My name is Lance Porter. I live in West Fork, AR with my wife, Shelly, and our three wonderful boys, Dirk 15, Eric 13, and Ryan 10.
We moved to West Fork a few years ago when the economy was hot and companies were willing to do anything to keep employees happy. What makes me happy is doing the work I love (electrical engineering) while living in the area I call home (Ozarks) and raising my boys right -- hunting, fishing, driving pickup trucks... We were really tired of city life. Anyway, my company allowed me to move anywhere I wanted and work from home. The story is a little more complicated than that but you get the idea.
I have been an electrical engineer for the past 15 years. I currently write software for cell phones. You know the cool ring tones? That wasn't me. You know the games and pictures and stuff? Not me either. You know how sometimes, for no reason at all, your phone call ends abruptly when you are in mid-sentence? Yep. That is my fault.
For many years we would spend the 4th of July with my family in Huntsville, AR. We would go to my uncle's house and shoot fireworks in his backyard. Every year the shows got bigger and bigger, until eventually we outgrew the backyard.
We were shooting exclusively commercial fireworks (1.4G) and I was primarily just a spectator until 2003 when my uncle went to fireworks school with some of his Fire Department buddies. That year we had the most amazing back yard fireworks display with the professional grade (1.3G) fireworks. Did I mention my uncle is the Fire Chief? He could basically write his own permits for fireworks displays back then. It was cool. Sigh.
With the bigger (1.3G) fireworks I suddenly got interested. I struck up a conversation with my uncle about how I could help. Right then, while the fireworks were still overhead, we laid out the basic framework of the system we now use.
Our backyard display that year was pretty hard to miss and several local businessmen contacted my uncle about having him shoot a show in 2004 for the entire town.
I got busy researching, designing, writing, building, etc. and the rest is history.