Spotlight: Dave and Trish Whitinger
By Sharon Brown (Sharon) on March 29, 2010
| It isn't often we get to take a peek into the minds of a young couple who have as many interests and as much passion about life as Dave and Trish Whitinger. Talking with them is as relaxing as it is informative, and is definitely worth sharing with you. Join us as we talk with Dave and Trish. |
We all look to Dave as our computer guy, the one we turn to when our writings in Cubits turn into gibberish and disappear into oblivion. He is our magic man when he goes into cyberspace and captures that which we thought was lost forever. Behind the image we have of him, there's a very kind and knowledgeable young man, one I enjoy calling friend. The words that follow belong to Dave, in answer to the many questions we asked. Dave: "I became interested in computers very early. Living in Dallas in my early childhood, my dad would bring home equipment from his job at Texas Instruments. There were all kinds of machines in the house, and my earliest memories involve a 300 baud modem with cups that the phone receiver plugged into. We always h Trish and I met in high school. She sat in front of me in one of our classes and we got to know each other. We married not long after we graduated from high school. I started Dave's Garden to provide a software solution to my seed trading. Back then I was trading on gardenweb and was having some trouble keeping organized with all the seeds I had for trade, as well as my 'wish list' that I wanted. So I wrote software to help me track my stash, and I allowed other people to sign up an account and maintain their own list. It grew pretty quickly, although nothing like as fast as Cubits has grown! It's not my first site, though. I guess my first site was a personal site I set up in the early to mid 90's. I created many successful web sites before Dave's Garden. Linux Today is one such site that is still going as strong as ever. I started that one two years before starting Dave's Garden. You can see a list of sites that I've built at whitinger.net." We asked Dave then about his family life. Here's what he said: Dave: "Plenty of people go out and work a job away from home all day. They wake up, do the farm chores, t In my opinion, being able to work from home is the ultimate in flexibility. I set whatever schedule I need, and handle things as they need handling." And then we asked this question: 'We understand your children are homeschooled. Can you tell us how that's working out?' Dave: "Homeschooling is the ultimate expression of freedom and liberty. There are two philosophies to raising children, that the parent knows best or that the state knows best. Those who homeschool (and there are around 2 million homeschooled children in this country) are doing it because they believe they can do a better job than the state. Obviously, I agree. A hired government worker with 20+ students under his care is not going to be able to give the quality of education that a caring parent is going to give in a one on one situation like homeschooling. And the results show it: homeschooled children are famous for their academic achievements. The last thing I'll say about government schools: growing up in them felt like a prison to me, and made me hate learning. It wasn't until I was well into my twenties that I started to be interested in furthering my education. I think government schools are more for "control" than for education. You only need to compare the United States test scores to that of the rest of the western world to see how pitiful we are. It's time for a change and millions of families apparently agree. As for computers, all of our children have accounts at cubits and our two oldest ones have setup their own (private) cubit where they write articles and chat in their forums with each other and with my dad. Will any of them become professional programmers? That's completely up in the air, it's too early to tell. But programming a computer is a skill that, like woodworking, gardening, or any other industry, is very useful, and I expect they'll all get a good exposure to the art." And then we asked Dave: 'Providing you and Trish manage to find any spare time, what do you like to do for relaxation?' Dave: "Well, we play a lot of chess, mostly against our 3 oldest children. We get a lot of relaxation from gardening, of course, and we read aloud most evenings. We also spend quite a bit of time on our front porch rocking chairs just chatting about whatever is interesting to us at the time. We talk a lot about religion, politics, family matters, and farming issues." And about Cubits? Dave: "When I learned that Dave's Garden had been sold and that the new owners did not want me to continue in my historical capacity, I started thinking about what my next project will be. I had a lot of fun doing Dave's Garden and I wanted to do something similar. I considered creating a new community site centered around some other topic, but I wasn't really passionate enough about anything else to successfully build a new community. I was on the porch with Trish and we were talking for a long time about this. We figured that what would be ideal would be to bring in someone else who was passionate about his subject, whatever that might be, and make a partnership with him where we provide the technology, and he managed the community. Well, from there, then the next logical step was to not limit ou The only question remained: what to call it? I have owned the domain cubits.org since 2004 and was actually about to just let it expire. While I was starting to develop the foundational framework of the site, I was using cubits.org as the temporary domain until we came up with a name. We thought for several days on the name, and finally it hit us that we could just call it cubits.org. The concept of a collection of communities called "cubits" really resonated with me, so it stuck immediately. The concept for the logo came simultaneously to me. We are about 2 months in now, and it has been everything I envisioned. I knew we'd have a lot of gardening-related cubits created, since most people knew me from Dave's Garden, but I had been hoping from the beginning that we'd have a lot of non-gardening interest, too, and that has definitely happened. You only need look through the tag cloud on the finder to see what a diversity of cubits are on the site. Have I had to change my perspective? No. There is always the chance when you start a new project, that once people start using it, you realize that the direction you thought you were going in needs to be changed, but in this case, cubits was implemented exactly according to my plan and the concept is obviously resonating with a lot of people. As for growth, it took me a couple years to build DG to the same size that cubits.org is after only a couple months. I couldn't be happier with the growth, concept and direction of cubits." We asked Dave if he'd had a mentor growing up. Here's his answer: Dave: "The only mentor I ever had was my dad who was always bringing home expensive equipment and letting me play with it. As I got older we got more computers until IBM finally introduced the first real 'PC' (the IBM XT). That is when things got really fun and also serious. I got my own modum and 286 computer for my bedroom before I was a teenager, and I ran a BSS off that computer. The BSS became the most active and popular BBS in the entire region where we lived at the time. Dad spent a lot of time messing around on the computer with me, handling the problems that I couldn't deal with. There were some interesting times back then. He also wrote some custom software for me that I was then able to take and customize to my liking." We then asked him about this first spring in his new home: Dave: "Decorating and landscaping are both coming up nicely. We've been doing a lot to prepare the land around As for output on the farm, that really depends on what we devote our energies to. I've been surprised at how profitable it can be to raise cattle in this area. Cattle do very well for us and we made a good deal of income from selling black Angus cattle the last couple years. We'll continue doing that. As for real money, my first and highest priority is to be self-sufficient for our own needs. Once those are met we can turn our excess to the market for sale." I turned my attention to Trish then, the lovely woman behind an admirable man. These are her words: Trish: "I am often asked how we 'do it all'. The answer is pretty simple, we don't. Everyone in our family is a hard worker. The children are taught from the time they can walk that working together is fun, and they love to work along side of Momma and Daddy. If we are doing a farm project, we are all working together, even if the little one's only job is to look cute and bring water. They are still helping, and we make sure they know it. As for my part, I do a tremendous amount of planning. I am a master list keeper, and I'm very good at multitasking. I never get everything done in a week that I would like, but it doesn't discourage me. I just move my list to the next week and keep on going. We've learned to be very flexible, working with unexpected things that happen almost Dave and I have worked together for so long that we have our roles set and we don't change things around, with the exception of those unexpected things previously mentioned. He knows I'm going to feed him every day and he'll have clean socks. I know he's going to get all the bills paid and feed the pigs. Neither one of us worries about the other's job, so we have less to think about. One thing that is very important to us is to have quality time together. Even though we are all together all of the time, it would be very easy to simply live and work together but not give each other quality time. We eat all of our meals together discussing what is going on during the day, we have story time in the evenings, and we make time to just play." Nancy and I would very much like to thank Dave and Trish for taking the time from their busy life to answer our questions. I admired them long before I wrote this article, and that admiration has grown considerably since the interview. Our best wishes to you, Dave and Trish. We are very happy to be a part of the growing Cubits community that you so graciously provided for us. Go here to see Dave's press release. |
| computers, cubits.org, daily life, Dave Whitinger, farming, home schooling, interview, programming, spotlight, websites, whitinger.net |
 I am a retired Art and Humanities teacher living in western Kentucky. I love writing and art with equal measure, but I also have a passion for nature and plants. |
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Comments and discussion:
| Subject | Thread Starter | Last Reply | Replies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thank you everyone for the kind words! | Trish | Oct 22, 2012 2:49 PM | 5 |
| An inspiring couple! | mollymistsmith | Apr 23, 2010 6:23 PM | 1 |
| What's not to love about these two? | drdon | Apr 2, 2010 7:28 PM | 4 |
| Wonderful article! | plantladylin | Apr 1, 2010 5:09 PM | 20 |
| Great | phicks | Mar 29, 2010 8:04 PM | 1 |
| Great Article | cliffhanger | Mar 29, 2010 7:25 PM | 16 |
| Fantastic article | starlight1153 | Mar 29, 2010 6:32 PM | 6 |
| Very inspiring!! | Dorothy | Mar 29, 2010 2:28 PM | 1 |
| Nice job! | dave | Mar 29, 2010 1:35 PM | 3 |
| Beautiful insight and warmth... | Katg | Mar 29, 2010 10:41 AM | 10 |
| Thank you for the wonderful article | PollyK | Mar 28, 2010 9:26 PM | 1 |
| What a wonderful surprise! | Boopaints | Mar 28, 2010 9:24 PM | 1 |
