked daily with both parents (more directly with my Mom, who was the office manager), for more that twenty-five years.  Unfortunately, none of my siblings stayed with the company, and due to many emotional and physical issues, we sold the business and my parents retired.

I've been married to my Wife Barbara for more than 28 years.  We don't have any kids of our own, but we have two mini-dachshunds we call our devildogs. 

An interesting moment in our lives was back in 1994, when we won a marketing drawing through our Discover card and they gave us $50,000.  We were also the focus of a national television commercial that they filmed with us and it ran for about a week.  Discover Shop to Win was the contest and it was a random drawing of all the transactions made during the previous week.  They said we were about six million to one odds.  They even paid us actors guild residuals for the commercial run.  Our dog was also in the commercial and she still resides with us today.  She let the fame go to her head and she turned into a diva.

I enjoy bowling (190 average), golf (a good walk anyway), poker (I've placed in tourney money frequently), euchre/hearts/etc, and listening to a wide range of music.

Throughout my adult life I've been fascinated by computers.  I wrote my first program on an Apple ][ and learned several programming languages just for the fun of it.  My most complex program was fantasy baseball draft management software that handled a live auction draft of up to twenty teams and reported the projected standings for the league, based upon the player projections provided.

My professional life in IT began in 2001, when a fantasy sports reporting service hired me for their web development work (in Perl).  From there I've had several short and long term consulting positions, one of which has been working with Frank Dillon on various WebGUI 6.9 projects for a past client.

I'd talked with Frank on occasion about joining the WebGUI staff, but conditions and timing was never quite right, until this December when we closed the deal.  I'm happy to say that it was a great decision that I don't regret.  The work is challenging, there is more than enough to go around, and I feel like I'm contributing to something more than a commercial venture.

Stephen Opal