A Light In The Darkness

Where are you guys?

From your position, if straight ahead is 12:00, we are at about 10:00.

Are you up near the top?

No, just to the left of Portal D.

It was really just a text conversation to pass the time. There was no way my daughter was going to see me. We were in the BYU Marriott Center. It’s the basketball arena and seats 19,000. The arena was about half full. With a graduating class of about 650 students and their friends and families, there were thousands of people in the arena.

Here’s a question, how do you find someone in a crowd that size? We could see my daughter because she was in the choir. And honestly, a pretty, short black girl in a white graduation gown kind of stood out.

So, I could see her, but was trying to help her see where we were sitting. It was myself, my loving wife, my daughter, her three kids, and five other of our kids.

I thought about how you find a spot in your software code, or in a computer system. In software testing you look for exceptions. During the development process, you might actually put in an intentional breakpoints. An intentional stopping point so that you could check the status of your code.

But, how do you add a breakpoint in an arena full of 10,000 people?

I have an idea. Flash your light and I’ll flash you back.

…

Oh, I see you guys now!

There were some interesting speeches delivered as well. And eventually my daughter got to walk across and receive her diploma.

But the high point of my daughter’s graduation was finding flashing lights across a darkened arena.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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