User:Lonnyyates

About Me



Occupation - Retired Education - AOS Computer Science - Management - Accounting - HVAC - Utilities - Warehouse Forman - Power Generation

You may contact me here on the Wiki, or email me at either of the following links.

[mailto:lonnyyates@ldschurch.org Church Email] [mailto:lonnyyates@outlook.com Personal Email]

I was born and reared in Tooele, UT. I am the second oldest of 8. I started working at the age of 12 as a paperboy, took a year or so off, then at the age of 15 I started working as a dishwasher at a local restaurant I worked from then until I was 55 at many jobs, but at least 30 years were in some type of management role. I served 17 years in the military, active duty, reserves, and National Guard. I'm married to an amazingly beautiful gospel strong woman, Donna, we have been blessed with, 4 children and 10 grandchildren.

If I were to pick one special talent or ability that I have it would be teaching. I really love watching students eyes light up when they "get it". I was a substitute teacher for a little time in the Tooele School District. I also taught two-day seminars on "Troubleshooting, Upgrading, and Repairing PC's in the United States and Canada. I had so much fun. Each seminar was so different as far as students experience was concerned. I learned how to quickly find out what the lowest level of experience was, and started my training there. It's a little hard on those who had more experience at first, but by the end of the second day, they had all learned quite a bit. I could have done that for the rest of my life. What a great memory! The only reason I had to change careers was the happenings of 9/11/2001. Companies decided to internalize their training instead of sending them out to the training. That day was bittersweet for me, the tragedy of the morning, and a grandson born in the afternoon.

Computers are my hobby and special interest. I enjoy learning new software, researching online, building spreadsheets and databases, troubleshooting, teaching others to use their computers, installing their software, and keeping track of my family on social media because they all live hundreds of mile away from us. The manipulation of data is something that I hyperfocus on. I have built many different software programs for others. My first database was built for a Sister in Grantsville who wanted to be able to print the older styled "Family Group Sheets and wanted to be able to enter all of the information into a database using an electronic form that looked exactly like that form. I had a great time doing it, had it done in short order, and she was just as happy as can be. I was too because she paid me for something that I had a great time doing. I started managing a truck terminal in 2001, they didn't have a software dispatch system so I built a very functional spreadsheet dispatch, vehicle maintenance/registration/permit tracking, and employee tracking system. Because of that system, I was able to grow this brand new terminal from a million dollar a year business to tens of millions and a very lucrative part of a major corporation. I created some job tracking spreadsheets for a major oil and gas company in Oklahoma, my wife was working for them, and she told the engineers she was working with that I could build what they wanted if they got tired of their trial and error issues. They accepted her offer, jumped at it is more like what she described. She came home and told me she had volunteered my services to do this. They wanted a very complicated sheet that required a lot of coding behind the many different sheets they needed to be tracked. I've had a lot of fun with computers in the past 35 years. I have had a computer since the initial 286 processors came out. My first computer was a Commodore PC 20, it had a 5 1/4" floppy, 3.5" floppy, and a 10MB hard drive with 2mb RAM upgradable to 4mb. Using MS-DOS 3.2 as the operating system. I can't even imagine trying to run that thing today.

I have served in various callings, the very first one was in 1983 while stationed at Camp Casey, Korea, I was called to be the Melkezidic Priesthood Group Leader in our small branch. Not too long after that while attending a religious retreat in Seol, Korea I was called to be a District Missionary. Because I joined the US Army at the age of 17 I didn't get to serve a mission so this was a very exciting time for me. I have served as a Ward Missionary, and Ward Mission Leader, also, served as a teacher in Primary, Jr. Sunday School, both Gospel Doctrine and Gospel Principals, and Priesthood. I've served as both counselor and president of Sunday School and Elders Quorum, and as First Counselor in a Branch Presidency. I have also served in a variety of scout positions, and I am currently the Webloes assistant in our Ward.

What a blessing this is to be able to contribute in a productive way in furthering our Savior's Kingdom. I am currently working in the Populated Places Project and learning quite a bit. I also have started to edit some of the "Wikipedia" pages when I find issues while I'm going back and forth. This is a great experience for me. I have recently started to work on the Bolivia clickable maps project, this one started out tough, but has become a great opportunity for me to learn. I have met some amazing missionaries while serving. Attending the various meetings is informative and fun, it is great to be able to interact with the missionaries. I greatly recommend this mission to anyone who is looking to do some service through missionary work.