New in Life

It turns out I’m really bad at keeping this thing up to date. Lots has happened since my last post relating to my career path. I left Thompson Coburn in January to pursue a career in non profit management; I am now the Executive Director of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. You can find more information about it at SaintLouisChessClub.org. The club is located at Euclid and Maryland and will open this June. The Scholastic portion of the club entails an outreach into the school system to promote chess in the schools. Many details are still to be worked out, but suffice it to say, this club will be visually the most stunning in the country.

Otherwise, things are pretty normal. Anna is still loving her job and doing very well at it. We picked up another dog - Polo is a Standard Poodle (like Lucy), but was rescued from the pound. He’s a very good dog and makes a great playmate for Lucy. Finally, we’re working to get our house on the market so we can move closer to both of our jobs. I’m anticipating finalizing everything this weekend - wish us luck on a speedy (and profitable) sale!

Hi everyone. I’ve been busy (in a good way) lately… I’ve been doing lots of rock climbing, road biking, and even the occasional racquetball game. Work has been hectic; we are merging with a law firm in the Chicago area, and this weekend is the official cut-over. Everyone has been keeping busy getting all of the systems integrated, and that leaves little time for all of the other work-related stuff. Heck, even the vendor lunches have had to be curtailed to make time for other work

Anyway, other than that stuff, life is pretty normal. Anna is doing well and still loving her job at LDA. She and I went to the Ben Folds/John Mayer concert at the Verizon Amphitheater and I was surprised at the demographics of the crowd. I expected to see people like us and older, but it was almost exclusively high school aged kids. Even the boys (14-18 years old) were yelling things like “We love you, John!” Very surprising!

I am going to be working most of this weekend, but I intend to go on the FBC’s full moon bike ride. We’ll start at 11pm at Turtle Park and go from there. I don’t really know the itinerary, but if it is anything like the last ride we did, it’ll be a blast. If you like drinking beer and riding bicycles, this may be the trip for you. Just let met know and we can meet up!

Every once in a while I get on a kick to do artsy stuff. Anna and I went to a KDHX fund raiser at Yemanja Brazil (see my restaurant review). Interestingly enough, the performer was a great Brazilian band called Samba Bom. They play a mixture of cool beats and upbeat dance music. We really enjoyed ourselves! We also had tickets to go the symphony tonight, but Anna has to work… There are a couple of musicals and performances in April that we’re all lined up to enjoy. Billy Joel is coming to town on April 13th or 14th and we’re going to see Chicago (the musical) at the Fox on April 25th.

I’ve decided that the only downside to all of this frivolity is that I can’t do multi-day weekend camping trips I’ve been itching to get out on some backpacking, hiking, caving, canoing, etc trips, but just haven’t had a clear weekend yet. Hopefully I can get some of that stuff lined up soon and get out while the gettin’s good.

Makes Tony a crabby boy. I have been working a lot lately, and there is no end in site. We have a lot of initiatives going on at work, and that means lots of stuff to do. I am involved in the VOIP project, switching infrastructure, wireless point-to-point project, firewall reconfiguration, server refresh, WAN emulation, expiring remote access tokens, blade center installs *deep breath*, and many other day-to-day activities. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

The good news is that, once I get home, things settle down a lot. Since I’m not in school any longer, my evenings are mine to do with what I want. I’ve been catching up on some reading (Desert Solitare by Edward Abbey and assorted magazines), watching a little TV (Boston Legal, House, Scrubs), and getting outside! Anna, Lucy, and I went for a walk in Bee Tree Park yesterday - it was perfect weather and we all had a good time. I have to work on Saturday and go to a birthday party on Sunday, so I won’t be able to take that camping trip I was looking forward to. However, I will still find some time to hit a bike trail, hike, or otherwise enjoy nature.

That’s about it for now. If I don’t see you sooner, have a good weekend!

I have had a very interesting experience lately regarding teamwork in the workplace. More precisely, I learned what teamwork ISN’T. Teamwork isn’t taking control of a situation, or demanding total control. Teamwork isn’t usurping, demeaning, or otherwise mitigating the responsibilities and capabilities of others. Furthermore, teamwork isn’t shirking all responsibility.

Teamwork is all about the team. This means that all personal agendas must be set aside, as well as feelings, in an effort to achieve something no one could do on their own. It is important when dealing with others on a team to make everyone feel important by recognizing them for their efforts. This does not mean that you have to kowtow when disagreements arise. Instead, it means being respectful of each other and to listen to persuasive arguments. If you are still unconvinced, state why, and then articulate your own case. If you can’t convince other parties that your solution is apropos, then either it isn’t, or you didn’t explain it well enough.

Perhaps the best piece of advice I can give is to read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, by Dale Carnegie. This is the quintessential book on personal interactions. Not surprisingly, most of the advice is common sense (make others feel valued, respect and attempt to understand their points of view, etc), but it is amazing how infrequently we acknowledge these principles. I make it a practice to reread this book every year, just to remind myself of the importance of personal interactions. I can’t guarantee this book will change your world, but I can promise that it will make a difference in all of your relationships, both at work and in your personal life.

Today is my brothers in law birthday, and I figured I’d send a shout out. Ben passed away in July of 2005, and we all miss him very much. His family and friends are very active in remembering him, as you can see from his website.

Nick is celebrating in style down in sunny Florida with Boots, soaking up the rays and catching spring training. They were able to go to a couple of the games in Jupiter, FL, and they will be seeing the Braves vs. Cardinals game in Orlando on Friday. Hopefully he is able to get some autographs while he’s down there. Good luck, Nick!

I will be in Rolla this weekend for St. Pat’s, so I probably won’t get chance to post until Monday. Everyone have a safe and happy holiday, and I’ll see you Monday!

I’ve been somewhat lax with regards to web development lately. I run BenRudd.com, TonyRich.org, StLChess.com, and MOChess.org. I have a pretty big backlog of stuff to do on all of these sites, but just haven’t had the time or motivation lately. I started slowly today by adding the cool little Java Script you see here. You can click on the headings below to expand older content and see the most recent posts. Also, I have redesigned the main page of this site to be more blog oriented.

Other than that, I still have to move MOChess.org to the new hosting company and then work on the redesign that we’ve planned out. The other two just need normal maintenance and development. Also, I have to make some more content for each to keep people coming back

Stay tuned for more updates later… You never know when the inspiration will strike me.

Hello everyone,

After a couple failed attempts at blogging, I’m back at it. This time, I think I’ll find one topic a day and reflect on it here. Hopefully that keeps me motivated.

Today’s topic is hiking.

I went on a couple of hikes recently. On February 18th, I hiked with a group of enthusiasts at Hawn State Park. The weather was nice, given the time of year, and we were able to enjoy lots of winter scenes, like ice waterfalls and furry woodland creatures. Some of us went on the 6-mile hike, and others did the full 10-mile loop. You can see my pictures from this event in my image gallery. Also, you can see the list of people that went on the trip by visiting our meetup site and clicking on the calendar.

The other hike was on February 25th at Huzzah valley, and back in to the Scotia furnace. The Scotia furnace is an old iron smelting furnace from the 1800s and is very fun to explore. This was a short-distance hike (maybe 5 miles), but there was lots of bushwhacking and ups and downs. You can see pictures from the event here, and the event details here.

Finally, we did a bit of a hike on March 3rd (3 miles each way) when we visited Green Cave. If you’ve never been to the Meramec State Park, you’re missing out. The park is covered in caves, most of which are closed during the winter (bat hibernation stuff). However, Green cave is open year-round, and has a lot to offer everyone. You can see some pictures of the event at the meetup.com group site. The trip description is here.

I guess school kept me busy for about two months - that’s how long it’s been since my last post! A lot has happened in the past two months, and it is all good. I’ll try to recap here, and then I’ll try to post more soon.

Anna’s surgery was a success!
Anna was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease a few months ago, which is a very highly increased Cortisol level. This can be caused by a number of things, including a tumor in the Pituitary gland or the Adrenal gland. Luckily, Anna’s was in her Pituitary gland (in the brain); this is lucky because the Adrenal version is usually cancerous, and this one is almost never.

Anna had surgery on November 30th and spent two weeks recovering there. Her sodium levels were not balancing out the way they should have, so she had to be under constant supervision. Her levels have since climbed into the normal range and it looks like things are stabilizing. She’s been home for a few days now and she’s feeling much better.

On a personal note, Anna is much happier and fun to be around. It seems like the cloud of depression has been lifted and she said she feels more alive. Not only are the psychological changes marked, but so are the physiological changes; she heals quickly, is losing weight, and needs less sleep. Obviously, she is still recovering and a little weak, but I am so excited that I have my old Anna back.

Semester is over (finally!)

The semester is finally over, and things went better than expected. I have a B in the class that I thought I was going to fail, and (I think) an A in the other class. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have chosen UMR’s IS degree for my Master’s, but I’ve already committed to it and I intend to see it through. If nothing else, it looks good on my resume. I’ll try to spend some time posting why I think it was a bad decision later.

While I have other things I’d like to chat about, duty calls… I’ve been particularly busy at work lately because of some new IS initiatives I’m a part of. Check back soon for more info on that stuff and everything else that’s going on.

Not a lot of time to write… School is keeping me VERY busy, as is work. On top of that, I’m in the MCA and we’re spending a lot of time on some new initiatives to get chess popular in Missouri again. I’ll try to post again this evening when I get home.