Third in a Series of Articles for LinkedIn

Do you work in code for the job or do you do it for fun? HR would ask the question on this to get a feel on how your technical makeup is. I do it for both. This is another in the series dealing with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Lately changed to add Art, so it becomes (STEAM).

Header picture of color periodic table. Copyright by Michael A. Eastman October 23 2006

The Rest of the Story – A Periodic Table and the HR question “What do you do for fun?”

Published on June 30, 2019
Michael A Eastman
Senior Technologist - System Integration Design Development, Analysis, Configuration Data Management, Application Development

Another item that I had not mentioned in my resume (I really ran out of room, but it will soon be rectified) is the age-old Human Resources question “What do you do for fun?” Among my several hobbies, I have one where I like to work/play with data and to present it in useful forms. This takes me to data access by technology and making it available to others.

One night I was watching my son struggle with his homework from science class on the periodic table. He kept flipping pages back and forth in his book and was getting frustrated. He was a freshman in high school at the time and disliked using the other science books in the same way, looking up information page-by-page. I sat down that night and whipped up an electronic version of the periodic table for him to use. He loved it.

Above is the first rough draft of the Periodic Table. The information would pop-up in a side window.

Above is the raw coding of first draft of Periodic Table.

My next iteration included some new coding for color and a pop-up for the element information.

The new element pop-up with color match to the periodic table - snazzy!

The new HTML code is a little more intense, but workable.

At the next Parent-Teacher Conference, I presented a copy to his science teacher. Loading it from the disk, she was able to click on each element and the data was instantly there, no flipping back and forth or searching for the information. She was stunned and asked, “You did this?”

I also made it configurable to include text, images or combinations with links to expand the data to what was needed in the class at that time. I indicated that it could be updated with some simple programming in HTML or JavaScript. I found out that the high school (even in the 21st Century) did not include any classes on computer programming at that level – for teachers or students. They would have to do it at a college level course like STLCC, where an advanced senior student would spend one day a week in a college level class. My son was a freshman at the time and not even in consideration.

The 'Rest of the Story' did not end there. We took him out of the public school system and enrolled him at the Christian Brothers College High School (CBC) where he was able to get a good education and ultimately received a scholarship to college as a nurse. Currently he is working at a local hospital as a Neuro Intensive Care Unit Nurse (NICU). I'm very, very proud of him.

This is not the first time I have tinkered with HTML code. Another story of a prior event will be presented soon.